[Imai Yone in Tokyo performing kamishibai in 1933.]
An innovator who saw the potential in the art form, Imai Yone, a Japanese Christian missionary, transformed kamishibai into the educational use it has today. Born in 1897 in Mie Prefecture, Imai moved to Tokyo in 1917 for secondary school and was baptized the next year. During the Kansai earthquake in 1923, she met Kagawa Toyohiko, a priest and social activist, and joined his relief efforts for the victims of the earthquake (Chen). By 1926, she helped in opening his “Friends of Jesus Nursing Mission” in Osaka and then travelled to the United States to study theology.
According to the San Francisco Passenger Lists, Imai boarded the S.S. Shinyō Maru in Yokohama and made the 17-day trip, paid for by her older brother, to San Francisco; arriving on December 27th, 1927. The section of the Passenger List that asks “whether going to join a relative or friend,” the name listed was the president of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkley, California showing her intention to study at the school for 2 years. Afterwards, in 1930, she studied at The Chicago Theological Seminary in Illinois for only the summer quarter. Migration records taken upon her reentry to the U.S. through Niagara Falls in NY after a brief trip to Canada show she had been staying at the Young Ladies Seminary in Wallingford, PA. Sometime in the 1930s, she moved back to Japan where her contributions to the art of kamishibai began to take shape.
In the early 1900s, kamishibai grew to be a popular pastime for children. Japanese scholars have offered a broad range of possible historical precursors for kamishibai from emaki picture scrolls to shadow theater to mechanized peep shows called nozoki karakuri (McGowan). The first form of kamishibai was the rudimentary street kamishibai. Performers made a living not from charging for the performance, but rather charging children for candy; a model born out of a time of economic depression in Japan and became the most commonly reminisced about version of kamishibai (Hoover). The candy was most likely a factor in the growing popularity of the kamishibai performances. A poll conducted in 1937 showed that a third of boys surveyed saw at least two shows a day, and some saw as many as six, even though many children were forbidden to watch (Horner). With the increase of popularity for the performances also came the increase of concern by the parents of the contents of the stories being told. A set of opinion pieces from the Tokyo Asahi newspaper in 1932 give a good overview of the concerns by teachers and parents alike with some mentioning the need for a regulatory committee to oversee the production of kamishibai scripts since, as another article states, the stories are full of topics not naturally suited to children’s taste: fantasy, adventure, criminal behavior, the grotesque, etc. (Orbaugh). However, Imai was able to look past those concerns and see the potential kamishibai had for educational purposes.
Imai established a troupe of performers in 1933 and in the same year, co-founded the Kamishibai Publishing Company. Her innovations in kamishibai made it more accessible to a wider audience and is largely to explain how it came to be in its current form today. These included increasing the card size of the images along with the length of the stories. Street-performance artists typically told episodes of about 10 cards each over what could sometimes continue for hundreds of episodes, Imai’s stories were usually 20 cards in length (Chen). The formatting wasn’t the only part of kamishibai that Imai influenced. She also pioneered the use of lithography to produce scripts quickly and in large numbers in addition to emulating the rental system for the street performance artists so her stories could be disseminated to a wide audience (Chen, Orbaugh). This set the foundation for the widespread use of kamishibai throughout Japan as a powerful educational tool.
Besides being a way of telling stories through performances, kamishibai has become important for children’s development as well. The teacher usually involves the children in discussing the content of the book and kamishibai supports their learning of vocabulary, conceptual development, comprehension, and content knowledge and can be similarly effective for children’s cognitive development (Du). After World War II, the Japanese government saw its potential for children’s education. The Ministry of Education instituted the “Childcare Guidelines - A Guide to Early Childhood Education,” which established kamishibai as a childcare teaching material for the first time (Kamishibai Net). Additionally, the “Educational Kamishibai Research Society” was formed in 1950 which further shows how important it became in Japan’s educational system.
Imai Yone’s innovative approach to kamishibai not only transformed it from a street performance into a powerful educational tool, it laid the groundwork for kamishibai’s widespread adoption in Japan’s educational system. Her legacy and influence can be seen in the continued use of kamishibai and its recognition as an effective medium for children’s cognitive development and writing.
Related Media
Kamishibai Part II - The Street Performance by University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries on YouTube, a history of kamishibai
Kamishibai: Momotaro – Peach Boy by TheJapanSociety on YouTube,
a performance of the classic Japanese tale
Works Cited
Atkins, Taylor. “AEMS: Publications.” Illinois.edu, 22 Aug. 2012, www.aems.illinois.edu/publications/filmreviews/dieforjapan.html. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.
Chen, Minjie. “Gospel and War Propaganda Take to the Streets! The Rise of “Educational Kamishibai” (教育紙芝居).” Cotsen Children’s Library, 30 Aug. 2019, blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/2019/08/educational-kamishibai/. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.
Du, X., & Chemi, T. (Eds.). (2018). Arts-Based Methods in Education Around the World (1st ed.). River Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003337263
Hoover Institution Library & Archives. “Kamishibai Defined.” Fanningtheflames.hoover.org, fanningtheflames.hoover.org/shorthand-story/7. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.
Horner, Emily. “‘Kamishibai’ as Propaganda in Wartime Japan.” Storytelling, Self, Society, vol. 2, no. 1, 2005, pp. 21–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41948951. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.
Kamishibai Net. “紙芝居を知る 紙芝居ストーリー -誕生から現代まで｜デヂタル紙芝居ネット（カミシバイ.net）.” Kamishibai.net, 1 Apr. 2007, www.kamishibai.net/know/story.html. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.
McGowan, Dr. Tara M. “About Japan: A Teacher’s Resource | the Many Faces of Kamishibai (Japanese Paper Theater): Past, Present, and Future | Japan Society.” Japansociety.org, aboutjapan.japansociety.org/content.cfm/the-many-faces-of-kamishibai#sthash.R3s3jf5c.fg08HPln.dpbs. Accessed 3 Nov. 2024.
Orbaugh, Sharalyn. Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen-Year War. Netherlands, Brill, 2016.
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