Katsura Sunshine has come quite a way from his days listening to Japanese rakugo comic tales at a local yakitori skewered chicken restaurant where he was introduced to the ancient traditional art form almost 20 years ago.
One might never guess that the 47-year-old Canadian from Toronto is poised to introduce Americans to Japanese culture by performing the craft at an off-Broadway theater in New York City in mid-November, as the first non-Japanese rakugo storyteller in post-war Japan.
Sunshine himself, whose real name is Gregory Robic, never imagined he would live the life he leads now, devoted to mastering a 400-year-old art form in the East while taking on the challenge to convey it to the West, and raising the necessary funds for the production through mainly Japanese investors.