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The story
Rakugo performer Tatekawa Shiraku (63) declared on his YouTube channel on the 22nd that he is launching a “Shiraku Family YouTube Faction.” The move comes after criticism over his taking on YouTuber Hikaru (35) as a disciple under the name “Tatekawa Sagishi” spilled over onto his rakugo organization — so Hikaru won’t formally join the Tatekawa school, but will instead be treated as a “guest disciple.” Under the new rules, performers with 1 million-plus subscribers rank as shin’uchi (master), 100,000-plus as futatsume (journeyman), and anyone below that as zenza minarai (apprentice-in-training). On the 5ch Geinou/Sports Breaking News+ board, comments split between mockery of the very idea of ranking rakugo status by subscriber count and renewed questions about Shiraku’s actual skill as a performer.
Rakugo performer Tatekawa Shiraku (63) updated his YouTube channel on the 22nd. After taking on YouTuber Hikaru (35) — now going by “Tatekawa Sagishi” — as a disciple, criticism flooded in against his organization, the Tatekawa school of rakugo. In response, he declared he would launch a new “Shiraku Family YouTube Faction.”
With criticism pouring in over Hikaru’s apprenticeship and causing trouble for his organization, Shiraku announced, “This time, I’ve decided to launch the ‘Shiraku Family YouTube Faction.’ Its very first disciple is YouTuber Hikaru — Tatekawa Sagishi.” Hikaru will not formally belong to the Tatekawa school of rakugo, but will instead be treated as a “guest disciple.”
“Anyone with over 1 million followers already counts as shin’uchi, so they’re allowed to headline a show. Everyone calls them ‘master.’ They can also take on disciples of their own. That’s the requirement for YouTubers. If you’ve got over 100,000 followers, that makes you futatsume. Anyone below that is treated as a rookie — a zenza minarai, an apprentice just starting out.”
Source: sponichi.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Hikaru's probably laughing about it behind his back.
He calls himself Danshi's "greatest masterpiece," you know.
But given what rakugo is, a fleeting subscriber count isn't going to earn real respect —
it needs a long, accumulated history.
blur the standards like this
and that's the end of it.
I'd subscribe in a heartbeat.
Caving to the backlash, lol.
Everything about this guy is lame.
The complete opposite of Danshi.
his name just keeps showing up on the entertainment/sports board.
That's just a popularity contest now.
Pathetic.
He's only got 50,000 YouTube subscribers and he's bombing hard.
Then by his own rule Shiraku's just a rookie apprentice, isn't he?
Would that make him No. 20, "Tatekawa Su-shira-ramen-riku"? (a nonsense mashup of his name with "ramen," mocking him for barely scraping in)
rakugo's basically got nothing left to offer except "who's performing it" —
female rakugo performers, foreign rakugo performers, that kind of angle.
Even calling it "new rakugo," every angle on human absurdity has probably already been done.
once people get bored of him, he'll get tossed aside (lol).
just stop appearing on TV already.
oh wait, Shinosuke's still there♪
The Tatekawa school was never part of the Rakugo Association to begin with.
And 5channel thread-summary channels too.
Yukkuri Rakugo.
Background and Key Points of This Story
The Tatekawa school is a rakugo lineage founded by Tatekawa Danshi after he broke away from the Rakugo Association, and it has its own long history of running the traditional shin’uchi, futatsume, and zenza ranks independently. What makes this case unusual is that those ranking criteria have now been swapped out for YouTube subscriber counts — and reactions on the thread split between discomfort at reducing a traditional art form’s hierarchy to raw numbers, and viewing it as a shrewd, if cynical, bid for attention. Notably, the thread’s focus centered less on whether Hikaru (Tatekawa Sagishi) should have been taken on as a disciple at all, and more on how unusual the subscriber-based ranking system itself is — a nuance that’s easy to miss from the original article’s headline alone. There were also several harshly worded posts mixing criticism of Shiraku’s actual skill with references to his past conduct, but any posts amounting to personal attacks or unverified criminal accusations have been excluded from this piece.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “Tatekawa Shiraku Declares Launch of “Shiraku Family YouTube Faction” — 1 Million-Plus Subscribers Get Treated as Master.”
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