Once, in front of two hundred people, I forgot my lines.

It became the most important moment of my career as a rakugo storyteller.

I gave my first performance when I was twenty-two.

July 14th, 1999. Shinjuku Suehirotei, one of Tokyo's oldest rakugo theaters, on the evening bill for the most junior performers. I had joined my master only two months earlier.

Back then, there weren't many apprentices, so I was thrown into the dressing room almost immediately. I practiced rakugo, of course, but there was so much more to learn: how to fold a kimono, how to serve tea, how to help the senior performers dress, how to play the drum before a show. I crammed two months' worth of training into my body as fast as I could.

Then came my first performance. The story was "Kohome" — a tale about a man named Hachigoro who tries to repeat something his elder taught him, and fails.

The first half went exactly as I'd rehearsed. The setup, where the elder teaches Hachigoro, went smoothly. The audience sat quietly, listening.

Then came the moment I was supposed to make them laugh.

That's when I noticed a legendary performer, Tachibanaya Enzo, had walked into the dressing room to watch. I could hear his voice. I knew he was there.

My nerves spiked instantly. Right at the moment Hachigoro was supposed to get it wrong and land the laugh — my mind went blank. The line was just gone.

The audience realized I'd lost my place.

So I said it plainly:

"I'm sorry. I forgot my line. Just like Hachigoro, I made a mistake."

More than two hundred people burst out laughing.

Something in me relaxed. I was happy they'd laughed that hard — and embarrassed, at the same time. Both feelings together untangled the knot in my chest. After that, the rest of the story came out smoothly. I didn't forget another line.

That one sentence — "I'm sorry, I forgot my line" — is what connected the first half of the story to the second.

That was kintsugi.

Everyone carries that first-time fear, the failure of not being able to speak smoothly. I didn't hide it. I held it up, plainly, on stage. And the laughter that followed became the gold that joined the crack.

From then on, I started rehearsing with a new assumption: I will forget lines. I will make mistakes. That's simply part of it. I still did, from time to time — but I learned to repair each crack in the moment, quietly, in my own mind, before the audience ever noticed.