The Flattery Shop and Other Comic Tales

Meiji Tokyo has gone mad for new inventions, so one enterprising man improves the phonograph and opens a shop that sells flattery: a teahouse keeper, a theater usher and a student each buy the compliments of their trade, until a customer arrives who flatters better than the machines. A simpleton sent to a rich man’s tea gathering is told to find a hairline crack in everything. A blind acupuncturist prays his sight back and learns more than he wished about his wife’s looks and his own.

These fourteen rakugo and one-sitting stories by San’yūtei Enchō, the greatest storyteller of his age, range from two-minute sketches to full comic tales. They include his report on Hell modernized with railways, ministries and gas lamps, and a talking ox at the Empress Dowager’s funeral of 1897. Every piece is complete, with its punch line, and concise notes explain the puns, people and places.

A New English Translation in the series Japanese Classics in English Translation.