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"I've got nothing, so I'm going there." Former small-time crook Yotaro has never forgotten the rakugo tale "Shinigami" that the great artist Yurakutei Yakumo performed to him in prison. After his release, he goes right to Yakumo's theater, and pleads to be made his apprentice. He's accepted, but quckly finds himself dealing with many strange twists in the world of rakugo, including a growing bond with Yakumo's ward, Konatsu, and reminders from his own inescapable past.
Yakumo begins the story of the promise he made with Sukeroku. When he was young, he was taken in by the 7th generation Yakumo and named Kikuhiko. He met the young boy Sukeroku, a strange child who insisted on taking over the Yakumo name, with a natural talent for rakugo. He is given the stage name Hatsutaro, and although his personality is unconventional, and his rakugo is rough, he loves rakugo more than anything. Together wth his polar opposite, the reluctant Kikuhiko, they begin their days of training.
After their first performance, Kikuhiko sharply feels the difference in skill between himself and Hatsutaro. Hatsutaro recommends he try erotic stories, but Kikuhiko is struggling so hard just to memorize the beginner stories, he can't even begin to consider anything else. The fact that he has to go to school in the mornings causes the gap between him and Hatsutaro, who can spend the day learning rakugo, to grow wider. Even so, he gradually comes to love rakugo more and more, and to develop something of a normal life. But the shadow of the war approaches, tearing rakugo, love, and friendship apart...
Kikuhiko and Hatsutaro, promoted to futatsume, left their master's house to live an impoverished life on their own. Ever since changing his name to Sukeroku, Hatsutaro's popularity has skyrocketed. Even Kikuhiko is shocked by his unwavering ability to make people laugh at difficult stories. Meanwhile, Kikuhiko is working to feed the both of them, so much so that he can't even get good training done. To cheer him up, his master introduces him to a geisha called Miyokichi...
After a performance, Sukeroku comes home drunk with girls on both arm. Work or play, he navigates all areas of life smoothly. Kikuhiko is annoyed with him, but he's also jealous of how easy he has things, while Kikuhiko himself struggles with practice for their play. Is he really cut out for rakugo? As he asks himself that question, Kikuhiko happens to run into Miyokichi, who leads him off with a mischievous grin...
Kikuhiko is feeling better about himself after the success of the play, with the audience hanging on his every word and gesture. Sukeroku tells him that he had a similar experience during the war, and that ever since then, he decided that he would do rakugo for the people. He asks Kikuhiko what he's doing rakugo for, but Kikuhiko, who has always done rakugo to secure a place to live, has never even considered the question.
After finding his own rakugo, Kikuhiko has become quite popular. Even when he's out with Miyokichi, rakugo is all he can think about. Meanwhile, Sukeroku is buoyed into arrogance by his own popularity. He takes on stories beyond his station, he picks fights with the masters... Sukeroku is dragging Kikuhiko around, complaining about the lectures he's receiving, when Miyokichi arrives to interrupt...
Kikuhiko's tour with the 7th Generation Yakumo was a huge success. His master is satisfied with Kikuhiko's growth, and plans to promote him to shin'uchi soon. The problem is Sukeroku, whose behavior is forcing Yakumo to bend over backwards to get him promoted. Meanwhile, Sukeroku learns something surprising from Miyokichi: that Kikuhiko didn't even tell her about his trip. Her face is sad, but accustomed to heartbreak... and beautful.
The Seventh Generation Yakumo manages to get Kikuhiko and Sukeroku promoted to shin'uchi. But although their unveiling ceremony is a huge success, Sukeroku gets in a fight with the president of the Rakugo Assocation, and insults him by performing his specialty work. When his master takes him to task for his conduct, Sukeroku gives an impassioned speech about his own feelings about rakugo... All the while, Kikuhiko is meeting with Miyokichi to break up with her. Both men's fates are about to take a turn...
For Kikuhiko, it's a time for goodbyes. To Sukeroku, with whom he shared the joys and frustrations of rakugo. To the woman who raised him as her own child. Men ask to be his apprentice, and he has so much media attention that he's sick of it... but the people most important to him keep leaving. To this struggling Kikuhiko, the Seventh Generation Yakumo tells the tale "Kowakare", as well as the story of his own sins. For it seems this is a cycle of karma from which they can never break free...
The girl Kikuhiko met at the soba shop in the hot springs town turned out to be Konatsu, Sukeroku and Miyokichi's daughter. She leads him to her house, where Kikuhiko finally reunites with Sukeroku, who seems to be living in squalor. Miyokichi made him quit rakugo, but he also wouldn't work. Miyokichi had to resort to working in nightclubs to support Sukeroku, and eventually got fed up and left. But Kikuhiko just has one thing to say to Sukeroku: "Come back to Tokyo and do Rakugo again."
A small rakugo performance takes place at an inn in a hot springs town. As he performs, Sukeroku feels the warmth of the audience's love for rakugo, and remembers what it means to be a storyteller. Kikuhiko brings and insists Sukeroku wear the 7th Generation Yakumo's montsuki, and he performs the story "Shibahama." Time, which had stopped for Sukeroku and Kikuhiko, begins to move again... As it does for Miyokichi, as well.
Their promise to each other was to carry rakugo into the future. To perform unchanging rakugo was Kikuhiko's job. To create a rakugo that would change with the times was Sukeroku's job. The story of the promise between two men who lived for rakugo is at last at an end, with Kikuhiko deciding to take on the Yakumo name at last. The era begins to wane, and both rakugo and people change. But what decision will Kikuhiko make about rakugo, and the destiny it bound him to?