番組開始10年目の節目に「10人限定子供寄席」開催決定！〜学校教育に「講談」を入れよう！
Towazu-gatari no Kandahakuzan (問わず語りの神田伯山), which launched in April 2017, has entered its tenth year on air. To mark the milestone, host Kandahakuzan announced plans not for a grand anniversary event but for an intimate ten-child variety show at a community hall — a warm-up act before a planned lecture performance in Shizuoka. The episode also sees him fired up about bringing kodan storytelling into Japan's compulsory school curriculum.
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What this episode answers
Why did Hakuzan decide to hold the 'ten-child limited yose' instead of a tenth-anniversary event?
A Shizuoka organizer asked him to perform kodan for about 100 children, which prompted him to first test his apprentices' abilities — and his own — at a smaller trial show for his child and ten friends at a community hall, with his wife acting as judge; she has told the apprentices that if they fail to get laughs, the Shizuoka show will be cancelled.
What program titles is Hakuzan considering for the children's kodan performance?
He is considering 'Takasode no Otokichi' — a fast-paced story featuring a twelve-year-old boy — and 'Aradaimyo no Chanoyu (Aracha),' a slapstick piece set on the eve of Sekigahara in which samurai lords repeatedly imitate each other's sneezes and runny noses in a tea room; for the latter he is weighing whether to strip out the historical context and keep only the physical comedy.
What did Hakuzan's child believe about his father's profession until recently?
Until one or two years ago, his child believed he was a YouTuber, and thought his master Kanda Shoryu was 'a YouTuber even older than Hikakin who had just started YouTube'; only recently did the child learn that his father is a kodan storyteller, and now describes his art as 'stodgy.'
What has Bunraku tayu Takemoto Oridayu been doing to promote traditional performing arts among children?
For 26 years, every Friday, Oridayu has taught bunraku at Koza Elementary School in Osaka, providing child-sized puppets and instructing fifth- and sixth-graders in shamisen and gidayu chanting; some graduates have gone on to become professionals.
What is Hakuzan's view on the fact that kodan is absent from Japan's national curriculum guidelines?
He is indignant that noh, ningyo joruri, kabuki, and rakugo all appear in the national curriculum guidelines while kodan alone is missing; he notes that kodan has already appeared in a textbook supplementary CD (a reading of 'Gon the Fox') and in the textbook itself, saying 'we're within reach,' and he is serious about pushing for inclusion in compulsory education.
Laughing Man Mofuji's Esophageal Cancer Scare
Sitting beside Hakuzan in the studio, the resident laugher Mofuji had been coughing while still managing to laugh through it all. Hakuzan had been talking about his own colonoscopy on air, and listeners had started sending in earnest inquiries asking which clinic he used. When Mofuji finally went to a clinic himself, he was told there was a possibility of esophageal cancer — something Hakuzan admitted he had quietly worried about. A follow-up examination cleared him of the diagnosis, though treatment with medication was to begin for a separate area showing deterioration. Hakuzan expressed relief, saying he was 'just barely in the clear,' then compared Mofuji to Kiguchi Kohei — the young bugler in the First Sino-Japanese War who reportedly kept sounding his bugle even as he died — and joked that Mofuji had the spirit of 'laughing even with your head cut off.'
How the 'Ten-Child Limited Yose' Came to Be
Every August, the Hakuzan school (comprising four apprentices: Umeno-jo, Ao-no-jo, Waka-no-jo, and Toyomatsu) makes an annual trip to a haunted house in Shizuoka. This year they also planned a school recital at a borrowed temple in the same city. Then the Shizuoka organizer added a new request: could Hakuzan perform kodan for around 100 children in the morning?
Since taking the name Kandahakuzan some seven or eight years ago, Hakuzan has not done a single school yose for children. His apprentices, by contrast, already have that experience and have reportedly been well received. One apprentice draws laughs from children with the samurai tale 'Wadaheinosuke,' slipping in a Demon Slayer–style pose at the opening and milking a joke about a blow to the groin during the 'koshi no umi' passage — repeating it five or more times. Hakuzan winced at the approach, calling it 'not orthodox,' while admitting he has yet to see it with his own eyes.
The solution he landed on: invite his own child and ten friends to a community hall for a mini yose. His wife, who serves as president of his management office, will sit in as the judge. She has made her position clear to the apprentices — no laughs means no Shizuoka.
Children's Honest Verdict and Choosing a Program
Hakuzan's own child was blunt: 'Dad's art is stodgy. If my friends aren't impressed, it'll damage my friendships — I don't want that.' Hakuzan pushed back, saying he is 'called a once-in-a-century talent,' but the pressure is real. The child's consolation was to suggest placing a Best Father Award trophy on stage beside him. Hakuzan had won the same award as the Yellow Man from Curious George, which apparently earns him god-like status among his child's friends.
Two programs are on the shortlist. The first is 'Takasode no Otokichi,' a kodan piece in which a boy of about twelve delivers sharp, fast-paced monologues — a story that his apprentice Kanda Shiori once performed to great acclaim among children. The second is 'Aradaimyo no Chanoyu (Aracha),' a fictional piece set on the eve of Sekigahara in which a Tokugawa retainer invites seven lords — including Kato Kiyomasa, Kuroda Nagamasa, Fukushima Masanori, and Hosokawa Tadaoki — to a tea ceremony. Unfamiliar with tea etiquette, the lords end up imitating Hosokawa's sneezes and runny nose in a chain of escalating slapstick. Hakuzan is still undecided whether to explain the historical background to the children or cut it entirely and reduce the piece to what he called a 'Kato-chan situation where snot just keeps landing in the tea.'
Takemoto Oridayu's 26 Years and the Dream of Kodan in Schools
Backstage at Shinjuku Suehirotei, Hakuzan learned that Takemoto Oridayu (竹本織太夫, 51), a bunraku tayu who is scheduled to succeed the name Takemoto Tsunadayu the year after next, has been teaching bunraku at Koza Elementary School in Osaka every Friday for 26 years. He brings child-sized puppets and teaches fifth- and sixth-graders shamisen and gidayu chanting; some of his graduates have become professionals. Hakuzan was moved: 'I just ramble about daydreams on the radio, but Oridayu-san has been quietly teaching, week after week, for 26 years — that's truly remarkable.'
Hakuzan has long called for kodan to be incorporated into school education. The national curriculum guidelines list noh, ningyo joruri (bunraku), kabuki, and rakugo — but not kodan. At the same time, a kodan reading of the children's story 'Gon the Fox' was included on a CD accompanying a Japanese-language textbook, and kodan has appeared in the textbook itself, leading Hakuzan to say 'we're within reach.' He theorizes that one obstacle to formal inclusion is kodan's wartime history — it was used for military education before the war — which he suspects has made the Japan Teachers' Union (Nikkyoso) wary of it. His half-serious conclusion: 'The only way is to win over Nikkyoso.'
At the end of the broadcast, Hakuzan also announced that TV Tokyo's program Doors: The Person Who Gave Me the Key to Life (ドアーズ 人生の鍵をくれた人), in which his master Kanda Shoryu (神田松鯉, 84) speaks about Hakuzan's time as an apprentice, would air that same night at 11:58 p.m.
Takeaways
- Prompted by a request to perform kodan for 100 children in Shizuoka, Hakuzan is staging a trial ten-child mini yose at a community hall, with his wife as judge and the Shizuoka show contingent on the result.
- Hakuzan is weighing two children's programs — the punchy 'Takasode no Otokichi' and the slapstick 'Aradaimyo no Chanoyu' — and considering stripping the latter down to pure physical comedy.
- Inspired by Takemoto Oridayu's 26 consecutive years of weekly bunraku lessons at an Osaka elementary school, Hakuzan is pushing seriously for kodan to be added to Japan's compulsory school curriculum, from which it remains the only major traditional narrative art excluded.
This article is edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. It is not an official summary — please listen to the episode itself.