Kishihachi's Opening: A Rookie Who Doesn't Draw

I read an article about a rookie sword bearer from outside the old lineages, who never drew her blade on the night she first stood guard at a window room. It sounds like the most ordinary thing in the world, but seeing an ordinary thing all the way through turns out to be the hardest part. It's the same in my own trade — the time spent in front of an audience doing nothing at all is, in truth, the time that takes the most practice.

A makura is the bit of small talk before the main story starts, but I've come to think even the few seconds of sitting there saying nothing belongs to the makura in the broadest sense. The rookie in the article reportedly said there wasn't even an occasion to draw that day, and that she thought it was a good thing. That's a fine makura, I thought. No punchline, no clever line. Knowing, already at twenty-three, that it's fine to end a story that way.

I've been on stage for nearly fifty years now, and even today I sometimes lose track of the knack for holding a few seconds of silence, which is harder than any line that makes a room laugh. Watching someone who arrived without a school's forms grasp the weight of those seconds from scratch, I'll admit, makes me a little envious. I've gotten this far leaning on my own forms more than I'd like to admit.

Someone, somewhere, apparently said that whether the window opens or not, just having a watchman changes the feel of the room. A stage audience is much the same. Even when no laugh comes, just having someone there listening changes how you hold the pause. How long that rookie's blade goes on staying undrawn — that, I suspect, will end up being the record of her skill.