Rakugo

<I>Rakugo</I> introduces the storytelling genre of Edo-style <I>rakugo</I> 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 <I>rakugo</I> 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.