For hundreds of years, Japanese performers have practiced a comedic storytelling art known as rakugo (落語). Traditionally staged in intimate yose theaters, rakugo transforms verbal storytelling into a one-man performance where a single actor inhabits multiple characters through subtle gestures, vocal shifts, and timing alone. Performers, or rakugoka, remain seated in the seiza position for the entire act, armed with nothing more than a paper fan and a small cloth as props. Everything else is left to the audience’s imagination.