In this short scene, the audience is introduced to the protagonist of the novel, who is named "sukeroku" . He is a young man who has just returned from his apprenticeship as a rakugo , or stage performer. He tells the audience that he is returning to the stage because he wants to tell his father's story to posterity. He asks the audience to imagine what it would be like for him to tell the story of his father, who was a "fiatatsume," or futsatsume, a Japanese term for a craftsman. He says that his father was an excellent performer, but that he was a nobody when he first came to live in Japan. He wants his son to be able to leave the story as it is written for posterity. The protagonist says that he does not need advice from anyone who says that they do not need their self.