桂 三輝さんの英語インタビューの動画ファイルと英語字幕につきまして

00:00
so how was japanese no
00:03
ah yeah i went to sleep very quickly
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[Music]
00:14
english
00:31
it's hard to you know say this in
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english right yes
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i would like to thank you now in advance
00:37
for your future kindness to me
00:39
[Laughter]
00:43
that's how you explain it yes
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so first would you introduce yourself
00:49
yes in english please i am traditional
00:51
japanese raku comic storyteller my name
00:53
is katsura sunshine
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very nice to meet
00:56
you oh that's it
01:00
okay
01:01
so
01:02
so what brought you to japan in 1999
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i
01:07
was writing plays
01:09
musicals but my main area of writing and
01:13
study was a traditional greek
01:17
theater 2 500 years ago
01:20
and
01:21
especially comedy comedy not tragedy not
01:24
i read the tragedies but i produced the
01:26
comedies
01:27
um translated them to english and then
01:30
producing them as musicals and that kind
01:32
of thing i was doing that
01:34
but while i was researching
01:37
i read an article by a scholar
01:40
who wrote that there were a lot of
01:42
similarities between ancient greek
01:44
theater and japanese no
01:46
and kabuki
01:48
and at the time it's 20 years ago 22
01:51
years ago
01:53
there was no google
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all right right so maybe today i just
01:57
googled japan no kabuki
02:00
finished and you can never come to japan
02:02
you get a lot of
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lots of information right
02:05
but at the time i thought that i had
02:07
some time i thought i have to go i want
02:09
to see some kabuki
02:10
i want to see no maybe i'll get some
02:12
ideas for my own
02:14
theater or something i don't know just
02:15
to be inspired
02:17
so i came to japan but i was only going
02:18
to stay
02:20
for maybe
02:21
a few months maybe six months
02:24
but on day three of being in japan i
02:27
thought
02:28
i'm never going home
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wow i'm never going back to canada
02:32
japan was just too interesting
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[Music]
02:36
i loved it i loved everything about it i
02:37
loved the japanese people were so nice
02:40
and interesting and i love the food and
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then everybody's doing some kind of
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culture right like some people do
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sho
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the calligraphy some people do ikebana
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there's a famous uh
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flower arrangement some people do
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kimono personally i do japanese archery
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archery there you go what's that kyudo
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yeah
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all every japanese person i met
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was doing something traditional as a
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hobby
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and some people more serious than a
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hobby maybe some people was their job
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but some people everybody had something
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but the interesting thing it was was
03:16
that they weren't saying oh i have to do
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this to preserve japanese culture nobody
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said that everybody does it because they
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loved it because it's fun interesting
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and they can meet other people with the
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same interest so
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so
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traditional culture
03:30
lives and survives very naturally in
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japan more than anywhere else i had
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experienced in my life so i really fell
03:36
in love with japan because of that
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traditional culture
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so how was japanese snow
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ah yeah i went to sleep very quickly
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see my head
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no i know it's beautiful it's beautiful
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it's it's amazing
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i was very surprised because
03:56
you know it's a four hour long or four
03:58
and a half hours long sometimes very
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long yeah i looked at a script
04:02
one time no script it was only four
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pages
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it takes them a long time to say these
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words
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kabuki i fell in love with immediately
04:13
it was amazing oh just the costumes and
04:17
the
04:17
these the stories and the action and the
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way of acting too and
04:22
everything's just and then the dance of
04:24
course and
04:25
music it was amazing i loved kabuki so
04:28
were you able to find the similarities
04:33
yeah i think so you know what this is 22
04:34
years ago so
04:35
and i've had a lot of sake
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and
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what do you call it the high board
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so that part of my brain is maybe
04:43
missing a little bit but uh
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yeah i mean there's some very obvious
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similarities they use the same
04:49
instruments
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sami sen taiko
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and
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and in greek they used a drum a flute
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and um
04:59
some kind of string instrument
05:00
so that's the similarity the
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similarities in the use of um
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masks
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um
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and there were similarities in the way
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that
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in in the different levels of
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of speaking
05:13
so a lot of a lot of interest there were
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a lot of interesting similarities but by
05:17
then i just forgot about i just forgot
05:18
about greece
05:20
i fell in love with japan
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and uh and never looked back
05:26
so when did you
05:27
encounter racquetball
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rakugo i first saw in a yakitori
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restaurant
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in yokohama
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and i had been here already for i think
05:39
five years
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i've been living here for five years so
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i could speak some japanese i could
05:44
understand japanese
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so i think rakugo would be a difficult
05:47
thing to watch if you don't know
05:50
japanese because kabuki has big costumes
05:52
and dancing and you don't really have to
05:53
know the story to still see something
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amazing and appreciate kabuki right
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but rakugo you just have an
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old guy like me sitting on a cushion
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turning his head this way turning his
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head this way and talking so if you
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don't know japanese it's not very fun
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but uh yeah so the first time i saw ako
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i just i was crying i was laughing so
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hard
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it was amazing and everybody around was
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was laughing their heads off
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and then i asked like what's this all
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about and they said oh first it's called
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makura the pillow
06:22
is just
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free talk kind of each storyteller
06:26
tells some jokes and becomes friends
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with the audience
06:30
and then the second half of a
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performance is the story and that could
06:34
be
06:35
one two three hundred years old it's
06:37
been passed down through the generations
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from master to apprentice master to
06:40
apprentice
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and um all of them are free to use the
06:44
same story so you maybe see the same
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story but with different storytellers
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and it's that's very interesting too and
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they told me about it that first day
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after i saw it and i just fell in love i
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thought i have to do this this is what i
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was born to do
06:58
so it's like love at first sight what
07:00
about rakugo fascinates you
07:04
yeah you know
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i think why i fell in love with it first
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at first is because it's traditional
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it's comedy it's theatrical
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it's very compact
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one person playing all the roles
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um
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but you use
07:22
you use the imagination of the audience
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to create
07:26
the world
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instead of using lots of
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sets and movies and props and lighting
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it's just words and but the the
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image
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appears in everybody's mind
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i thought that was fascinating and also
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you know
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i had been studying traditional greek
07:43
comedy so i would like comedy i like
07:45
theater i like making people laugh
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um i like traditional stuff so all of
07:50
everything i had really
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studied or worked on or been interested
07:56
in
07:57
in my life up to now
07:59
up to when i saw rakugo it was all
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contained in rakugo so it was kind of
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it was kind of destiny like i've been
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searching for rakugo all my life is kind
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of how i felt
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it was like perfect for me
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i see i see but have you done any
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um
08:17
stand-up
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comedy i've never done it no
08:21
so how how was it like at first
08:24
ah i was terrible
08:27
but everybody's terrible at first i
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think stand-up comedians are terrible at
08:31
first until they get better and
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unless there's some geniuses i think
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like
08:36
do you know dave chappelle
08:38
dave chappelle dave chappelle is one of
08:40
is my favorite
08:41
american comedian but he was apparently
08:44
already
08:45
amazing at like 15 16 years old i think
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that's very rare
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so everybody's just terrible and then
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they get better and better better i mean
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that's what apprenticeship is for
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your master tells you you're terrible
08:56
we'll try again right
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but then you just learn and it's anybody
09:00
can learn it that's the other thing it's
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not talent
09:03
it's it's just work it's a craft
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so
09:07
anybody that wants to become a rajoka
09:08
can become a raccoon
09:10
so you spend three years with katsura
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yes master with my master yeah so the
09:17
apprenticeship is very traditional
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i went to my master's house every day
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three years not one day off
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and did the laundry
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did the cleaning clean his house fold
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the kimonos
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some
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apprentices cook for the master my
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master usually ate out so we didn't cook
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but other for other masters they want
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you to cook in the house and everything
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and then help the master all day maybe
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his shows
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go to the shows take out the kimonos
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help him get dressed when he takes off
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the kimono fold the kimono back up do
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the sound do the lighting do all the
09:50
theatrical stuff
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and then once you've learned a story you
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can be part of his show
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so um and that was three years
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but um it's it's really amazing and then
09:59
and you don't pay for a thing which is
10:02
amazing
10:03
it's a traditional
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japanese apprenticeship
10:08
so every master
10:10
learned from their master
10:12
and so then they have a responsibility
10:14
or they feel a responsibility to pass
10:17
the craft down to the next generation so
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there's no money you're not paying for
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lessons or anything like that in fact
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master pays you a little bit every month
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uh also pays your rent pays all your
10:27
food you know you don't have any use for
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money for three years
10:31
they take care of you
10:33
and you work for them so you work you do
10:34
a lot of menial things for the master
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but you're with the master
10:39
all day every day except when he's
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sleeping you're with him
10:43
so you can learn so much by think about
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it like if you take a lesson or have a
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class at a university it's maybe three
10:50
hours a week
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or if you're taking violin lessons maybe
10:53
two hours a week
10:55
here it's it's 14 hours a day you're
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with the master
10:58
everything every phone call master makes
11:00
there's something you can learn from
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that right of course from his shows
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seeing how he talks to other
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storytellers see how he talks to his
11:06
fans
11:08
um
11:09
other people in the in show business
11:10
that kind of tv directors love my
11:12
master's on tv a lot so i went to a lot
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of tv stations
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so it was fascinating fascinating three
11:18
years
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and then once you finish that you're
11:21
free to you're free you go and you start
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doing your own shows
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what part of japanese culture did you
11:28
find hard to understand
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um
11:35
[Laughter]
11:37
read read the wind i couldn't do that
11:40
either really right were you born in
11:42
japan
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uh just yeah okay so i know but some
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people say that i'm from outer space so
11:49
maybe that's right
11:50
yeah it's hard so it's a japanese way of
11:52
communication
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where
11:56
you have to notice things that are not
11:58
said explicitly and that was quite
12:00
difficult at first because you know for
12:01
in in united states and canada i'm from
12:04
canada but same as the united states or
12:05
maybe europe
12:06
they're waiting for you you're waiting
12:08
for the person to say what they mean and
12:10
then you can understand it and you react
12:12
in that way but in japan could be saying
12:15
one thing but actually means
12:17
another thing or might not be saying
12:19
what they really mean at all
12:20
but you just have to kind of notice
12:22
you're not just learning a language
12:23
you're learning a culture
12:25
i think that's with any culture anyway
12:26
so
12:28
but yeah that i found that challenging
12:29
sometimes
12:32
because finally i would realize how a
12:33
person felt or something like that
12:35
why didn't they just tell me my japanese
12:37
friend was like
12:38
it was pretty obvious really
12:41
i feel very stupid
12:42
[Laughter]
12:45
interesting
12:47
anything else
12:49
yeah also you know
12:51
language keigo song kenjo
12:54
that was uh
12:56
that was challenging i'm still not very
12:57
good at it i don't think but i can i can
12:59
fake it now
13:00
fake it yeah
13:02
especially speaking is is okay
13:04
writing when i write if i try to write
13:06
kegel
13:07
my japanese friends like say okay you
13:09
have to put one more thing here one more
13:10
thing one more thing i'm always missing
13:14
when you're speaking you can get away
13:16
with being like
13:17
you can just go like
13:21
and
13:22
it sounds like it sounds like you're
13:23
being very polite right right
13:27
don't show this to me show because he
13:30
he's very strict
13:36
[Laughter]
13:42
so now you're performing in london yep
13:45
london new york
13:48
how how does that feel ah it's great
13:51
i was always dreaming of being
13:52
of going to broadway
13:54
i wasn't counting on being a performer
13:56
before because i was a writer and
13:58
producer so i was on the backstage what
14:00
would you say i was in the in the wings
14:03
but uh now that i'm performing it's
14:05
wonderful to be on stage on broadway and
14:08
in london they call broadway they called
14:10
the west end that's the same as broadway
14:12
it's 40 about 40 theaters
14:15
concentrated into one area
14:17
so being in the west end and being on
14:19
broadway is a great
14:21
it's a great experience the audiences
14:23
are amazing and people that come to
14:24
shows there go to a lot of shows a lot
14:26
of concerts very educated audience and
14:29
they're looking for
14:30
something so this is traditional
14:32
japanese so people are very interested
14:33
in japan but it's also something they've
14:35
never seen before so it's also new
14:37
they're very old but it's new at the
14:38
same time do you know what i mean
14:40
because they haven't seen it before
14:41
that's new oh this is new i've never
14:43
seen it
14:44
they're saying it's new yes but it's
14:46
actually very old right
14:48
so uh i find people of dawn's very very
14:51
uh i mean they're good listeners they
14:54
laugh a lot they're interested after
14:56
when i'm seeing them after the shows ask
14:58
me a lot of questions
14:59
a lot of repeaters come so what i was
15:01
doing on broadway
15:03
was a different different two stories
15:06
per show
15:08
in japanese you'd say niseki
15:09
so one
15:10
story
15:12
is maybe um 40 minutes so two stories 80
15:14
min 80 minute show
15:16
and i do do different stories every
15:18
month
15:19
maybe some kind of theme
15:21
so
15:23
when i started in september i just did
15:24
traditional rahu and then in november i
15:27
did shinigami which is kind of a ghost
15:29
story now in japan you would do that in
15:31
the summer right kaidan banashi you do
15:34
it in the summer
15:35
because it's very hot so people listen
15:38
and then they get goosebumps because a
15:39
scary story and so that's the kind of
15:43
emotional air conditioning
15:45
kind of thing right
15:47
traditionally but
15:49
you know at the end of october we have
15:50
halloween and then november the skies
15:53
are starting to get dark and that kind
15:54
of thing so the atmosphere for ghost
15:56
stories actually november is also not a
15:57
bad time we also tell them in the summer
15:59
but in november is not even so i had the
16:02
ghost story in november and december was
16:04
coming close to christmas and everything
16:05
so i had family stories so bring your
16:08
children
16:09
all the stories are going to be good for
16:10
children also adults but particularly
16:12
children can laugh then in january i
16:15
said leave your children at home this is
16:17
adult rakugo
16:19
in japanese
16:23
so it's not really dirty but
16:25
but you know it's like
16:27
it's like a wife cheating on the husband
16:30
the husband comes home so she puts her
16:32
lover in the closet
16:36
but it's not
16:39
it's not bad it's not it's nothing
16:41
pornographic
16:42
but
16:43
just children wouldn't really understand
16:44
the or gambling stories that kind of
16:46
thing so so we had the adult rockville
16:49
was very popular
16:51
most broadway shows reach their peak of
16:53
the year around christmas and then in
16:55
january people are very people don't go
16:58
out that much
17:00
traditionally so it shows you you see a
17:02
dip in ticket sales
17:03
until like very march march
17:06
it goes up again usually it goes like
17:07
that christmas dawn in january right
17:10
my show went way up in january
17:13
why is this and i realized oh i've been
17:14
advertising adult track ago so
17:16
everybody's coming from the adult track
17:20
i see it
17:21
so
17:22
the fact that people see it once and
17:24
then they want to come back i mean
17:25
that's
17:26
that's a great feeling you know because
17:27
that's the way raku is in in
17:30
in japan
17:31
if you see a storyteller if you like
17:32
them you want to go see them again and
17:33
again
17:34
so i was really happy to have that and
17:36
it's great to be doing a long run so
17:38
we're off right now
17:40
because of corona so i've been off for
17:42
about two years but starting again in
17:44
march so in about two months yeah it was
17:47
starting again on broadway and i started
17:49
my run in the west end last month it's
17:51
once once a month
17:52
every month for the next year so to be
17:55
doing a show in london and new york at
17:56
the same time is
17:58
kind of unprecedented i don't know if
18:00
anybody's done that before really
18:02
the shows like if you have phantom of
18:04
the opera you have the london
18:06
version and the new york version but
18:07
it's not the same cast obviously because
18:10
they're performing eight times a week
18:11
but for me for london is once a month
18:13
and new york it's once a week so i can
18:15
go between the two and do a long run and
18:17
both at the same time it's a really
18:18
unique opportunity
18:21
so you're
18:22
you will be based in new york i'll be
18:25
based in new york starting in march yes
18:27
did you get any stage fright at first
18:31
um when i started raghu or
18:34
in new york broadway oh no no no by the
18:37
time i got to broadway
18:39
um i mean i've been doing it so long you
18:41
get used to it i would feel more afraid
18:43
if you put me
18:46
in a university class and
18:48
asked me to teach english
18:50
because i haven't been doing that for
18:51
the last 15 years
18:53
um that would make me more nervous than
18:56
than doing a draco i don't get nervous
18:57
even when the audience is not laughing
19:00
in japanese you say
19:03
when you're when you're bombing
19:06
which thankfully doesn't happen so much
19:08
these days but sometimes yeah broadway
19:10
sometimes get quiet audiences but i also
19:12
know
19:13
that just because audience is quiet
19:15
doesn't mean they're not enjoying
19:16
themselves and also a lot of the rakugo
19:19
stories are not like a laugh a minute
19:20
it's just people get into the story and
19:22
there might be only a couple of laughs
19:24
that kind of thing so
19:26
so no it doesn't doesn't make me nervous
19:28
at all i think um
19:31
no no stage fright
19:32
at this point i don't know now that i
19:34
said that to you my next show gonna be
19:35
like
19:37
i'm not sure but
19:40
but london and new york i haven't i
19:42
haven't i was out of breath once but
19:43
that's because i
19:46
what happened was
19:49
i did a show in new orleans okay but i
19:51
had taken the mic and it's a special mic
19:54
used for raku
19:55
called the sampachi sony
19:58
and i and i i forgot it in my apartment
20:00
when i came to the theater i had
20:02
borrowed the mic from my it's my mic but
20:04
i bored from the broadway production to
20:07
to go to
20:08
do a tour show and i forgot to bring it
20:11
and like i can't do the show without
20:13
them i mean
20:14
i'd have to shout really loud
20:17
it would have been kind of crazy so i
20:18
thought okay well i have just enough
20:20
time to get home and back so i ran in
20:22
the taxi went home
20:24
grabbed the mic came back
20:26
squeezed the mic to the stage and i said
20:28
beyond immediately has changed into my
20:30
kimono
20:31
and by the time i got on stage and it
20:33
was only about
20:34
five minutes late
20:36
so i actually started almost normal time
20:38
a little bit late
20:39
but when i thought i was like
20:41
ladies and gentlemen
20:43
thank you for coming today what's wrong
20:45
with this guy
20:46
i felt the audience thinking this is
20:47
something but after about 10 minutes it
20:50
went back to normal but some of my
20:51
japanese friends my investors were there
20:53
and we went drinking after and they said
20:55
was there something wrong with you at
20:56
the beginning
20:57
i said yeah this is what happened and
20:59
they were laughing yeah you didn't look
21:01
right
21:03
tell me a little about your
21:05
denim daniel jennings yeah so this is my
21:09
own denim kimono fashion brand
21:11
i started it last year and the denim is
21:14
from okayama
21:16
okayama
21:17
prefecture is very very famous for denim
21:20
makers there's a lot of famous denim
21:21
makers there one of them is a denim
21:23
jeans brand called momotaro
21:26
but also the momotaro the parent company
21:28
on motorola is called japan blue and
21:29
they sell
21:31
material basically cotton denim and
21:33
cotton materials and they sell them to
21:34
even a lot of high brands in europe and
21:36
that kind of thing so i'm using
21:39
their denim to make made in japan
21:41
original japanese denim kimonos and
21:44
original aspect of katsa sunshine denim
21:46
kimono is that you could take the sleeve
21:48
off with a zipper
21:50
and so i could put this sleeve on this
21:51
side and this sleeve on this side or i
21:54
can have different design sleeves
21:56
um i could have like uh
21:59
uh japanese
22:01
auspicious is like
22:04
auspicious symbol like katsuru
22:07
uh koino taken
22:09
that kind of thing
22:18
yeah
22:20
that kind of thing so this
22:22
so i wanted to have one kimono but i
22:23
could change it into different fashions
22:25
that's the casa sunshine kimono so this
22:28
free soda thing this is yeah this is not
22:31
fruity soda as much this is shorter but
22:33
it's this is longer than usual the usual
22:35
men's soda will maybe go to about here
22:36
so i made it a bit long
22:38
because i like things kind of oh guess i
22:40
like things but i also made furisode for
22:42
men
22:43
um i think in the edo period there were
22:45
like kabukimono
22:47
were kind of
22:48
bad guys
22:49
who dressed in really crazy ways but one
22:51
of the things they did was have like
22:53
very gaudy furisode an imitation of
22:56
women's foodies all day
22:57
um
22:59
so
23:00
yeah i really like that idea like i
23:02
think fruity soda looks so good and and
23:04
only unmarried women are supposed to
23:05
wear a fruity soda that's it's a shame
23:09
sometimes you see an inca singer who's
23:11
quite even older i don't think she's
23:13
still an unmarried girl but she's
23:14
wearing furisote and it looks amazing
23:17
so i really like that look so even like
23:19
a lot of my male friends even japanese
23:21
guys they choose the fruity soda because
23:23
it's really
23:25
nobody really gets a chance to wear
23:26
foodies all day in their life
23:27
you know i googled it and i couldn't
23:29
find the brand what's the name of the
23:31
book sunshine denim
23:34
yeah i don't know i don't know if it
23:35
comes on google yet we just started i
23:37
mean
23:38
right now it's just uh we haven't even
23:40
started promoting it yeah it's more like
23:43
word of mouth and people contact me and
23:45
they're order made you can't actually
23:47
buy one online you have to contact me i
23:49
need to get your a couple measurements
23:51
how tall are you and your shirt size and
23:52
that kind of thing and then and you also
23:54
choose
23:55
your dinner but we're building a site
23:57
right now do you know the nike shoes
24:00
site where you can choose all the colors
24:02
of your shoe have you ever seen this no
24:04
no it's really cool if you go to like
24:05
make my own nikes or something like that
24:08
it starts
24:10
start with a shoe and then you could
24:11
choose the stitch color the swirl the
24:14
back little sticker there the rubber
24:17
color oh you can change everything to
24:19
your side make your own original shoes
24:21
we are doing a katsura sunshine kimono
24:24
version of that site so you could choose
24:26
this or here's i have blue stitches here
24:28
right and a blue zipper but you could if
24:30
you if you wanted you could do red you
24:32
could do pink you could do yellow you
24:34
make it your own choice here hair here
24:36
the stitches show up here even there's
24:38
different pieces right so this piece of
24:40
material i don't know if people can see
24:41
there's no but
24:43
here if i stand up in front of this
24:44
camera so this piece of material here
24:46
and this piece of material here are two
24:47
different colors you could change that
24:49
you could choose the zipper
24:51
the decorative zipper
24:53
so um once we build that that would be
24:55
then we'll be in business
24:57
i'm sorry we're not top of your google
24:59
this is still still a kind of secret
25:01
business
25:05
sunshine denim right now
25:07
got that
25:19
it was great talking to you thank you
25:20
very much yeah thank you very much
25:22
that's a lot of fun let's do it again
25:24
thank you cheers
25:29
[Music]