The Pedagogical Uses of Kamishibai, the Paper Theatre, in Asia

Who We Are as Kamishibai Storytellers?

I, Karine, am a French educator, who trained in kamishibai tradition of storytelling in Tokyo in 2010 when I was researching additional pedagogical resources while creating a youth library for the French Alliance in Singapore. I continue to apply storytelling in my current role as a teacher librarian at an international school in Singapore.

I met Eiko-san and Etsuko-san at the IKAJA annual event in 2010 and was honoured to be the International Guest of Honour for the 20th anniversary of IKAJA in 2012. I kept in touch with Etsuko, supervisor of the international members of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan knowing a collaboration opportunity would arise one day.

I, Etsuko Nozaka, am a Japanese writer and translator. I live in Japan, but I have also lived in Europe for five years. Since 2001, I have been active as a performer and educator about kamishibai at seminars of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA) in Tokyo. I am also responsible for workshops overseas and often attend international congresses.

I, Eiko Matsui, am a muralist, with over 150 murals in Japan. I co-founded IKAJA along with Etsuko and other colleagues. My kamishibai Nido to (Never Again, 2005) was selected by the International Youth Library in Munich for their “Hello, Dear Enemy” exhibit. I perform and give lectures about kamishibai overseas, as well as seminars in schools and universities in Japan.

IKAJA has been aiming at supporting a wider use of kamishibai and its kyokan effect (“sharing of feelings”) (likened to empathetic imagination) as well as promoting the study of the subject from a cultural perspective and establishing kamishibai as a world-wide art since 1992. However, kamishibai is an art form that started earlier, in the 1930s in Tokyo, based on older traditions.

What Is “Kamishibai?”

According to Kamichi (1997), Japanese kamishibai has its early roots in picture scrolls (emakimono, twelfth century, Heian period), which were viewed while listening to a storyteller. The Buddhist practice of using mandalas and hanging scrolls or wall charts for etoki (explanation by means of pictures; thirteenth-fifteenth centuries, Kamakura/Muromachi periods) was closer to kamishibai, in that people listened as a group in order to comprehend an illustrated lesson.

Later, nozoki karakuri appeared (seventeenth-nineteenth centuries, Edo/Meiji/Taisho periods); looking into the small opening of a box in which karakuri dolls and illustrations appeared and moved, viewers could experience a story in time to speech, sing, and dance. The same period saw the popularity of utsushie, storytelling while projecting illustrations on a washi paper screen. Movies then usurped utsushie; subsequently, tachie (standing pictures) were invented (twentieth century, Showa period). Illustrations of a character in two poses were pasted back-to-back and mounted on a bamboo stick, to be moved about with other characters on a small stage. As this theatre involved dolls made of paper, it was sometimes called kamishibai; kami means paper, and shibai means theatre or drama. After tachie came hirae (flat pictures) in the same form as today’s kamishibai (twentieth century, Showa period).¹

Kamishibai’s history can be further outlined through a few main transition periods (IKAJA, 2017). Kamishibai in its current form originated around 1930 as street-corner kamishibai, performed with hand-drawn illustrations in the working-class areas of Tokyo. Street-corner kamishibai functioned as a tool to summon children to buy cheap sweets, so the works themselves did not stem from authors pouring their lives into them. As Japan invaded other countries, kamishibai’s feature of eliciting shared feeling (kyokan) among listeners was exploited, with numerous kamishibai published to encourage cooperation with the war effort.

After World War II, a new kamishibai movement began that centred on peace, love for children, and affirming the value of life. Published kamishibai that explored the meaning and wonder of life became mainstream. In 1957, Doshinsha was founded as a publisher of kamishibai. Kamishibai creators began avidly pursuing not superficial entertainment and sensationalism, but joy based on a culture of affirming life. Kamishibai genres expanded to include folktales, fiction, science/knowledge, daily life/events, peace, and environment, among others. In 1998, a fundamental work of kamishibai theory, Kamishibai—kyokan no yorokobi (Kamishibai: The Joy of Kyokan), was published. 2001 saw the founding of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan, or IKAJA, which continues to study kamishibai and encourage its practice in Japan and abroad. “In this way, kamishibai began to develop in the 1950s as a published artistic form, grew established as a culture for children, and is now becoming known around the world” (Matsui, 2008).

The 5Ws of Kamishibai

With a kamishibai in hand, anyone can perform it anywhere, anytime. Here is a who, what, when, where, how of typical kamishibai activities in Japan (IKAJA, 2017, pp. 126–35).

Who can use it::

childcare workers, librarians, teachers, booksellers, editors, authors, illustrators, translators, university professors, lawyers, business people, volunteer…

What kamishibai to use::

mostly published kamishibai, occasionally handmade kamishibai.

When::

during daycare or school; in the course of lectures, events or gatherings; when at home. As an introduction to kamishibai itself; as therapy; as activism for peace.

Where::

in kindergartens, nurseries, schools, universities, libraries, bookstores, child-rearing support centres, eldercare facilities, public cultural facilities, community halls, squares, parks, homes…

How::

with a three-door stage (butai) facing the audience, in an environment where the audience can concentrate on the kamishibai.

Comparison with Other Storytelling Modes

In working with early years students, teachers create and use visual props or even backdrops to enable students to relate to or envision the unfamiliar concepts in the stories. With the kamishibai, the visual and oral storytelling modes are combined making it an ideal educational resource.

Colonna d’Istria et al., (2013, p. 8) proposed the following comparison between the three storytelling modes consisting of reading a picture book, storytelling in a traditional way and storytelling with kamishibai.

Table 5.1 below draws on the multiple literacies and engagement induced in utilising a kamishibai with students. It can also be argued that the audience is always watching (the images on the book, the storyteller). In the kamishibai storytelling, however, the audience is immersed in the images that take up the whole space of the box. The point made about illustrations can also be nuanced, as in post-modern picture books, text and illustrations are designed in tandem.

Table 5.1 Comparison of the characteristics of three types of storytelling

Kamishibai Theory and Its Unique Mechanics

The following theory of kamishibai is based on the foundational ideas of Noriko Matsui (1934–2017), a writer, illustrator of children’s books and kamishibai, and principal founder of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA). Kamishibai is not only telling a story but also requires a set of sturdy illustrated sheets, a wooden stage (butai), and some particular motions. It is an art to perform, so hereafter the term performer is used in place of storyteller.

Format and Key Features

Kamishibai is not bound. On each thick sheet of every kamishibai work, the illustration is printed on the front and the text is printed on the back. To perform, a series of separate sheets is put into a stage, slid out one by one, and slid back in, while reading the text on the back aloud. The kamishibai story proceeds as this process is repeated. Since the text is on the back, a performer is needed, and the performer must face the audience. This unique format leads to two key features of kamishibai.

The first key feature is that the story world emerges and extends into the real world, where the audience is. This occurs primarily through the sliding-out motion. The role of the stage is also important: because the stage, the story world, and real world are distinct.

The second key feature is concentration and communication. When you start sliding out the present picture, the new picture appears. With this change, the audience concentrates on the new illustration. The sliding-in movement also makes the audience concentrate on the picture in the stage. Facing the audience gives the performer a distinct presence, establishing communication between the performer and the audience.

Through the above two key features, kyokan (literally “the sharing of feelings”) unique to kamishibai is born. The essence of kamishibai is expressed by this term kyokan.

Figure 5.1 illustrates this process.

Fig. 5.1

How to perform Kamishibai

How to Perform Kamishibai

The basic method of performance can be illustrated in Fig. 5.2 according to the theory above (IKAJA, 2017, pp. 18–27). Through performance, kamishibai creates a sense of shared reality among the audience, which in turn stimulates empathetic imagination and mutual responsiveness.

Fig. 5.2

Special features of Kamishibai

Its Popularity

How did this cultural product, specific to Japan, where it grew extremely popular between 1920 and 1950, and is still very common in the Japanese public libraries today for the storytelling programmes, become globally popular? And in what way is it a remarkable pedagogical tool? Several features contribute: its spatial setting; its flexibility; the high level of focus it creates; the ease with which transdisciplinary projects can be set up with a kamishibai at their core.

The kamishibai is indeed at the service of literacy, by servicing the skills of reading, speaking, writing, and image analysis. It also encourages listening, creation, and cooperation. In addition, during the rehearsals and performances, the students learn to develop a spectator's behaviour capable of attentive and respectful listening, but also of participating, depending on the story, and even criticising in the process of elaborating the story.

The spatial setting refers to the movement of the sheets pulled out and pushed in. Lamarre (2009) insists on the enhanced force of a moving image while shared in limited animation and how.

this cardboard theatre, with its sliding drawings and live narration, had a profound impact on limited animation, leading to an emphasis on moving the drawings and on supplying voice-over narration or explanations. Nonetheless, even if we locate the sources of sliding planes and moving the drawings in the sliding paperboard panels of kamishibai, those kamishibai techniques, already profoundly related to technologies of the moving image, occur under conditions of movement in limited animation, wherein the flattened compositing of celluloid layers pushes depth and movement to the surface of the image in specific ways. (p. 193)

Kamishibai seems slow and limited in terms of movement by essence. In fact, this very core feature enhances more power through a minimalist, concentrated movement, which fascinates the audience like the technology of the animated image.

Tara McGowan (n.d.) in her life-long research about kamishibai refers to the process of creating and performing kamishibai as a process similar to directing a theatre production or a film, on a reduced scale. Ishiguro (2017) highlights the flexibility of kamishibai, which allows for a great diversity in its use. He presents his research drawn upon workshops with children creating kamishibai. The focus was not so much on writing exercises, but rather a collaborative project. He shows how a two-step process including an adult-led and then a child-initiated collaborative creation, allowed students to explore the notions of authorship and self-expression based on rich body-play modalities.

In terms of oral expression, kamishibai’s flexible usage is also a great aid in differentiating: the butai (the box) works as a protective accessory that encourages speaking. On the one hand, it partially hides the shy narrator, on the other hand, it shares the attention of the audience between themselves and the child. Finally, the fact that there are indications on the back of the sheets is reassuring for the child. Children in school can present to a small group vs a larger audience, to the whole class or to a lesser-known audience, such as another class, or even to a larger number, such as a grade level or the parents’ community, depending on the challenge that is sought after, scaffolding the principle of responsiveness.

The setting of this art induces a sense of confidentiality that supports attention. The stage is larger than a children's album, but remains small (between A3 and A2 formats) and brings together its audience working as a focal point. As on a screen, the image occupies the whole surface, concentrating the attention of the audience. As the kamishibai sheet has to be readable at a distance and is visible only for a few minutes at most, unlike a picture book where the reader can linger on small illustrative and even non-essential details, the sheet ought to be very clear in its organisation, colour contrasts, etc. Adjusting the scale or the image layout allows the hierarchical relationships to be identified, with the dominant characters occupying all the space, for example, while at the same time strongly conveying a power of evocation or symbolism.

Moreover, the stage (butai), which doors open to reveal the story, offers what could be called an "open window to the world". Each image offers a unity of place, where the audience is drawn into a view of a moment, inside or outside, making the storytelling principle of relationality tangible. Older students have a more developed awareness and knowledge of mental images and how to analyse framed shots with truncated figures, enclosed in the space of a stage to construct the solutions of sequencing and linking, that is, the relationships of proximity necessary to understand the story. However, young children who are not aware of the limits of the image understand the medium in all its extent, as a vast field of projection, which builds a powerful immersive experience.

The sheets pulling mechanics enable the storyteller to build anticipation and excitement in the narrative. The pull-out/push-in sheets in the wooden stage allow for strong sensations and surprises, such as partial unveilings. By pulling a sheet out halfway a performer can create a dialogue between two characters as in the kamishibai Hats for the Jizos.

As this art of storytelling is visually based, it allows for pedagogical links with art, with the primary aim of making the students aware of the importance of the visual element of a story. More generally, many transdisciplinary projects can be developed. Regarding arts, the students can work on the notion of representation, playing with forms, background, symbolism, different techniques of illustration, use of a two-dimensional space, the expressive value of differences in relation to realism, the encoding in image of the narrative intention, and organisation of layout (repetition and alternation, enlargement and reduction, full and empty, etc.). For example, exploration of comics allows the children to further inquire how to represent emotions, how to highlight an object in the story (close-up for example).

Cross-curricular projects, including technology, information technology (IT), music, drama or maths elements, centred on the creation of a kamishibai are easily set-up. The construction of the stage allows students to carry out a manufacturing project in science and technology: they will have to explore materials (wood, sheetboard…), to make plans, to work on the notion of scale, to experiment and solve problems, to add variants such as a lighting system possibly researching electricity, etc. Students can also use IT tools to type and/or check texts, or to edit photos. Accompanying sounds can be explored in music: discovering other art works that mix art-literature and music such as Peter and the Wolf, Fantasia, or The Magic Flute and tackling the concepts of intensity, tempo, and how different emotions are conveyed through diversity of music. Foundations of theatrical performance can be introduced: reading or reciting in an articulate, fluid and clear way, conveying emotions, projecting one’s voice, capturing attention, and becoming aware of one’s posture. Finally, depending on the content of the story, kamishibai could be the provocations and the triggers for inquiries as well as an aid in scaffolding concepts of mathematics as shown in the Five Little Squares kamishibai, or for history, geography, interculturality.

Kamishibai and Education in Japan

The Significance of Kamishibai in Education

“Let us give real culture to children! It is in the midst of kyokan and awe that children develop the strength to live, which is the purpose of education” (Matsui, 2002). This statement by educator Mikio Matsui (1927–2012), former head of a middle and high school known for nurturing freedom and self-reliance, neatly summarises the significance of kamishibai in education. Kamishibai culture nurtures the sharing of feelings and emotions, which in turn help children to embrace life.

Offering Real Kamishibai

IKAJA’s vision of the kamishibai consists of nurturing children’s strength to live through real kamishibai. This means kamishibai that utilise the form’s features and offer messages of joy and affirming life, which can be experienced through kyokan. With these principles as the foundation, kamishibai should also offer superb illustrations and beautiful text in the audience’s mother tongue.

There are two types of Kamishibai: audience-participation type, which requires responses from the audience in order to proceed; and self-contained type, in which the story is complete in itself (IKAJA, 2017, pp. 74–5).

The audience-participation type is illustrated by Okiku okiku okiku na-are (Grow Grow Grow Bigger!) by Noriko Matsui (1983) (Fig. 5.3). She once reflected, “I pursued the unique aspects of kamishibai and created works in which the audience plays a central role. In this work, by repeatedly calling out, ‘Grow grow grow bigger!’, the audience magnifies the universal human desire to grow” (IKAJA, 2017, p. 81). Children take part in this kamishibai actively, and when they pretend to eat the cake that appears at the end, “it’s a time of filling up on their own wishes to grow bigger” (p. 81).

Fig. 5.3

Okiku okiku okiku na-are (grow grow grow bigger! 1983) by Noriko Matsui

A complete story type example is Yasashii mamono Wapper (The Kind Monster Wapper) by Etsuko Nozaka and Nana Furiya (2009) (see Fig. 5.4). In the first half of this work, a lone monster hanging about town is spotted by a boy named Jan, and the two become friends. This development shows the importance of seeing others for oneself, without prejudice. In the second half, Jan and other children join forces with the monster to cast a spell, and the monster becomes able to do magic he could not do before. The message “you can do more than you think!” spreads through the young audience with kyokan, and the joy of self-confidence is felt deep in children’s hearts.

Fig. 5.4

Yasashii mamono wapper (The kind monster wapper, 2009)

Both types of kamishibai convey the significance of living as humans. Children must have this essential joy for their growth and future.

The Importance of Performing

The performer of kamishibai is nearly always an adult, but benefits have also been observed when teaching children to perform. Saeko Uehara of Izu City, Shizuoka, reports teaching kamishibai performance to forty students in grades one to three (roughly ages six to nine) during summer and winter school vacations over two years (Uehara, 2020). The leaders were eleven adults in a local kamishibai study group. They began by performing kamishibai for the children and having them practice vocal production and readings of poems and short prose, emphasising the importance of understanding the text as a whole. Then, the children began to say, “I want to perform kamishibai, too!” The leaders offered them a choice of eight kamishibai and had them form groups based on which kamishibai interested them. The groups practiced diligently, receiving guidance as needed, and they successfully performed their kamishibai. This exercise helped the children relate to one another across age groups, thanks to the kyokan-eliciting aspects of kamishibai based on the principle of relationality.

Kamishibai Born in the Classroom

The kamishibai Kuishinbo no manmaru oni (The Hungry Round Ogres) (Matsui, 2002) was conceived in the classroom.

While trying out various forms of children’s culture in class, we realised that kamishibai offered the superior feature of eliciting kyokan. Special needs instructor Toshio Sugiyama handmade some kamishibai while considering the students’ responses, and the students grew to love learning math with it . . . With this success, we began wishing for more math kamishibai that we could share with more children. This led to having an author-illustrator create Five Fantasies with Numbers and Shapes [the series including Kuishinbo no manmaru oni].

The three oni or ogres in this work (see Fig. 5.5) search for food that comes in the same quantity as they do. While teaching the mathematical concept of one-to-one correspondence, this work also teaches the “life” concept of each person being able to find happiness.

Fig. 5.5

Kuishinbonomanmaruoni (The hungry round ogres) (Matsui, 2002)

Children can recite “one, two, three, four...” without knowing what numbers mean. To grasp the concept, they actually need more meaningful experiences. In the ogre kamishibai, when food falls out of the sky but is not enough, the main characters take action. When at last they have one portion of food per ogre, children experience kyokan and truly understand.

Elementary school teacher Kaoru Yoshida writes of performing this kamishibai (Yoshida, 2012):

The scene where the yummy treats from the sky are not enough, and one round ogre doesn’t get any and cries, and the other two ogres say ‘sorry, sorry’ and try to comfort him, this feels to the kids like a scene from everyday life, and they really relate to it. The scenes where delicious-looking food appears or a lovely aroma wafts down also seem to tickle their senses, expanding their imaginations and really getting them to think. When the three ogres embark on their quest to get one treat each, the children call out as one, and when a third treat is found at last, the classroom fills with smiles as children experience joy. This is not just because fantasy (rather than an explanation) has been used to teach them math, but also because they have been engaging with others and experiencing the pure delight of kyokan. It is not merely an informational kamishibai, but really a microcosm of human thoughtfulness and delight. (Yoshida, 2012, p. 20)

Strength to Face the Future

In 2005, sixty years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Eiko Matsui wrote and illustrated the kamishibai Nido to (Never Again) (see Fig. 5.6). She wanted to embed the cries of “No more Hiroshimas, no more Nagasakis!”—which fill the hearts of people working towards peace—in the kyokan that kamishibai creates. Since then, she has been performing Nido to in “peace classes” in Japan and abroad, in kindergartens, nurseries, schools, universities, and describes in (Matsui, 2016):

When I perform Nido to, the students lean forward and stare straight at what the atomic bombs did. When I see the students unwavering gazes, I see that these young people are strong beings who can absorb the truth. I perform as if embracing them, conveying, ‘We will never do this again, OK?’ I encounter with them not only the horror and tragedy of war, but also the importance of kyokan. When we reach the scene where Ayako—an eight-year-old who has lost all nine of her family members to the bomb—raises both hands to the sky, I feel determination ignite in all of the audience members, and I myself feel a strength well up inside me to stand strong and live. In the scene where a bird born from the cries of ‘No more Hiroshimas, no more Nagasakis!’ soars into the blue, I turn toward everyone, and what I see are people gazing straight ahead with conviction. In the kyokan of kamishibai, young people experience the ‘ideals of those working to create peace’ deep in their hearts.

Fig. 5.6

Nidoto (never again)

In such experiences, an answer arises to the question “What do children learn from kamishibai?” In the words of educator Mikio Matsui (2010):

You immediately begin to rethink the meaning of learning. You meet these students, and they overturn your ideas of ‘why humans learn’ You realize that learning is for self-reliance. Learning is to help us take pride in being alive. It’s to help us feel joy in supporting each other. (Matsui, 2010)

IKAJA regularly highlights several kamishibai for peace, including not only Nido to but also Kariyushi no umi (The Ocean of Kariyushi) by N. Matsui and Yokoi (1989), and Zoge no kushi (The Ivory Comb) by Bui Duc Lien (2006). Kamishibai for peace vitally illustrate what war is, have humans face it head-on, and illustrate how humans go about overcoming it. In the depths of these works dwells not only the reality of war, but also the need for humane living. “Even when peace itself is not the theme, the best kamishibai have the wonder and meaning of life at heart. When children make this their own, they develop the strength to face the future” (Matsui, 2008).

Kamishibai in Asia

Founded in 2001, the International Kamishibai Association of Japan is the world’s largest kamishibai organisation. Some 604 of its 682 members (including 561 in Japan) hail from Asia and Oceania, comprising about seventy per cent of all members.² IKAJA publishes an English-language homepage and annual newsletter and uses the book How to Perform Kamishibai Q & A by Noriko Matsui in several translations, including Chinese and English. In Japan, it holds countrywide seminars twice per year, once in Tokyo and once in a different region, and it offers workshop series on performance and creation of kamishibai.

The first IKAJA presentation in Asia outside of Japan was at the Asian Conference on Storytelling in New Delhi (2005), which included a performance for children. After that, members of IKAJA went on to present at the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) World Congress in Macau (2006) and at Asia Oceania Regional IBBY Congresses in Bali (2013), Putrajaya (2015), Bangkok (2017), and Xi’an (2019), as well as at the Asian Festival of Children’s Content in Singapore in 2016.

Besides conference delegations, IKAJA has sent individuals to China (Shanghai and Beijing), Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), India and South Korea to conduct kamishibai seminars for educators, librarians, authors and illustrators, storytellers, and university students. As a result, local libraries’ and schools’ collections of kamishibai have reportedly grown, and the number of kamishibai performers has gradually increased. IKAJA has also responded to requests for remote sessions for audiences in China (Shenzhen and Shanghai) and Thailand (Bangkok) in December 2020–January 2021.

As early as ten years before IKAJA’s founding, Vietnam’s large, state-owned Kim Đồng Publishing House hosted near-annual kamishibai seminars with the guidance of future IKAJA leaders Noriko Matsui, Kyoko Sakai, and Shigeko Kusakabe. Vietnamese creators of kamishibai then emerged, and their works were published one after another by Kim Đồng. Japanese translations of several Vietnamese kamishibai were then published in Japan, including the acclaimed Where Does the Sun Come From? by Truong Van Hieu (1996). Such activity later continued under the auspices of the Japan-Vietnam Kamishibai Exchange Association. Alexander Brown (2020) writes, “The story of the development of kamishibai in Vietnam in the early 1990s and the publication of Vietnamese works in Japanese further exemplifies how kamishibai as a movement has enabled transnational relationships between former enemies on the basis of peace and education” (p. 6).

Supporting the Preservation of Folktales

A glance at the kamishibai published in Asia and the West also shows the prevalence of kamishibai that tell traditional tales.

Among the Doshinsha publications, available in English in Japan or in the United States, a diversity of folktales can be found. Japanese tales such as Tumbling Taros or The Three Magic Charms (priest and monk folktales), the Celestial Robe, The farting young wife, Hats for the Jizos, Momotaro. There are also tales originating from Sumatra, like Father, and from France, Duck the King, along with stories covering the traditions shared across Asia, namely How the years were named, the Story of Tanabata. In Europe, whether in France or Germany, the same trend was developed by several publishers. For example, the majority of kamishibai published in Germany are linked to traditional holidays (St Nicholas, St Martin, Christmas and the nativity story), traditional witch stories, or the brother Grimm's tales. Publishers have seized the opportunity offered by the kamishibai set-up to renew their offer to libraries and schools. Outside of Germany, at the Goethe Institutes and at German schools as observed in Singapore, these folktale kamishibai are widely used in the context of language learning and of introduction to Germanic culture. For example, at the German European School Singapore, during the 12-week unit of inquiry How we express ourselves, the Pre-Primary teachers teaching 5–6 years old children, introduce Grimm's fairy tales via kamishibai in German. The butai and kamishibai stay in the classroom on a dedicated table. The children can handle them freely during free time. They are invited to retell the story to their classmates by handling the sheets during the inquiry sessions. This manipulative characteristic of the kamishaibai is particularly suitable for early years.

In this context, kamishibai as an easy-to-handle tool that facilitates access to meaning via storyboard-like visualisation which supports empathetic imagination, therefore nurturing an understanding of others. Following on from this idea of intercultural exposure and inter-literacy, it is possible to discover links between different storytelling traditions with young students. For example, Urashima Tarō, a fisherman who is rewarded by a turtle for saving her baby, is transported to the dragon's palace at the bottom of the ocean and returns to his village to find that 300 years have passed. This story can be linked to other folktales, such as Sleeping Beauty or Rip van Winkle, with the motif of many years of sleep.

In a context of globalisation and the disappearance of oral transmissions of stories, and a growing ignorance of traditional tales, many stories are therefore published via a medium that offers several advantages: a renewal in the way the story is delivered; and a visual support for children who are immersed in a culture of internet images or for children who are in the process of learning languages in a multilingual context and who are not immersed in the original culture of these stories. Further, the stage allows all performers to free their hands and they can use sign language or makaton when telling the story.

Scaffolding on all these traits, between Christmas and Lunar New Year, the German-as-a-Foreign Language teacher of the K2 kindergarten in GESS planned her lessons to tell the story of the Lunar New Year in five different ways. Her aim was dual: having the students discover the traditional origin of the years associated with an animal over a twelve-year cycle, and enriching the learners' vocabulary, working in particular on the names of animals. She used resources ranging from the most visual to the most linguistic to accompany memorisation and knowledge creation, first using the kamishibai, then a book, then a puzzle story, then drawing a storyboard and finally acting out a playlet. The kamishibai was used as an original visual tool, unknown to children, allowing the introduction of vocabulary while maintaining a high level of attention from the 4–5 years-old students.

How Kamishibai Supports Teaching the Writing Process

Text-based work is only one mode of communication. Kamishibai offers students multiple modes with which to communicate: drawing, oral storytelling, writing, reading, and performing. Within the network of French international schools, since 2015, an annual multilingual kamishibai competition has been offered by Dulala, open to children from kindergarten to secondary grades. Classes enroll to create a kamishibai written in at least 4 languages.

Created in 2009, Dulala³ is an association specialised in multilingual education based in France. It offers an opportunity for “the children [to] become […] language experts, contributing to the collective understanding by bringing in their own knowledge, sometimes acquired outside of school” (Pedley & Stevanato, 2018, p. 47). The children explore in turn, as they go along, all of the narrative roles, in reception as well as in production, orally as well as in writing: spectators, listeners, mediators, authors, scriptwriters, illustrators, readers, and storytellers. Writing/illustrating a kamishibai requires a great deal of teamwork, which requires an effort to listen, to help each other, and to organise.

Before moving on to the creation of their own kamishibai, children take a proactive role in discovering their linguistic environment. Teachers guide them in the awareness of the resources of the classroom, the languages present and the skills of each individual, but also of the presence of other languages in other contexts (the school, the home, the neighbourhood, for example).

A booklet to guide teachers is offered to support them in the four phases of the project: (1) the discovery of the kamishibai and the plurilingual kamishibai, the sensitisation to their linguistic environment; (2) the creation of a plurilingual kamishibai; (3) the preparation of a performance, and (4) the diffusion of the created object. Since stories are a familiar medium for students and allow them to enter into the approach known as "language awareness" in a roundabout way, creating a plurilingual kamishibai does not necessarily need them to speak a multitude of languages, drawing on the knowledge creation principle but also their empathetic imagination. To create a multilingual kamishibai, one can work with the languages present, for example by using the languages of the children, parents or professionals, or languages they don't know. According to the coordinator of the competition in Asia, Mary Leclercq, elementary teacher in the French international school of Shanghai, China, the realisation includes the following steps.

• 1. Discovering the kamishibai

• 2. Making the butai (wood stage)

• 3. Writing stories

• 4. Story-boarding

• 5. Drawing the sheets

• 6. Reading/performing the kamishibai stories

The competition includes a different theme each year: “The world was changing faster than I had imagined” Tom Tirabosco Wonderland, in 2019. Participating groups spend an average of 20 to 30 h on the project. The competition has now seen over 20,000 children participating worldwide since the competition’s inception in 2015. More than 600 children registered in 2019 in Asia–Pacific representing 27 classes across the French international schools of the region.

What IKAJA Members Are Doing: World Kamishibai Day and Translingual Approaches

Since 2018, IKAJA has celebrated its founding date of December 7 as World Kamishibai Day, registering it with the Japan Anniversary Association and urging those in Japan and abroad to aspire to peace; to perform and enjoy kamishibai; and to spread the joy of kyokan, the sharing of feelings to live life together.

On the inaugural World Kamishibai Day, IKAJA held an event at a Tokyo bookstore with performances of kamishibai in Arabic, Dutch, English, Japanese, and Mongolian, seeking to enjoy kyokan that went beyond language (Nozaka, 2019). The idea of a multilingual presentation can also be applied in classrooms, with the audience-participation type is especially effective. When children from different countries are in a classroom, the kamishibai performer can ask them how to say a line in a kamishibai that calls for participation, such as the title line in Grow Grow Grow Bigger! (Matsui, 1983) in their own language(s). When it’s time to call out as group during the kamishibai, everyone present then uses the new language(s). This has proven a helpful method for knowledge creation (for the audience), relationality (between audience members and performer), and empathetic imagination

In addition, IKAJA has created a Mini-Booklet for Performing Kamishibai in seven languages, which is downloadable from the website (IKAJA, 2021), hoping to seed further translingual approaches.

Kamishibai in Libraries: The Example of OpenBook in Cambodia

Verse

Verse With Kamishibai The Butai opens its doors To let the words fly

Haiku by Catherine Cousins, founder of OpenBook, a network of community libraries in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

OpenBook was founded as an NGO in 2002 to give access to books to all, in a safe environment, with a vision of fostering the pleasure of reading and the respect for books and other readers. Free, open 7 days a week, the now five small community libraries welcome mostly children and families in different neighbourhoods of Phnom Penh.

Since 2002, once a week, on Thursday afternoon, librarians offer a storytelling time followed by a creative moment, when patrons can express themselves in drawing. The librarians lead these two activities and read to the children in Khmer language. Depending on the foreigner volunteers available, the storytelling can also take place as bilingual (English, Japanese…). The novelty of the kamishibai when they were first utilised in 2018, raised interest and more patrons visited.

The founder of OpenBook, Catherine Cousins, born and educated in France with a degree in ethology, first taught French in higher education in the USA for 17 years before relocating to Asia. She worked as a teacher, a librarian, and a publisher in Cambodia and now Singapore.

Her interest for observing behaviours as well as knowledge transmission tools brought her to the Japanese art of storytelling called kamishibai. She attended her first kamishibai performance during the 2015 Frankfurt Bookfair at Lirabelle publisher’s booth, and travelled to Japan to train with IKAJA in Tokyo later. She saw the potential use of reading kamishibai inside the libraries in Cambodia.

The OpenBook team have been using kamishibai storytelling in three ways.⁴

• i) to support literacy by sharing the love of stories and by giving access to international literature;

• ii) to give exposure to languages, by honouring the Khmer language and offering activities in foreign languages. As of the time this chapter is written, the collection comprises circa 30 kamishibai which have been translated into Khmer language;

• iii) to develop creativity and public speech in a non-assessed setting. Shy children enjoy inserting their drawings into the butai and come up with their own story in creative ways.

A publishing house was also founded to cater to the needs of publishing original multilingual works and supporting illustrators. The kamishibai was a good match to the mission of the library. It focuses on visual arts, nurturing the love of colour prints and original artworks. In recent Cambodian history, books were destroyed during the “Red Khmer” era (1975–1979). The vast majority of books available were only photocopies. The OpenBook libraries are committed to be places where patrons play, read, and have access to original colour prints. No photocopied versions are allowed on the shelves. Hence, children are supported to develop not only a love for curated beautiful stories, but also encouraged to develop their creative mind, in expressing themselves orally and in drawing. Papers and coloured pencils are provided and children enjoy drawing after the story. Some insert their single drawing in the stage and tell their own story, which shows the power of knowledge creation supported by the initial storytelling. The second focus consists of building a collection in translated Khmer language and foreign languages. The large size of the kamishibai makes it more appropriate to large audiences and allows to print up to four languages at the back of a sheet. With clear large illustrations and no words to read, the kamishibai organically draws attention to the stage of the butai. Its doors that open and close at the beginning and the end, symbolically draw the audience in and out, creating a strong sense of relationality. As highlighted by Catherine during her interview with the authors in March 2021, the doors represent the opening of the mind of the children ready to go into the unknown of a story.

The power of kamishibai lies in its ability to bring children of all ages together to socialise and share a communal experience, which at OpenBook is further enhanced by removing the academic context and pressure of the school context and allowing families to enjoy the experience of kyokan and relationality.

Kamishibai Supporting Bilingualism at the German European School of Singapore (GESS) Preschool, Singapore

In the particular context of the bilingual preschool at GESS, bilingual kamishibai storytelling has been successfully used for the storytelling principles of relationality and responsiveness. In this non-profit inclusive school, the 300 children from 18-month-old through 6-year-old are exposed to English and German, and can enrol regardless of their language skills in both languages and at any time of the school year. In other words, homeroom teachers and specialists are confronted on a daily basis with the double challenge of levels of comprehension that vary from zero to 100 from one child to another, and of working several times a year on the cohesion of their class by integrating the double movement of departing and arriving children in the year. As the librarian speaks English, the bilingual kamishibai sessions are with the German-speaking co-teacher, the German teacher from the language department or a Mystery Guest, as well as the main school.

In a kamishibai bilingual storytelling lesson, the magic kamishibai theatre box is hidden and uncovered, and the children are encouraged to understand the mechanism of the scrolling sheets. The two languages are shared on an equal footing. The narration is theatricalised with props, body language, and sounds for children who do not yet have the tools of auditory linguistic comprehension. Kamishibai storytelling ensures repetition of the message, through two linguistic codes read or re-transcribed against the same visual code. The adaptation of the content to the audience in the moment is facilitated, by allowing children to play with rhythm (slowing down the narration for example, or extending pauses), the visual cues that are very visible on the large sheets, and the variation in the times of silence.

The dramatisation of kamishibai can be more or less elaborate. Narration as presented by the members of IKAJA is preferred to dramatisation. However, the Japanese language is extraordinarily rich in onomatopoeia to add readily expression to the story narration. In educational contexts, it is desirable to reinforce the dramatisation to facilitate access to meaning for young audiences, for example, by adding sound effects, background music, lighting, decorating the kamishibai or even providing props.

Conclusion

Kamishibai storytelling encourages listening, creation, and cooperation. The kyokan effect of sharing emotions in the audience acts as a powerful bond in a class. Additionally, the slow mechanics of the sheets sliding in and out of a stage and the large size of images facilitate focus. By using a stage instead of holding a book, it allows the storyteller (or performer) to face the children and encourage communication.

Kamishibai is a multifaceted educational resource ideal for use during group settings, such as nurseries, pre-schools, and library story times, as well as well suited for multilingual settings. The large sheets can be used to reveal the story in a variety of ways, adding drama and intrigue, which allow a large group or an entire class to enjoy the story together. We invite you to explore the Japanese story and paper art tradition, kamishibai for its great capacity to pedagogically attend to multiple literacies—visual, oral, gestural, and written, through kyokan.

Practical Suggestions

Dont’s:

• Do not tell a kamishibai without the stage, unless the story was meant for (Heave-ho⁵).

• Do not copy the pages of a picture book to insert in the butai. In addition to being a violation of copyright, it does not work (that’s how birds fly backwards as the movement on the page can be opposite to the sliding-out direction).

Do’s:

• Play with the butai, practice the sliding in and out, action movements. Create a song or a sentence to begin and end (the ending could be “kamishi-bybye”). Take some time to intimately know the art and the text of the kamishibai.

• Read The Kamishibai Man (Say, 2005) to share how kamishibai started in Japan.

• Read How to Perform Kamishibai Q&A (Matsui et al., 2008) to know about the performance based on the theory.

• Performing real kamishibai helps you to understand what kamishibai is.

• Writing and illustrating one kamishibai is also a good way to capture its essence.