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The story
Rakugo performer Tatekawa Shiraku has apologized after saying, during an appearance at a Mrs. GREEN APPLE concert, that he “got the tickets through connections.” In a thread on 5ch’s Geinou Sports News+ board, commenters focused less on whether using connections was wrong in itself and more on how he phrased it — arguing he should have simply said it was an industry-guest seat — while also debating how celebrity invite quotas work in general.
Shiraku apologizes for saying he got hard-to-find Mrs. GREEN APPLE tickets “through connections,” explains his true intentions: “I’m sorry for making anyone feel uncomfortable”
Rakugo performer Tatekawa Shiraku (62) updated his own X account by the 24th, clarifying remarks he made about tickets to Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “CEREMONY” concert held in June.
Shiraku made a guest appearance on Day 2 of “Mrs. GREEN APPLE presents ‘CEREMONY.’” He reported on his own X account that he had held a talk session themed “Music and Me,” and encouraged followers with “Please do check it out.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Are you supposed to buy tickets for your friends through the official site too?
But you still end up posting the second a thread pops up, and you won't even put him on your NG word list — such a tsundere.
Impressive producing skills, coming from the guy who broke Girls' Generation and KARA.
I've stopped going as much lately.
they just mass-produce school-pop aimed at young listeners. For someone in their late twenties to listen to it
is childish, and when a middle-aged guy listens to it, it's just a laughable bandwagon move to make himself look
like he's "getting it" by showing appreciation for something that's a huge commercial hit. That said, genuinely
falling for it for real is even creepier. Like, what kind of music history does this guy even have?
Shiraku gets respect less for his talent than for the fact that, while his master's other successful disciples
went independent early, he stuck by Danshi's side almost to the very end — that's the respect people have for him.
A guy like that shouldn't have to apologize.
When you can't get tickets to a show you're desperate to see and then this happens, you'd want to strangle someone.
Not really something you're supposed to talk about in the media, though.
Unless he was sleeping or being loud while sitting in one, that is.
Isn't that just Watanabe Entertainment's pull? Dunno though.
Even granting a celebrity invite quota
he doesn't look connected to them at all.
Couldn't he just ask through TBS or something?
You often hear about a co-star coming to see the show or getting invited by someone they worked with,
but here's a guy with no personal connection and no industry tie watching for free from an industry-guest seat.
It's hard to accept that the invite seats are better than what paying customers get.
He just bragged about getting in for free and got dogpiled by the people who actually paid.
He phrased it in a way that could be read as getting a regular seat through connections, and that's exactly why people got mad
These days, for a popular show like this, even a celebrity who wins a regular seat fair and square can get flamed with "use your connections and sit in the guest section instead (you just tanked everyone else's odds)" — so this is a bit rich.
Isn't an industry-guest seat exactly what you'd get through connections?
That's the normal case.
Being in an industry-guest seat doesn't necessarily mean it was free, though.
Huh, so there are paid industry-guest seats too. Anyway, the reason he's getting slammed is that he said "connections" instead of "industry-guest seat" in the first place.
Background and Key Points
Tatekawa Shiraku is a veteran rakugo storyteller (a shishō-level performer in the traditional comic-monologue art) and a longtime disciple of the late Tachikawa Danshi, one of the most influential and controversial masters in postwar rakugo history — which is why several posters invoke Danshi’s name when discussing whether Shiraku’s standing should shield him from criticism. The concert in question, Mrs. GREEN APPLE’s “CEREMONY,” had already generated friction before Shiraku’s remark: the band is one of the biggest commercial acts among younger Japanese listeners right now, tickets are notoriously hard to obtain through the normal lottery system, and an earlier controversy over gravure idols receiving invited seats at the same tour had primed fans to react badly to any hint of insider access.
The thread’s actual fault line isn’t “was it wrong to use connections” — posters broadly agree that industry invite quotas (kankeisha-seki) are standard practice at concerts and theater productions across Japan, reserved at the performers’ own request, and not something unique to this show. What split commenters was wording: Shiraku said he got tickets “through connections” rather than the more neutral, industry-standard phrase “industry-guest seat,” and that specific phrasing is what paying fans, who have no visibility into how these quotas work, read as bragging.
What outside readers likely miss is that invite/guest seats aren’t automatically free — several posters note paid guest-seat arrangements exist too — and that this practice is so normalized in Japanese live-entertainment culture that the backlash here is really about tact and framing, not about exposing some hidden abuse.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Tatekawa Shiraku Apologizes for Saying He Got Hard-to-Find Mrs. GREEN APPLE Tickets “Through Connections,” Explains His True Intentions: “I’m Sorry for Making Anyone Feel Uncomfortable”.”
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