About Tozaburo Yanagiya
Not just a performer — a guide bringing RAKUGO's wisdom to the world.
Tozaburo Yanagiya brings the Japanese wisdom inside RAKUGO — resilience, ikigai, humor — to modern minds worldwide. A shin'uchi master whose craft is rakugo, and whose offer is wisdom you can use. Each turn of his path began the same way: with instinct.
A library, and a book on rakugo
The summer he was fifteen, a boy who had broken his collarbone at rugby escaped his un-air-conditioned room to read at the local library every day. As he slid a volume of European paintings back onto the shelf, a spine caught his eye on the performing-arts shelf just above: Tatsukawa Danshi's Modern Rakugo Theory 2: You, Too, Can Become a Rakugo-ka.
On the tapes he borrowed, Danshi's "Nezumiana" and "Tensai" gave him chills that erased the heat. Far more thrilling than anything on TV. From that day, the boy who was going to be an architect belonged entirely to rakugo.
The master's "Shibahama," and instinct
December 29, 1998, at Shinjuku Suehiro-tei. Hearing Yanagiya Gontaro perform "Shibahama," something unlike any rakugo he had known struck him to the core. It was as if he were being struck by rakugo itself. That night he decided, clearly: not simply to become a storyteller, but to become this man's disciple.
"I live by instinct." He apprenticed in 1999, rose to shin'uchi in 2014 and took the name Tozaburo Yanagiya III, and in 2016 — his very first time entering — won the newcomer prize at the Agency for Cultural Affairs Arts Festival.
Loss, and renewal
Around the time of that award, he lost a close friend and fellow actor, and then his father, in an accident at a construction site. Carrying deep grief even as he threw himself into rakugo and theater, he let everything go for a while, retreating to Kyoto to begin writing about his father.
Those Kyoto days became, unexpectedly, the reason he would cross the ocean.
"Maybe I could do rakugo in English"
He had taken up English simply to refresh his mind. One morning, studying in Cebu, a thought surfaced: "Maybe I could do rakugo in English." From that offhand line, eighteen New York performances came together almost overnight.
In 2019 he became the first rakugo artist ever granted a U.S. O-1 artist visa and moved to the States, basing himself in New York for seven years. In 2024 he gave the first-ever English Rakugo at Carnegie Hall. He now works between Japan and abroad, with plans to move back to the U.S. from autumn 2026.
"Maybe I could do rakugo in English." One morning in Cebu, on instinct — and everything began to move.
The official method: A New World of Rakugo
His 2023 book A New World of Rakugo (Sairyusha) carries an endorsement from Prof. Aaron Gerow of Yale University. It is the origin of the RAKUGO Method that underpins every class, performance, and training program.
Performances, talks & training
From cultural events to corporate training and school programs — inquiries welcome.