Storyteller works to the victims of the Tsunami Cheer Japan

 The traditional Japanese storyteller kneels before a room full of families who have lost everything - their houses, their relatives, their entire city - and her face stretches a wide smile.

"There once was a Samurai who liked drinking sake," he said and began swinging as well éméchés.

The story of Samurai, a classical comedy of hundreds of years, normally draws a steady stream of laughs. But she gets only a few chuckles at this shelter for those who lost their homes in the earthquake on March 11 and the tsunami.

After two months, survivors of disasters receive constant food, water and medical supplies. Now, Sanyutei Kyoraku attempts to overcome another challenge - to smile again.

Kyoraku is a master of the "rakugo," ancient Japanese art of the humorous tale and usually opposite rooms crowded Tokyo or on national television. Shelter in Ichinoseki, he is sitting in a cramped room attached to an abandoned gym, his audience look at rows of folding chairs.

In a culture where pain and sadness are internalized and not discussed openly, it is often difficult for those living in shelters with little privacy to have a sense of humor.

"Some people still cannot even laugh again;" "they walk just when I start," said Kyoraku, giving free performances throughout the battered northeastern coast of the Japan since disasters.

Kyoraku is the name of scene of Takayuki Kato, 47. He played in the style classic, kneeling on a small cushion and wearing a simple kimono with only a fan of paper and a handkerchief for accessories. It switches of expressions and the ways to play several roles at the same time - thirsty drunken, combined grandmothers, dogs in anger - rapidly alternating voices for each in a story.

"It was really interesting." "I thought it was brilliant," said Seito Ishizawa, 57, sitting pontificating primarily through the show.

After his performance, Kyoraku talks mental stress dealing with personal tragedy and the life of the months without any protection of personal information and the need to help all to lift the spirits of those around them.

"If you want that the people around you smile," he said. "" "". You have to start by yourself smiling. ?

Some 120,000 people live in shelters, uprooted by the earthquake and tsunami that left 26 people dead or missing along the northeast coast. While the evacuees in some regions have begun to move into temporary housing, it will be months more before enough are built for all those who have lost their homes.

The shelter in Ichinoseki, a sprawling former elementary school, is well provided. A cloakroom on the first floor has been converted into a giant pantry loaded with fresh vegetables, more staples such as rice and flour. There are stoves Giants hot food and water, communal and own toilet, washing machines working.

For many residents, the main challenge is killed in time.

"Some people have found part-time work, but almost every day we all type of loiter, says Soichiro Suzuki, 22"

In his submissions to shelter, Kyoraku sticks cheerful traditional stories. He learned to moderate the content of voluntary emissions after for survivors of a deadly earthquake that struck southern Kobe in 1995.

At an event for charity in an area with much less damage, it performs a piece on a hospital trying to cope after a major earthquake, mixture of humor and the tragedy that he mixes characters through half a dozen. Some audience members laugh as they mourn.

"We must talk about the tragedy, to get it all out," he said. "If you are in these thoughts, they will be in your dreams."