Narrative art forms such as rakugo and rôkyoku come from a genealogy of Japanese minimalist medieval (12th cent) performing arts which includes noh theater and biwa hôshi. Biwa hôshi were lute players who recited martial epics for audiences while accompanying themselves on the lute. Noh theater was characterized by uniform stage spaces and the sparse use of props. Therefore, both art forms demand that the audience invest a high degree of their own imagination in filling out the particulars of a story. That would include mentally allowing a stage space to expand or contract temporally or physically to imagine performers traveling immense distances or long periods of time. Or imaging the same space as an outdoor scene or the inside of a dwelling.
Rôkyoku is narrative singing, usually with shamisen accompaniment. It has an eight-hundred-year history. It stems from biwa hôshi (lute playing recitation mentioned above) but it went through a similar evolution as the chanting in the puppet theater (bunraku) in which the lute was replaced by the shamisen. It is also related to narrative Buddhist sermons, used to relay Buddhist texts or homilies to illiterate audiences.
Rakugo is sometimes translated as sit-down comedy, because the performer is seated while telling humorous stories. Rakugo proper has a nearly a five-century history with roots in setsuwa (spoken stories—oral narration of folk tales), humorous Buddhist sermons, and otogishû (advisors to warlords who would also recite books and tell stories). By the mid-17th century, professional story tellers could make a living telling humorous stories. Today, rakugo is performed by seated storytellers (hanashi-ka), who use a minimum of props (often just a fan) to tell funny stories that require that the audience use their imagination to fill out the story.
Rakugo and rôkyoku are unique art forms from Japan that both have histories of more than five hundred years. They have acquired their characteristic minimalism from the prior art forms based in chanting that encourage the audience to imagine the details of the performance rather than giving those details to the audience in the form of props, sets, or costumes.