Kamishibai (紙芝居)
Our Japanese language courses in London are scheduled for the weekends. We also include a guest speaker each class to talk to our students about a Japanese cultural theme; this would happen after the language session. Our guest lecturers in the past have spoken about Kamishibai so we thought we would write an article about it.
Kamishibai (紙芝居) means "paper drama." This art form is designed to tell stories, rather like a medieval travelling bard. Kamishibau originated in Japanese Buddhist temples in the 11th century, where monks used e-maki (picture scrolls) to explain stories with moral lessons to a mostly illiterate Japanese audience. The art form lasted as a storytelling method for a long time, but is perhaps best known for its revival in the 1920s through to the 1950s. The gaito kamishibaiya, or kamishibai storyteller, rode from village to village on a bicycle equipped with a small stage. When the gaito Kamishibaiya arrived, the storyteller used two wooden clappers, called hyoshigi, to announce his arrival. (It is worth noting that in Sumo the referee also uses these clappers to annouce who will be fighting next.)
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Children who bought candy from the storyteller would be given the best seats in front of the stage. Not a concept a million miles away from Punch and Judy shows, once an audience assembled, the storyteller would recount stories using a set of miniture stages. Often the background images would tell the story and would be rotated as the story progressed.
The revival of kamishibai can be tied to the global depression of the late 1920s when it offered a means by which an unemployed man could earn a small income. The tradition was largely supplanted by the advent of television in the late 1950s but has recently enjoyed a revival in Japanese libraries and elementary schools. Some Americans have translated traditional kamishibai into English and offer them as part of a "Balanced Literacy" teaching philosophy.