SUGISAKAMASANORI

Journal of Advances in Artificial Life Robotics
Vol. 1(3); December (2020), pp. 112–115
ON LINE ISSN 2435-8061; ISSN-L 2435-8061
https://alife-robotics.org/jallr.html

Research Article

The IoT Solution to Archive and Play the Digital Library ofKamishibai
Motohide Yoshimura, Ayumi Eikawa

Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Information Systems, University of Nagasaki, Siebold Campus 1-1-1 Manabino, Nagayo-cho,Nishi-Sonogi-gun, Nagasaki 851-2195, Japan

ARTICLE INFO
Article History
Received 23 October 2019
Accepted 02 August 2020
Keywords
Kamishibai
Japanese picture story showABSTRACT

We innovate an IoT solution to archive and play the digital library of Kamishibai. Kamishibai isa form of Japanese picture story show. The solution has two aspects. The one is a regional
vitalization to know cultural history of the residential area, and the other is an educational platform
to design the programming education by using NFC device. In this paper, we report theexperimental results to build a display and sound system to play the digital library of Kamishibai.

© 2022 The Author. Published by Sugisaka Masanori at ALife Robotics Corporation Ltd.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Regional vitalization
Programming education
IoT solution
Near field communicationdelivered, and the tourist information such as a time tableof the cable car and manners of national park usage, etc.
is shown at the stations by using digital signage [3]. At
Hiroshima City in Hiroshima Prefecture, the peace
tourism around the Atomic Bomb Dome and Peace
Memorial Park is promoted, so that the number of foreign
tourists has been increasing year by year, since when
Barack Obama has visited at the Peace Memorial Park.
In that case, the fact that almost half of them return tocities such as Kobe City, Osaka City, and Kyoto City ona day trip is came out according to an analysis of tourist
information of Hiroshima Free Wi-Fi users. Therefore, around trip to various areas in Hiroshima Prefecture suchas Miyajima island, Kure City, and Edajima City, etc. isplanned to encourage tourists to stay in the prefecture [4].
Especially, through the stamp rally such as “Hiroshima
Red Passport” is held from August 31st to December
25th, 2019. Stamp rally means going to differentlocations to collect stamps on a card. If you take part in
the stamp rally, you can win prizes according to the1. Introduction
Advances in information and communication
technology have certainly improved the convenience ofour lives. The household ownership ratio for smartphones
such as iPhone and Android is 79.2%, and the grand totalof mobile device ownership ratio is 95.7%. Overall, thepercentage of Internet users from 13 to 59 years oldexceeds 93% [1]. The role of Information
Communication Technology (ICT) in tourism has
become very important for the countryside vitalization.
Here are some examples. At Tateyama-cho in Toyama
Prefecture, various type of promotion are moved aheadfor the global branding of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine
Route, in which mountains at altitude of 3,000m are highup [2]. In the Murodo Area located at the altitude 2,450m,
an optical fiber cable has been laid and Wi-Fi Internet
access become more convenient for the tourist. Live feedat the gazebo of Kurobe Dam by using web camera isCorresponding author’s E-mail: yxsimura@sun.ac.jp, bs116004@sun.ac.jp URL: http://sun.ac.jp/112

Omihachiman City at Shiga Prefecture, the guides belong
to tourism association produce and play Kamishibai.
They conducts demonstrations of Kamishibai atelementary schools, so that the students can acquire
knowledge of Omihachiman's history such as culture,planning town, and Omi merchants [9]. Kamishibai isutilized in programming workshops for junior highschool students. In the workshops, the students create
Kamishibai by using Scratch, a programming language[10]. In this study, we design a framework of traditional
culture and ICT by blending Kamishibai and IoT, andbuild a display and sound system of Kamishibai
experimentally. We report the experimental results tobuild a display and sound system to play the digital
library of Kamishibai.
In Section 2, we describe the outline of the display
and sound system of Kamishibai, and in Section 3, report
the experimental results to build the system. In Section 4,
we describe the conclusion.

number of stamps you collect! [5] In Nagasaki City atNagasaki Prefecture, the “Miracle Nagasaki Project” isbeing promoted to explore further appeal points ofNagasaki City and consider a new style of tourism, andthe Wi-Fi Internet service has been provided to improvethe convenience of tourists [6]. As an approach to barrierfree access to sightseeing facilities and spots, barrier-free
information such as sidewalks (road steps, obstacles, etc.)
is automatically collected based on the various sensors
attached to a general wheelchair. The collected
information is visualized on images and maps as thebarrier-free street view web application [7],[8].
Though these tourism services based on ICT will bean urgent issue in Japan, where the Tokyo Olympics areclose at hand, the perspective after the Tokyo Olympics
is also important. Making the further leap forward as thetourism-oriented country, it is important to create new
tourism services based on flexible thinking. Considering
tourism services as “things”, users are “tourists”, andtourism that users enjoy is “experiences”. Tourism
functions in case that “things”, “tourists”, and“experiences” engage together, and tourism cannot
uphold without the interaction between “things”,“tourists”, and “experiences”. Even in view of the current
state of community-based new tourism, it is obvious thatnew kinds of tourism results from the regional activity.
Tourism cannot be uphold without vitalizing the regionalcommunity.
Now, let's get into the main subject in this paper.
What is the most important element among “things”,“tourists”, and “experiences”? It is perfectly obvious.
The answer is “tourists”. Tourists use “things” and obtain“experiences”, and share “experiences” with another.
Tourism must be centered on tourists. There are threeessence for creating a new community-based tourism.
The first is the innovation in tourism. The second is thesustainability in tourism. The last is the educationalenhancement in regional community. Here, we make anemphasis on the last, and plan to organize a workshop
which enhances the awareness of regional culture. How
can we enhance the awareness of regional culture? Isn't
it "accumulation of regional culture", "learning ofregional culture", and "creation of new values"? In thispaper, we apply Kamishibai to accumulating and learningof regional culture, and employ ICT to create new values.
Kamishibai is a form of Japanese traditional picture story
show and is a kind of play that a performer tells story
while switching several sheets of pictures. In

2. Display and Sound System of Kamishibai
2.1. What is Kamishibai?
Kamishibai is a form of Japanese traditional picture
story show. The beginning of Kamishibai is said to be a
performance by the unemployed people in parks and atstreet corners where the children gathers during World
Depression in 1929. Unemployed people set a miniature
stage-like device on a carrier of bicycle and tells the story
by switching the sheets of pictures. They sell the cheap
candy in order to gather children. The performer
communicates with children to create a lively atmosphere.
The impeccable interval of switching pictures deepens
the concentration in the story. Kamishibai is getting
noticed as an educational tool for children.
2.2 Development Environment of Display andSound System
In our system, Kamishibai consists of several sheetsof picture made by using drawing tools, and they areplaced on a Web server. Each picture is coded as a website by using HTML5 and is displayed on a monitor byswitching each NFC tag in which URL information ofeach picture is written. In this study, we made each sheetof picture by using free illustrations. The story ofKamishibai is “Momotaro”, famous Japanese fairy tales.
Our “Momotaro” consists of 12 sheets of pictures, so thatthe numbers of NFC tags to switch each sheet of pictures113

is 12. We also construct sound system by using raspberrypi 3 Model B and the "PaSoRi" RC-S380/S. NFC tag has
a unique ID for every tag, we read and identify the ID,
make sounds according to the picture story. The code toread and identify ID is written in Python.

Cardboard

Runner

NFC tag

2.3 Architecture of Display and Sound System
We explain the architecture of display and soundsystem to play the digital library of Kamishibai in Fig.1.

Drawing paper

Kamishibai
on a Web server

Fig. 3: Reverse Side of Display System.
Web server

3. Experimental Results to Build Display andSound System
3.1. Positional Relationship between NFC tag and
NFC Reader

NFC tags
switching
Kamishibai

3.1.1. Thickness of Cardboard
Between NFC tag and NFC reader, there is a
cardboard and its thickness is 412g/m2. We check
whether read error is occurred or not according to thecardboard. We repeat the three sets of sliding 12 sheetsof drawing paper, there is no read error and we canperform the full story of “Momotaro” by three times.

Display device

Fig. 1: Architecture of Display System.
Kamishibai consists of several sheets of picture on aWeb server and is displayed on a device by switching theNFC tags in which URL information of each picture iswritten.
Here we show the observe side of display system inFig.2 and the reverse side of display system in Fig.3. As
shown in Fig.2, we use android device to display
Kamishibai and the device is affixed to cardboard withdouble-sided tape.

3.1.2. Position of NFC tag against NFC Reader
Fig.4 shows a cross-sectional view from left sid
CardboardObserve
sideCardboardAndroid

RunnerReverseside

NFC tags oneach drawing
paper
Drawing papers
RunnerAndroid

Fig.4: A Cross-sectional View from Left Side
In case that the position of the NFC reader of theandroid device and the position of the NFC tags is fully
overlapped in line as to the performer’s eye, error ratio isat 42% through sliding 12 sheets of drawing papers. In

Fig. 2: Observe Side of Display System.

114

6. Nihon Unisys, Ltd. MIRACLE NAGASAKI PROJECT,
Retrieved December 19th, 2019, from the website (inJapanese).
7. Chisato Miura, et.al., Proposal of Slope Information
Provision Method for Barrier Free Street View System,
The IPSJ Transactions on Consumer Devices and Systems,
vol.9, no.1, pp.11-21, 2019 (in Japanese).
8. Kenichi Arai, et.al., Social Barrier-free Street View
System, The Journal of Information Processing, vol.60,no.3, pp.821-829, 2019 (in Japanese).
9. Association of tourism volunteer guide of Omihachiman,
Hidetsugu San to Omihachiman, Retrieved December19th, 2019, from the website (in Japanese).
10. Motoyuki Ozeki, Practice and Trends of Computer
Programming Workshop for Junior High School Students,The Bulletin of Mukogawa Women ’ s University.
Humanities and Social Sciences, vol.65，pp.37-44, 2017
(in Japanese).

case that NFC tags are affixed at the position horizontally
2.3cm to the left, error ratio is at 0% through sliding 12
sheets of drawing papers.
3.2. Making Sound by Unique ID of NFC tag
We also construct sound system by using raspberrypi 3 Model B and the "PaSoRi" RC-S380/S. NFC tag has
an unique ID for each tag, we read and identify the unique
ID of each tag, make 12 kinds of sound effect according
to the story of “Momotaro”, such as sounds of a peachflowing on a river, peach breaking, and so on. Fig.5
shows our sound system. At the Kamishibai performance,
we can slide each sheet of drawing paper by right hand,and can make sound effect according to the story by left
hand.

Authors Introduction
Dr. Motohide Yoshimura
He is an Associate Professor of
Faculty of Information Systems at
University of Nagasaki in Japan.
He received his Dr. of Eng. degreein Graduate School of Engineeringat Tokushima University in 1999.
His research interests is town
planning and design by using IoT,
AI, and so on.

Fig.5: Sound System
4. Conclusion
We innovate an IoT solution to archive and show thedigital library of Kamishibai. In this study, we
experimentally build the display system and soundsystem to show the digital library of Kamishibai. By
using this system, we can perform Kamishibai without
printing the sheets of pictures.

Ms. Ayumi Eikawa

References
1. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, WHITE
PAPER Information and Communications in Japan, 2019
(in Japanese).
2. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corporation, Case
Study in ICT Applications, Retrieved December 19th,
2019, from the website (in Japanese).
3. Sasunaka Tsushin Kogyo Inc., Case Study in ICT
Applications, Retrieved December 19th, 2019, from thewebsite (in Japanese).
4. Hiroshima Convention Bureau, Hirotabi, Retrieved
December 19th, 2019, from the website (in Japanese).
5. RCC Bunka Center Inc. 2019 Hiroshima Red Passport,Retrieved December 19th, 2019, from the website (inJapanese).

115

She received her Bachelor’s degreeof Science in Information Systemsat University of Nagasaki. Her
interest is vitalization of regional
community through educational
workshop by using multimedia
contents with IoT and AI.