Singing Tales of the Gishi: "Naniwabushi" and the Forty-Seven Rnin in Late Meiji Japan

So swift has been the demise of naniwabushi i?^?ff?, the most popular form of mass entertainment in Japan throughout the first half of the twentieth century, that few Japanese under the age of fifty can even describe it, much less recall an actual performance, either live or recorded. Even by its current name of r?kyoku ??ft, a more elegant term introduced in the Taish? period but established in ordinary speech only after World War II, the story-singing tradi tion of naniwabushi is today largely unknown and its history poorly docu mented.1 It hangs on today by a thread as a performance tradition, coming to life at a handful of seasonal concerts for graying audiences and at daily performances on the first ten days of every month at the small and dilapidated Mokubatei 7fc|g ^ theater in the Asakusa S^ district of Tokyo.