Japan's Kamishibai & Picture Storytelling

About this book

Before television, Japan's favourite screen was made of paper. A performer bicycled into a street corner, struck two wooden clappers, and opened a little wooden stage: inside it, picture cards slid one by one into the next scene while a single voice played hero, villain and child. Japan's Kamishibai & Picture Storytelling is the complete guide to 200 subjects of that paper theatre — its temple roots and golden age, its beloved tales and lost genres, its performers, stages and candy trade, its second life in schools and libraries, and the makers keeping it alive today — in one uniform format, every entry giving History & Setting, Form, Craft & Making, Performance, Audiences & Meaning, and Visiting, Watching & Care, each entry written in full at 200+ words.

Ōgon Bat, the skull-faced hero born on cards years before the comic-book superheroes. The lenders who rented stories by the route. The script printed on the back of the card, where only the performer could read it. The war years the art was made to serve, the ruins it performed in, the classrooms that saved it, and the festivals that brought the clappers back. A front chapter teaches you to watch a performance in four checks — story, cards, voice and crowd — and Part 5 teaches you to build a stage and perform a tale yourself.

The classic tales are given as synopses and commentary in the guide's own words; no card set's text or pictures are reproduced, because the cards belong to their makers. There are no photographs: the art is taught in words, for the eye and the hand. Fees, hours, schedules, stock and prices are never asserted; every entry asks you to confirm them on the official channel.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.