Nureki Chimuo Archive

At the storytelling club where we meet once a month to practice, I was delivering the opening lines of “Gozonji: Suzugamori” with great enthusiasm, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the tachi-e stage.

As I got more and more into it, listening to my own voice, I found myself becoming entranced, thinking to myself, “What a rich, resonant, and beautiful tone I have.”

“Young man, please wait a moment. The one who told you to wait is none other than myself, isn’t that right?”

Just as I was lost in self-admiration and raised my voice in a particularly fine mood, a thought crossed my mind, one completely unrelated to the “Suzugamori” puppet show, another group I’ve been attending once a week.

“Alright, I’ve made up my mind. I’m cutting ties with you lot. You filthy old hags. I’m never looking at your faces again. Drop dead, you fucking old hags.”

The spirit of Shirai Gonpachi, drawing his sword and mowing down those good-for-nothings one after another, possessed me.

This other group is also a gathering of people who specialize in voice acting.

Most of them are women, and the group goes by some name like “Bariana Furi” or something. Waving the banners of seemingly plausible humanism and justice, these old hags — no, I mustn’t use such a filthy word as “hags.” I’ll bite my tongue and call them “ladies” instead, proudly performing their clumsy storytelling.

These ladies, dressed in fine clothes and with their white faces covered in smooth makeup, were holding a tear-filled gathering overflowing with goodwill, intent on using their storytelling skills to help people with physical disabilities. What a foolish notion! And there I was, completely out of place, having inadvertently stumbled into their midst.

I wrote “utterly out of character,” but it was indeed a case of a man as petty and vulgar as myself, a wretch whose poverty-stricken mentality has seeped deep into his very guts, sticking his nose into a place completely out of his league.

It’s no use regretting it now, but I can only say I must have been possessed by a demon.

“If our humble storytelling skills can be of even the slightest help to those poor souls…” Pfft.. what the hell is she talking about?

She calls it a “humble” performance, but deep down, she’s convinced it’s actually quite a fine one.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have the arrogance to think she could entertain others and offer them comfort.

I simply cannot stand the sense of superiority displayed by these ladies, not “old hags” pretending to sympathize with “those poor souls,” but ladies.

What filthy old hags they are.

Still, since I have a connection to this gathering and feel a certain sense of obligation, I quietly took a seat at the end of the row where the ladies were lined up. I made a genuine effort to wholeheartedly go along with their spirit of volunteerism.

As I listened to the ladies’ arrogant and clumsy storytelling for the sake of “those poor souls,” I gradually lost my patience. I’d like to share here the notes I scribbled on the back of the flyer I had on hand.

I tried to understand their “goodwill” even a little, but I finally couldn’t take it anymore, and ended up writing this in such a hysterical manner.

After living eighty years, when I should have long since given up on everything and settled down, I still had enough youth left in me to scribble such an emotional note.

I’m not quite done yet.

To confirm the youthfulness of my own heart, I am taking the trouble to transcribe this scribbled note here. Doesn’t this just amount to a denial of the human capacity for imagination? Narration that’s nothing but explanations like this is just annoying. It’s annoying, annoying, it just feels like nothing but noise. This kind of narration is like robbing us of our precious ability to visualize.

I absolutely cannot believe that something like this would be beneficial to the hearts of people with disabilities. It’s a waste. It just makes me frustrated. When there’s unnecessary narration I can’t get into the drama. It really does kill the viewer’s imagination. I don’t trust people who do this kind of work thinking it’s “good.” I question their judgement. It’s a nuisance. Anyway, narration like this is a nuisance. Meaningless. We have to believe in imagination. Let’s continue to believe in and cherish our imagination above all else. I’ve come to realize just how important moments of silence are in a drama. “Silence is golden,” this is exactly what that means. The performance of the voice actors on screen are sufficient. Even when I try to empathize with the drama, the narration blocks it. It’s noisy. It’s just noisy. The voice actors’ voices alone are enough. The emotion comes through just fine. When narration comes in incessantly and frantically, it kills the emotion. Silence, pauses, the joy of imagining. The breadth of the drama. It is pointless narration that denies and hinders the depth of the drama. Space left unexplained. The effect of darkness. Drama is built on effective omissions! The moments of silence are the most important part of the drama! There was a fan who said Nureki tinkered too much with his models. There was a fan who said that a model’s psychology is conveyed by a motionless, silent model. It’s okay to leave the parts you don’t understand as they are. You don’t have to make everything perfectly clear. Through the soaring music and the murmurs of the voice actors, the drama’s content is fully understood. Or perhaps even more so than by able-bodied people. We can grasp things that able-bodied people cannot.

It is precisely when there are things we don’t understand that the drama’s imagery expands more richly. These ladies are mocking the imagination abilities of people with disabilities. This is something that must not be done. We must not do anything that kills the imagination of the blank spaces! This is the arrogance of able-bodied people! The arrogance of able-bodied people reaches its peak here!

While those shameless ladies were smugly competing in their voice acting, I scribbled these words on the back of a flyer.

I had to attend this wretched meeting four more times.

I had to sit through three hours of it each time.

I couldn’t stand those three hours.

I hated breathing the same air as those ladies.

I only had to endure four more sessions, twelve hours in total, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I thought that if I stayed here, I would be ruined. I thought I would cease to be myself.

I am a person of low ambition, vulgar and uneducated, the scum of society.

But even someone like me would be in trouble if I ceased to be myself. I must remain myself and live a little longer.

Even after leaving that meeting room, I felt gloomy. From morning till night, I was in a gloomy mood.

Even when I wasn’t in the same room, the shameless arrogance of those ladies weighed heavily on me.

Now, having come to a gathering of storytellers, unrelated to volunteer work, and standing here in front of the small “tachi-e” stage, telling the story of “Suzugamori,” my gloomy mood cleared and I felt elated. Even the blood vessels at the tips of my fingers and toes grew hot.

Shouting out with all my might in a Kabuki-style tone really is a good thing.

“All right, I’ll escape from that hideous horde of old women,” I resolved, just as Shirai Gonpachi, having cut down every last one of the swarm of ruffians attacking him: “If the pheasants hadn’t cried out, they wouldn’t have been killed. What a pointless slaughter I’ve committed,” raising his voice even higher.

I won’t go back to that room where those hypocrites hang out. I won’t go back, no way!

Instantly, the dark clouds in my heart were blown away, and my vision cleared.

I felt as though I had cut down those old hags.

“Sensei, it’s been sixteen years since I last moved the puppets to your narration, it was so much fun. I was thrilled. Please let me do it during the actual performance, too!”

M-ko, who had been operating the puppets in time with my narration, looked up at me with a flushed face.

“I’d be honored to have you.” I bowed my head to her.

The actual performance of this “standing illustration (tachi-e)” is two months from now. I wonder how many more times we’ll have to rehearse.

I wrote the script for “Gozonji: Suzugamori,” I crafted over twenty puppets, and I will be the one performing the narration.

Nureki Chimuo, who loves theater (clapping), is also involved in this sort of thing.