Nureki Chimuo Archive

I finished writing “Mikazuki Hanshiro’s Butt” and immediately faxed it to Rakka-san.

I reread it once more, and about thirty minutes later, I sent the manuscript to R-san.

If I don’t send it to R-san, it can’t be posted on the “Talking Theater” section of the website.

(I’m not really sure if it’s called “posting” or “publishing,” though.)

R-san has been handling everything related to the website flawlessly for the past four years (or is it five now?)

I don’t do anything (or rather, I can’t).

As always, I don’t understand a thing about IT.

I don’t even try to understand it. I don’t even own a cell phone yet.

Even without one, I don’t really feel any inconvenience.

R-san is, so to speak, my personal, excellent proofreader. Not only does she catch typos and missing characters, but she also accurately points out parts where the meaning is unclear. She’s a truly invaluable person.

Rakka-san read “Mikazuki Hanshiro’s Butt” right away (just fifteen minutes after I finished writing it, what an age of enlightenment!) and called me.

Before she could say anything, I jumped the gun and offered an excuse.

“It’s no good. I couldn’t possibly capture the intense presence of that troupe with my limited expressive abilities. It turned out half-baked.”

“Not at all. It was interesting,” Rakka-san said in her usual clear tone. Perhaps she was trying to comfort me.

“I haven’t portrayed Hanshiro at all. Hanshiro’s charm isn’t like that,” I said. It wasn’t modesty, it was my genuine feeling.

“I think you captured him quite well,” Rakka-san said.

“Do you really?” I wanted her to praise me even more.

Come to think of it, I had started writing this “Talking Theater” precisely because I wanted her to praise me.

“I know because I’ve seen Hanshiro on stage, but I think people who haven’t seen him in person will read it and find it interesting, imagining all sorts of things based on your writing alone,” Rakka-san said, calm as ever.

“Well, as a distinguished member of the Naoki Prize selection committee once said, writing, not just novels, shouldn’t force a specific heart or form upon others. After presenting the bare minimum, it should be left to the reader’s imagination.” I continued my half-hearted excuse.

“The actor Hanshiro has a certain dark shadow not just on his face, but over his entire body. You yourself said right after seeing his performance that you sensed a strange, decadent beauty in that, didn’t you? I didn’t feel that dark shadow in the Hanshiro you portrayed. Instead, I felt like Shunosuke’s aura was a bit muddled,” Rakka-san said.

“Ah, I see. Now that you mention it, you’re right.”

Shunnosuke is a young onnagata in the Mikazuki Troupe, and apparently he’s only eighteen.

With her striking features and cute looks, in terms of conventional beauty, she’s more fresh and beautiful than Hanshiro.

When Shunnosuke appears, the audience is shaken by a different kind of resounding sigh and murmur than when Hanshiro appears.

About ten days ago, when I first saw Shunnosuke on stage portraying an Edo-period town girl, I cried out in surprise, leaned close to Rakka-san’s ear, and exchanged the following conversation.

“What is that? Is that a man or a woman? What is that beauty? What is that allure? Tell me. What is it? What is it? Is that a woman or a man? Tell me.”

Rakka-san stared straight at the stage, her eyes fixed intently, shaking her head and said, “I don’t know.”

Then, as if to confirm whether it was a man or a woman, she stretched her slender neck and gazed at Shunnosuke.

Shunnosuke was by no means an actor with a masculine aura. Rather, he had a somewhat lonely air about him. Yet, being young, his features were plump and his physique rounded.

In contrast, Mikazuki Hanshiro’s face and body were suffused with a sickly, sharp shadow.

His nose is slender and high, and the flesh of his cheeks is slightly sunken. His lower lip juts out, giving his mouth the appearance of someone who speaks nothing but sarcasm.

However, the sensuality of this lower lip is incredible. If you stare at it, it is a mouth so erotic it makes your head spin.

It would not be surprising if there were women who favored him, fantasizing about having their entire bodies licked by that lower lip, and who, every time they saw him on stage, generously gave him gifts of fifty thousand, one hundred thousand, or even two hundred thousand yen.

While the allure possessed by the young Shunnosuke is undeniably innocent and supple, the dark eroticism exuded by the slender, tall Hanshiro feels as hard as a blade. His entire presence is ruthless.

It was there that I sensed his decadent beauty.

“Hanshiro had a kind of desolate shadow about him,” Rakka-san said on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, that’s exactly right. A sensuality with a desolate shadow. That is decadent beauty.”

It is a desolate sensuality, and that is why decadent beauty permeates his entire being.

In this “Talking Theater,” Rakka-san’s sharp advice occasionally comes through. Saved by her apt counsel, I have been able to keep writing up to this point.

She is always the first to read my manuscripts. I’ve already written 1800 pages of 400-character manuscript paper. She must have read every single one.

That said, it’s not just Hanshiro and Shunnosuke. Everyone in the gypsy troupe is really good at applying makeup.

It would be no exaggeration to say that they focus all their attention and stake their very lives on the techniques to adorn their faces.

When they dance during showtime, each person is a star in their own right, and every single one of them becomes a handsome, dashing leading man.

When dancing in female roles, naturally, they create faces even more beautiful and alluring than those of women.

Poor makeup will cause them to lose their regular patrons. Unless they are beautiful and sexy, the audience won’t tip them.

Being skilled at makeup means concealing one’s flaws, emphasizing only one’s best features, and making oneself appear even more attractive.

And one more thing, they are skilled at choosing and wearing their costumes.

Here, too, one can see the determination of artists who pour all their energy into their craft and stake their entire careers on it. When performing, they undoubtedly wear costumes they have chosen and made themselves to appeal to the audience.

Whether or not one possesses allure on stage depends entirely on how well they wear their costume.

For example, when having a loose-fitting single-layered kimono (hitoe) made, might they not specifically request measurements that make the body width slightly narrower?

This is to tightly and explicitly reveal the shape of their lower body, especially the butt, to the audience’s eyes, thereby emphasizing sex appeal.

The reason I was mesmerized by Hanshiro’s butt was clearly because, just as he intended, my sensuality was stirred.

this.

The vast majority of people refuse to acknowledge the valiant artistry of performers like

Some people shun it, calling it vulgar or base. They are clearly being discriminated against.

The small minority of people who do not consider this artistry to be base or vulgar, who do not look down on it, but instead believe it to be a message from the god of the performing arts, becoming intoxicated and passionately devoted to it, I secretly call them “enthusiasts” in my heart.

I consider them comrades connected at the deepest level of human instinct.

I have known of this gypsy troupe since I was a child. I wrote about this in “Talking Theater” as well. Although it was only for a short time, I was also involved with them.

In fact, it was I who took Rakka-san to the audience of the gypsy troupe.

Until then, she had no idea that such a breed of entertainers existed in this world.

While ordinary people generally prefer and are familiar with the performing arts of the streets, the Gypsy troupe occupies a position somewhat removed from that common sensibility.

She is someone who grew up in an environment completely unrelated to this kind of entertainment.

Therefore, guiding her into a secluded space that one might even call heretical, that stands apart from everyday sensibilities, was, for me, an adventure.

I even feared that showing her this performance might sever the relationship we had maintained so well up until then.

There was a specific reason why I decided to show her the men and women writhing in that intimate space, a space that could by no means be called refined, and their art.

However, explaining that would take too long, so I will leave the details and the sequence of events for later.

For now, I will write briefly.

One evening a few years ago, I took her by the hand and boarded a small boat at a pier along a canal near the sea.

At that time, she was, unusually, in a very bad mood.

The boat set off and approached the disembarkation point located upstream on the river flowing through the city, but her bad mood persisted.

For the sake of her reputation, I should note that the reason for her anger did not stem from the usual, commonplace whims of a woman.

Simply put, her anger arose from being starkly confronted with the reality of buildings constructed solely on utilitarian principles, which laid bare the inhumanity of modern society. It was, so to speak, a social and human indignation.

I tried my best to calm her down.

However, while on the boat, I couldn’t think of a way to lure her into that enclosed space.

Eventually, the boat docked at the town’s pier and I took her hand again to disembark. But at that moment I suddenly recalled that chaotic yet profoundly human space.

All right, I’ll take her there and show her that!

Even if, after I’d dragged her in, she grew even angrier, saying she hated such a filthy, stuffy, smelly, eerie place teeming with all sorts of shady characters, well, that would be a problem for that moment.

I wondered how she would react when she saw it.

In a sense, my feelings at that moment were a kind of gamble.