Kamishibai, picture card shows, paper theater or paper drama, first appeared in Japan in the late 1920s performed as street theater, although their origins have been dated back to ancient Japanese picture scrolls, emakimono. The stories, told through the use of picture cards, each about 15 inches wide  x 11 inches high, with narration by a gaito kamishibaiya, informally called ojisan kamishibaiya or "uncle kamishibai," quickly became a big hit with children, with the narrators hawking candy and toys to the assembled audience before the performance.

As Japan fell into the Great Depression in the early 1930s, this form of theater, requiring minimum investment, became even more popular and diverse in its content, expanding into the areas of education, religion and more adult themes. "It is estimated that, during the years of the Great Depression, some 3,000 kamishibai storytellers were operating in the city of Tokyo [and in] Japan as a whole, the number of gaito kamishibaiya, who travelled by bicycle between performances, reached almost 30,000.[1]

As Japan entered into its period of colonial expansion and the 1931-1945 Asia-Pacific War (Fifteen Year War), "the government was quick to recognize and exploit the potential of this medium"[2] and "after 1938, the use of kamishibai . . . for the purpose of glorifying state projects," known as National Policy Kamishibai (国策紙芝居 kokusaku kamishibai), became commonplace.[3] While many of the wartime kamishibai were directed at children and students, many more were targeted at adults, "particularly those of the lower classes," reaching out to factory workers, farmers and small and family business owners.[4]

As censorship and the oppression of those with liberal views grew at home, the originally left-leaning Japanese Educational Kamishibai Federation (日本教育紙芝居連盟) was co-opted into the war effort under the Nihon Kyōiku Kamishibai Kyōkai 日本敎育紙芝居協會 (Japanese Association for Educational Kamishibai).[5] Many of its founders, such as one of this collection's kamishibai editors, Saki Akio 佐木秋夫 1906-1988), a liberal religious scholar, shifted their "politics to a pro-government, pro-war stance."[6]

"By the early 1940s . . . all plays were being produced under the auspices of the state" and "under state sponsorship kamishibai plays [were being] sent to every corner of the country and every far-flung outpost of the colonies."[7]

Not surprisingly, "in a very large percentage of kamishibai plays . . . the end goal of the narrative was to produce a soldier who was ready to die willingly for the sake of the holy war (seisen)."[8]

As with the artist Nonoguchi Shigeru 野々口重 (1912-?), a prolific illustrator of kamishibai including this collection's "Behind Distinguished Service," little is known about many of the wartime kamishibai illustrators. To encourage these many men (only one woman illustrator has been identified) their work was overseen by better-known artists such as the fine art painters Fukuda Toyoshirō (1904–1970) and Miyamoto Saburō (1905–1974), hired by the Japanese Association for Educational Kamishibai in late 1941.[9]

With Japan's surrender in September 1945, the US Occupation forces applied strict censorship on kamishibai, as is it did with other performing arts, novels and news media. This censorship was the beginning of the end for kamishibai and with the wide-spread post-occupation (after 1952) growing presence of TVs in almost every home, "kamishibai had largely died out by the 1960s."[10] 

Today there is a resurgence of interest in kamishibai, much of it driven by teachers, cultural centers and libraries. Internationally, the use of kamishibai as a teaching tool "to encourage reading [and] to offer new forms of theater performance," is being promoted by UNESCO, the Petite Bibliotheque Ronde and the International Kamishibai Association of Japan.[11] Their "actions have helped to promote kamishibai, and it is once again today a fully-fledged form of storytelling."[12]

[1] Kamishibai: An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Japanese Culture and its Application in Infant Education, Ana María Marqués-Ibáñez appearing in, Képzés és gyakorlat, 2017. 15. Evfolyam 1-2. Szam, p. 31. [https://doi.org/10.17165/TP.2017.1-2.2]

Other estimates of the number of kamishibai performers are closer to 60,000.

[2] Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media (Japan and the Modern World), David Earhart,  pub. M.E. Sharpe , 2008, page 412 note 7.

[3] Propaganda Performed : Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen Year War, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Brill, Leiden, 2015, p. 54.

[4] ibid., p. 2.

[5] ibid., p. 88.

[6] op. cit. Certain Victory, p. 51, 55. Saki is quoted in "'Kamishibai' as Propaganda in Wartime Japan" as saying,"When I think about it now [after the war], I know that I made some awfully stupid things. But I would have been risking my life if I hadn't made them." Source: "Kamishibai" as Propaganda in Wartime Japan Author(s): Emily Horner Source: Storytelling, Self, Society , FALL 2005, Vol. 2, No. 1 , pp. 21-31 Published by: Wayne State University Press, p. 29. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41948951 [accessed 7-19-24]

[7] op. cit. Propaganda Performed, p. 56, 3.

[8] ibid. p. 90.

[9] Hoover Institution Library & Archives, "National Policy Kamishibai" https://fanningtheflames.hoover.org/shorthand-story/8 [accessed 7-18-24]

[10] "Kamishibai" as Propaganda in Wartime Japan Author(s): Emily Horner Source: Storytelling, Self, Society , FALL 2005, Vol. 2, No. 1 , pp. 21-31 Published by: Wayne State University Press, p. 29. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41948951 [accessed 7-19-24]

[11] op. cit. Kamishibai: An Intangible Cultural Heritage, p. 27

[12] op. cit. Kamishibai: An Intangible Cultural Heritage, p. 32-33

[13] op. cit. Propaganda Performed, p. 10.

Additional References

Kamishibai Collections Online

Hoover Institution Library & Archives Digital Collections https://digitalcollections2.hoover.org/browse?q=facet,parents,equals,14941&q=must,any,contains,Kamishibai&limit=10 and https://fanningtheflames.hoover.org/kamishibai-collection [accessed 7-21-24]

The University of British Columbia Libraries https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/kamishibai [accessed 7-21-24]

Children's Culture Institute Kamishibai Reference Room https://kodomonobunnka.or.jp/kamishibai-search/ [accessed 7-22-24]

Kanagawa University Digital Archive https://www.i-repository.net/il/meta_pub/G0000723kamishibai [accessed 7-22-24]

National Museum of Taiwan History Collections Search Page https://collections.nmth.gov.tw/WebSearch.aspx?a=206&q=%2c - search on the term "紙芝居" [accessed 8-4-24]

Kamishibai Performances Online

Shinsu War Materials Center 戦時紙芝居「甦る鐘」　日中戦争・太平洋戦争下の宣伝戦 (“Wartime Kamishibai ‘The Resounding Bell’: Propaganda during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War”) https://youtu.be/K3tqgdg9mgI?feature=shared [accessed 7-22-24]

Books and Articles

Fanning the Flames: Propaganda in Modern Japan, Kaoru Ueda, Hoover Institution Press, 2021.

"Gaitō Kamishibai in Postwar Japan: Picture-Storytelling: Performance in the Democratic Public Sphere, Stephanie Marie Hohlios, a thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah, College of Humanities, May 2015.

"Kamishiba as Propaganda in Wartime Japan," Emily Horner, appearing in Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (FALL 2005), Wayne State University Press, p. 21-31. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/41948951

Manga Kamishibai: The Art of Japanese Paper Theater, Eric P. Nash, Abrams Comicarts, 2009.

Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen Year War, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Brill, 2015.

Other References

Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints, University of Oregon  https://pages.uoregon.edu/jsmacollections/home/artists/wada-sanzo-1883-1967/picture-card-show-from-the-series-3bfe4d65dbba8ead.html

Kamishibai in Collection

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