The portrait of the artist as a young man.

Through its echoes of the past and its glimpses of the future, Rakugo Shinju has always fluctuated between grief and hope, melancholy and elation, as its characters and rakugo itself struggle to balance what they’ve been with who they want to be. This week sees us not just shifting between those emotions, but occupying them simultaneously, leading to some of the show’s most poignant moments to date. It’s an atmosphere that’s difficult to describe with words, although Yakumo brushes up against it when he looks through an old photo album, muttering with a wistful smile: “Natsukashii, ne…”

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