Download or read book Rakugo written by Lorie Brau and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rakugo introduces the storytelling genre of Edo-style rakugo as performed around the turn of the twenty-first century, focusing on the performers' image, training, and techniques and the art's contexts and audiences. Brau argues that, while storytellers' goal of making a hit with audiences sustains the art's vitality, rakugo has come to represent something more than simply popular entertainment: it is also regarded as the cultural heritage to which some Japanese may turn in a nostalgic search for identity.