Photos by Tak Sugita
Touhou Rikimaru is wearing a pair of thong tabi socks, jeans, a denim jacket, and a white headband wrapped around his long caveman-like hair.
He neatly stacks manga outside the train station in Shimokitazawa, a hip Tokyo neighborhood of vintage record stores, thrift shops, and live music clubs. Amidst shuffling hipsters, he sits on the ground with his legs tucked under, clears his throat dramatically, and flips open a Rieko Saibara classic.
Touhou, 34, is a professional manga reader—likely the only one in the whole world. He started off by playing folk guitar to sparse crowds in the small beachside town of Chigasaki at the age of 20. He later moved to Tokyo to pursue a career in voice acting; after finding it boring and repetitive, he hit the streets of Shibuya with a handful of manga, hoping to make a few bucks by reenacting some of his favorite cult classic cartoons. “My early audience was mostly photographers and band members—people who looked at the world from a non-mainstream point of view,” he says. As word of the quirky street performer spread and crowds gathered (with some people even making requests), territorial food vendors sometimes broke up the party, forcing him to occasionally relocate.
Touhou is part traditional kamishibai [paper drama] storyteller, part voice actor. “[Regular] voice actors probably find me obnoxious,” he says. “I’m definitely stepping in their turf.” He plays up different characters by practicing tonal inflections and accents at home. “I basically have three voice patterns,” he explains. “High, mid, and low, one each for male and female.” To demonstrate, he gives a pitch-perfect imitation of some characters from the popular manga Sazae-san.
Since making his first TV appearance four years ago, Touhou has enjoyed steady crowds of several dozen every weekend and does occasional gigs at live concert halls around town. But his ultimate dream is to make it big stateside. “I used to watch ‘Saturday Night Live’ obsessively when I was in my late-teens,” he says. “I really hope to perform in America someday, or at least make it big on YouTube.”
Issue 24 Apprentices
Comments
I was living near Shimokitazawa when this article was published. I sometimes encountered this very strange man who always had a group of grown ups sitting on the street in a circle around him. They would hang on every word he was saying as if they where kids listening to the most amazing bedtime story of their life. My Japanese wasn’t good enough at that time to appreciate his talents, but I was entertained by only listening to the voices he utilized and his passion which vibrated in every new character.
Add a Comment