What is Shogei?

Shogei does not mean any specific performing art. In a day’s theater performance, there are performances done on stage aside from Rakugo, Manzai, Koudan, and Roukyoku for variety’s sake.
For dynamic and visually entertaining performances, there were different acrobatic stunts, which originated from the grand performance of kagura, Western magic, Japanese magic, and recently, juggling. There is also silhouette cutting, which is an impromptu paper cutting performance, Jazz manga, which is an impromptu manga drawing with jazz background music, and ventriloquism, where dolls are shown as if they are talking.
Furthermore, there are performances that entertain the audience aurally, such as a comic chat where a storyteller stands on the stage and tells a humorous story, voice imitations of animals and famous people, singing, and musical instrument performance. There is also fancy playing of musical instruments such as samisen and violin, and onna douraku (samisen comic chat), where one or multiple female performers sing kouta and hauta combining with comic chat.
There used to be such a wide variety of performances for each period and to each region’s audience’s tastes that we cannot actually write down everything. There will probably be new performances to come out in the future.

What is Kamigata Comedy?

Engei is performed by one or a few performers. Kamigata Comedy is not a form of Engei. Rather it is categorized as a play. A group of performers play a story along with a script. In a part when the play wants to draw laughter from the audience, and humor gets so entwined in the play that it is difficult to differentiate from Manzai and other humorous performances, we call it Kamigata Comedy.
In the Edo period, amateur performers played a mime called niwaka as a sideshow of summer festivals. The mimes were developed and began to be played by professional mimes. First, parodies of kabuki were mainly performed, then social trends from newspapers came to be introduced. After the middle Meiji period, Soganoya Goro and Jyuro, who were formerly kabuki actors, produced “shin-kigeki (new comedy)”, aiming to produce a comedy play suitable for the new era while inheriting the features of niwaka. From then, many theatrical companies emerged and it developed. Shochiku Katei Geki, which capitalized on humorous yet sad plays of humanity, became Shochiku Shin Kigeki after World War II and enjoyed its golden age thanks to the popularity of actors including the 2nd Shibuya Tengai and Fujiyama Kanbi. Then, as if to counter it, Shin Kigeki, which pursued easy to understand and intense humor, came out and continues until this day.