ABSTRACTSAND
BIOGRAPHIES

11 MAY 2018

SECTION II: KAMISHIBAI AND ITS POSSIBILITIES FOR PERSONAL GROWTH,IN EDUCATION, SOCIAL INTERVENTION AND THERAPY

Etsuko Nozaka
Development of IKAJA: Kamishibai for a Peaceful Society
Kamishibai originated in Japan in the 1930s. The International Kamishibai Association of Japan(IKAJA), which we founded in 2001, recognized kamishibai as a part of Japan’s unique cultural
heritage and wanted it to be better known in the world. That’s why IKAJA established asecretariat to address potential members outside Japan. IKAJA has now become the largest
kamishibai organization in the world with more than 800 members. 300 of those members
are from 47 different countries. Our aim is to foster communication about kamishibaithroughout the world and to promote the study of kamishibai from a cultural perspective,
thereby learning from each other and establishing kamishibai as a world-wide art. It is
important to create good kamishibai works, but it is equally important to think about
performing it. The distinctive key feature of kamishibai, which is different from picture
books, is creating kyokan (shared feelings) among the members of the audience on the spot.
Picture books foster a sense of individuality, while kamishibai stories raise a sense of kyokan.
Both are important and indispensable for being human. We have been organising seminars,
lectures and workshops for 16 years in European and Asian countries to share ourknowledge about kamishibai through performances and explanations.
While trying to acquaint the people around the world with the fun of kamishibai, we
received feedback from various sources. Madame Geneviève Patte, the honorary presidentof La Petite Bibliothèque Ronde in France, described the encounter with IKAJA and its
selected kamishibai stories as “an encounter with a culture that respects peace,” forexample. Such communications with countries outside Japan encouraged us to advocate theuniversal values of kamishibai. For the audience, it is as if the world of the kamishibai story
spreads out of the theatre into the real space. The audience in that space shares their
feelings and experiences the story as their own world. Kamishibai opens up people’s minds
and makes them receptive to empathy. That’s why kamishibai performances with goodstories and good illustrations can bridge the differences between us all: children, adults,
people with and without disabilities, immigrants, prisoners, victims of disasters... and perhaps
friends and enemies. We believe kamishibai is a cultural asset that enables us to share thefeeling that we are happy living here together. In my presentation, I will report several
examples which demonstrate the true value of kamishibai, based on the “How to Perform
Kamishibai Q&A”.
Etsuko Nozaka was born in 1959. She majored in English literature at the Waseda
University in Tokyo. She used to work for a literary agency to introduce Japanese literaturein the world. After living in the Netherlands and France for five years, she became a
productive translator of Dutch and English children’s literature. She introduced many writers
and illustrators such as Dick Bruna, Max Velthuijs, Marjolijn Hof, and Guus Kuijer (Astrid
Lindgren Memorial Award winner) to Japanese readers. In 2003 the 50th Sankei Children’sBook Award Grand Prix was awarded to the work of her translation “Ojiichan wasurenaiyo(Een opa om nooit te vergeten)”.
In 2016 she translated Truus Matti’s Mr. Orange, which had received the Batchelder Awardof American Library Association, from original Dutch into Japanese. She is not only a longtime board member of the Japanese Board on Books for Young People (JBBY) but also a
leading member of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA) since its
establishment in 2001. She frequently gives lectures on kamishibai in various venues in EU2and Asian countries. In 2012 she coordinated the first European Kamishibai Meeting at
UNESCO in cooperation with a French library La Petite Bibliothèque Ronde. Etsuko also writes
texts for picture book as well as kamishibai. Her Kind Monster Wapper (illustrated by Nana
Furiya) received the Gozan Encouraging Prize in 2009. She is now a part-time lecturer at theTokyo Seitoku University, Aoyama Women’s Junior College, and Sophia University in Tokyo,
as well as an international supervisor of IKAJA.
Robert Eisenstadt
Kamishibai in America
Margaret and I arrived in Tokyo, Japan, in late summer of 1969. Our destination however,was much farther north, in Hokkaido and the northernmost city of Japan, Wakkanai. I would
be there working as part of the USAF/JASDF Air Station; Margaret was the Air Station’s
kindergarten teacher, with both a morning and an afternoon class.
It was there that she first “discovered” kamishibai and the many wonderful Japanese folktales
for children. She began to collect them, knowing that they would be wonderful as well for
the New York City children she would be teaching when it was time for us to return to
New York City. She was right – the children in NYC were fascinated by them! They loved
both listening to kamishibai, discussing them and making their own. They also loved copying
down Japanese words, then asking what they said. The parents were thrilled that thechildren were learning about a different part of the world.
Other teachers began asking about kamishibai. Margaret, Donna Tamaki, a JapaneseAmerican friend from graduate school at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and I
began working on making kamishibai more available about twenty years later, in 1993.
Kamishibai for Kids was formed and, with the help of Sakai-san at Doshinsha Publishing, we
obtained a much wider age-range of kamishibai stories. Each kamishibai is accompanied by aTeacher’s Guide which both explains the cultural context of the story and suggests questions
for teachers to ask the children about the story.
To promote kamishibai in America, Margaret and I have attended and talked at national andregional conferences for teachers and librarians throughout the United States. Kamishibai
have received a warm reception from teachers and children everywhere they have beenused. Kamishibai for Kids has distributed kamishibai in all 50 states and Canada. The
traditional kamishibai stage, hyoshigi, and a Japanese children’s CD/songbook are alsoavailable to those who choose.
But we have just scratched the surface of what could be a major expansion in the use andinfluence of kamishibai in North America. One reason I am attending this Symposium is tothank Sakai-san for getting us started to spread the knowledge and joy of kamishibai in the
United States and to learn from all of you how we can do an even better job of spreading
the word about the marvellous educational and cultural education potential of these picturecard stories.
Robert (Bob) Eisenstadt is a retired corporate/regulatory lawyer living in New York City.
His wife is Margaret G. Eisenstadt, the Sole Proprietor of Kamishibai for Kids.
Bob was born in 1941 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. He is a graduate of Stamford HighSchool, Princeton University (cum laude in Philosophy) and Columbia Law School. He served
four years as a legal officer (Judge Advocate) in the United States Air Force - two years in
Laredo, Texas (on the Mexican border) and two years in Wakkanai, Hokkaido, Japan, where
he was the Air Force liaison officer to the local Japanese community.

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Following his military service, Bob returned to New York City to practice law. His legal
specialty was contracts law, focusing on the documentation of complex, financially structured
insurance and reinsurance transactions. He retired in 2002.
Bob has been an active supporter of civil rights and environmental policy organizations in the
United States. He has played a lot of basketball and tennis, run nine marathons and currently
walks three miles a day.
Bob is currently the Class Agent for the Princeton Class of 1963 and has won several awards
for his fundraising efforts on behalf of Princeton. He and his wife Margaret have beenmarried for over 50 years, live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City andare pleased to be a part of the kamishibai community.
Vid Sever
The Interactive Kamishibai for Children
According to Dr. Zdenka Zalokar Divjak, stories have power over us as their contents
resonate with our personality, almost regardless of age. They lead us to understanding
ourselves and others. In a child’s world, stories help children in the budding progress ofdiscerning right from wrong, darkness from light. The precious resolutions stories offer
often provide courage for the timid, compassion for the neglected, and strength for theweak.
In his essay, Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim states that a story is successful when thechildren in the audience are entertained, their curiosity piqued, their imagination awakened.
Kamishibai is a secret all by itself; only when the doors are unlatched and opened do we geta glimpse of what is about to happen – it is the first step of observing, exploring anddiscovering a completely new experience.
Telling a story, says Zalokar Divjak, is much more effective than just reading it, as the eye
contact with the audience is regarded to be the most successful and impactful form ofconnecting with the audience. The storyteller is free to tell his tales, which are notmemorized, but assimilated. The storytelling is spontaneous and natural, allowing him tocreate an atmosphere appropriate for the children of the audience, weaving words thatenable a greater connection with the listeners.
When the empathy between the storyteller and the listener is at its peak, we’re relaxedenough to interact, so the children become part of the story. They might yell with me (or atme), or whisper, or sing. They chirp and bark and howl. They have danced, clapped, done
kung-fu. They chatter about the story excitedly, after. But it is not my story anymore. All ofus made it happen.
It is that feeling of interactivity that allows me to do more with my stories. Kamishibai can beused for so much more than just reading to children. It allows us to engage more of theirsenses, as the stories have pictures they can observe, sounds to listen to and repeat, aperformance they can imitate. I like to engage their entire beings . When I open my ‘magicalbox,’ it is not because there is a story I need to let out – it is because there is an audience
waiting to be invited inside.
Vid Sever first came into contact with kamishibai while studying Japanology at the Facultyof Arts in Ljubljana. The first time he performed, he contracted a fever – he got sick, yes, but
4also inspired by the simplicity of the wooden frame and the depth of the stories it could help
weave. His storytelling style borrows heavily from his background of street andimprovisational theatre – communicating with the audience, making stuff up on the spot, anda healthy amount of energetic showmanship all help a story truly come alive. He has
performed at various events and festivals, but lately his work in education inspires him totour various schools, kindergartens and other educational facilities, where he does his best
to present the children with a different way of experiencing storytelling.
Maki Nakaya Sommet (And Moritz Sommet)
An Adaptation of Kamishibai as an Educational Kit for Reproductive Health in India
This paper presents an ongoing project that uses kamishibai to improve reproductive healtheducation in India. The educational kit resulting from the project alters the conventional
form of kamishibai to adapt it to local conditions and make it easier to use, allowing even
untrained persons to teach about this complex theme in an objective and enjoyable way.
Sexual education in India is highly stigmatized and faces a lack of knowledge and willingness
to learn as well as a general sense of awkwardness stemming from a culture in which thissubject is regarded as a taboo. Parents and politicians are worried that reproductive healtheducation means teaching children how to have sex and forcing them to become adults
prematurely. Meanwhile, children’s need for information is satisfied through often unreliable
sources such as friends, siblings and the Internet.
During my six-month stay in Chennai, India, I created an educational program centredaround kamishibai that aims to address these issues. The kit was developed in collaboration
with local teenagers and sexual education specialists and tested in front of 70 middle- andhigh school students who had not formerly received any sexual education.
The potential of kamishibai to engage cultural difficulties lies in its unique mode ofrepresentation: it reduces the awkwardness of talking about sexual topics by allowing bothteachers and students to focus on pictures and narratives instead of each other. Since theminimum requirement to be a performer is only the ability to read, it can even be used byuninformed teachers to educate children about complex issues ranging from human anatomy
to sexual consent and gender equality.
The content was carefully developed to render the information about reproductive health as
objectively as possible, offering children a new perspective on sexuality through the eyes ofanimal characters. As animals, these characters do not feel awkward talking about humansexuality and are in a position to question human behaviour that is rooted in prejudice anddiscrimination from an outsider perspective.
Since kamishibai is not well known in India, I needed to adapt its physical form to reduce
both manufacturing costs and difficulty of use. Kamishibai with its physical transportability
has the potential to be easily shared among neighbouring schools. The content of the plays
was conceived as part of a transmedial product series that can potentially include picture
books, online videos, downloadable kamishibai for individual schools, and other media.
Maki Nakaya Sommet, Product Designer, was born in Tokyo in 1986, She has lived andworked in Germany and Switzerland since age 20. Originally trained as a kitchen planner, she
5graduated with a B.A. in Industrial and Product Design from the Swiss art school ECAL
(École cantonale d'art de Lausanne). In the autumn of 2016, she organized the exhibition»Re-Importation« in Tokyo with four other Japanese graduates from the same school. Since
2018, she holds a post as an industrial designer for the Swiss kitchen tools manufacturer
Kuhn Rikon while also working on several projects as an independent designer. The project
presentend at this symposium originated in a six-month internship for an international design
agency in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, in 2017.
Nataša Konc Lorenzutti
When Words Fly out of the Cage
An addict only pulls away from his drug of choice after his loved ones, who often live withhim, force him to do so. When everyone leaves him and nobody trusts him anymore, he
only has two options: to finally self-destruct or rise from hell. When he decides on such aclimbing endeavour, he faces risks at every handhold. He could quite easily slide back to thebottom. Each time he does, it is more difficult to get up again. This is why I have nothing but
deep respect for every addict who has faced such a decision. The realization of how many
years he had spent drowning in intoxication, how much youth, opportunity, and knowledge
has passed him by, must be horribly painful – and yet the former addict persists in sobriety,conforms to the rules of his community, works menial jobs, and begins again where he had
been cut off years ago. For three years now, I have been a mentor in the “Integrate andactivate” (Vključujemo in aktiviramo) movement for vulnerable groups, financed by theEuropean Social Fund and coordinated by the Slovenian Book Agency (Javna agencija zaknjigo RS). In 2017, I led literary activities in a community for addicts with additional mental
health problems called the “Therapeutic community Pelikan” (Terapevtska skupnost Pelikan),which functions under the Slovenian Karitas. Before we began, I asked myself how thesepeople who are recovering from their addiction to illegal drugs will even react to me
bringing them books and wanting to talk about them. And what would they say to mysuggestion that they should write? Their will to learn, study, and create mostly began towane when they were fifteen or sixteen years old, when they started neglecting school andfinally drowned in a complete rejection of their growth. They welcomed me kindly, evenwith a degree of curiosity that came as a pleasant surprise. I tried to be as relaxed as I could
manage, so I wouldn’t come across as haughty but rather equal to their views. I work as ahigh school teacher (apart from being partly freelance), but I stepped out of my teacher’s
shoes before I entered their domain. I presented myself differently than I do with my firstyear students, from the other side. Not from the outside, passing all my roles, but rather
from the inside, preceding my roles. With the painter and illustrator Peter Škerl, who was
assigned to our group as the mentor for illustration (the main mentor, the writer, performs
80 hours of activities, while the mentor for illustration does 10), we formed the plan of the
training to focus on story creation that would be presented through the art of kamishibai. I
did not know that genre before. But since the project allows the mentor to bring guests(both artists and experts) into the group’s activities, I invited people who would help us
learn about kamishibai and also create it: Jure Engelsberger, Jelena Sitar-Cvetko, and Igor
Cvetko. Through various approaches to creating the stories, then drawings (paintings), andre-writing stories that were somewhat changed by the images, we prepared short kamishibai
products that were nothing short of miraculous. Almost all of the project participants firstclaimed that they wouldn’t perform because they didn’t have the skill or the will to do so,that they suffered from stage fright… In the end, everyone who prepared a kamishibai story
also performed – every performance was shocking because none of them were burdened by
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knowledge, techniques, or other factors that would have veiled their show. The stories flew
out of them like birds from a cage after they’d been locked in for a long time. It turned outthat none of the bids had broken wings. I will speak about this process in my presentation at
the symposium.
Nataša Konc Lorenzutti (born in 1970) graduated from the Academy of Theatre, Radio,
Film and Television in Ljubljana, at the Department for Stage Acting and the Artistic Word,
where she was awarded the Faculty Prešeren Prize for her role of Ophelia in 1993. In 2010,
she obtained a MA from the Chair of the Artistic Word with professor Aleš Valič. Between
1994 and 1999 she worked as an actor in two Slovenian professional theatres, but started
focusing on literature in 1999. She has since published sixteen fiction works for children andyouth and four adult works. Her work has been nominated for the Original Slovenian
Picture Book (izvirna slovenska slikanica) and Blue Bird (modra ptica) awards, and threetimes for the Desetnica and Večernica awards. Her adult prose earned her two awards from
Mladika in Trieste. In 2017, she received the Golden Pear award for the best original
children’s book (priznanje Zlata hruška za najboljše izvirno mladinsko delo) for her work Kdo
je danes glavni, as well as the Svetlobnica award for her novel Bližina daljave.
Apart from being an author, she has been teaching theatre subjects at the artistic
department of the Nova Gorica High School (Gimnazija Nova Gorica) for eleven years. She
helps her students perform her original theatre works as well as theatre retellings of thenovels that are the subject of Matura essays. Almost every year, her students perform at theTransgenerations festival (festival Transgeneracije) in Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana.
For three years, she has been a mentor for literary activity in the “Integrate and Activate”(Vključujemo in aktiviramo) project for vulnerable social groups, which is financed by theEuropean Social Fund and coordinated by the Slovenian Book Agency (Javna agencija zaknjigo RS). In 2017 she cooperated with the illustrator Peter Škerl to carry out a project ofstorytelling through kamishibai theatre with a group of addicts.

Aksinja Kermauner, Jerca Cvetko and Jure Engelsberger
Kamishibai as a Means of Expression for People with Intellectual Disability
People with intellectual disability (ID) are defined as people with a lower or a specific level ofintelligence, lack of skills, or impaired cognitive, speech-related, motoric or social abilities.
Their thought process is concrete and many of them never reach abstract thinking. Theirspeech is usually poorly developed. Persons with ID have a limited or non-existentimagination. We want to surpass all the above by introducing kamishibai theatre to persons
with mild, moderate and severe ID. According to Krajnčan, artistic, musical and culturalareas in particular contain numerous experiential, pedagogical-developmental and design
opportunities for people with ID. The process of getting familiar with kamishibai, its creationand staging opens up new spheres of thinking and activity. Each of kamishibai’s phases thus
includes different cognitive processes and allows for each person’s individual expression
while giving creative freedom within a concrete goal (kamishibai as a product and a play).
Kamishibai presents an easier understanding of the story as the narrative is reinforced byimages (key scenes are illustrated) and the narrator’s oral interpretation. The illustrations
are helpful when summarizing the content of the text as well. Creating one’s own kamishibai
opens up a new palette of means of expression. Apart from choosing any content an
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individual wishes to share with others, there are also different artistic techniques to choose
from (drawing, painting, collage, photography, etc.). The final product is always permeated by
the author’s (or group’s) character and calls for an artistic or oral presentation. Kamishibai
can also function as a group project for those who are not able to express themselves
artistically or orally and would wish to follow and interpret the story in a different way, forexample through sound or movement. This creative freedom and a wide variety of means ofexpression within kamishibai are especially welcome when working with persons with ID,
providing a framework for every individual’s characteristics and expressions. Active
participation, arranging the staging, and the verbal and musical performance of kamishibai
stimulate people with ID to learn through various senses and motivate them through thefeeling of success they experience from the audience’s reaction. Kamishibai stimulates
psychosocial processes, which contribute toward identity building, social competence andempathy. That way, an individual’s experiencing and thinking is changed, affecting their
behaviour as well.
Dr. Aksinja Kermauner (b. 1956, Ljubljana, Slovenia) is by profession a teacher of visually
impaired, as well as an art and a Slovene language professor. She taught at the Institute for
Blind and Partially Sighted Children in Ljubljana for 26 years. She now teaches methods ofwork with blind and partially sighted children at the Faculty of Education, University of
Primorska. She has written numerous articles, several musicals, comedies, and 26 books forchildren, youth and adults. One of these, the novel for teenagers Berenikini kodri (Berenica's
Curls), was included in the collection White Ravens 2008 of the International Youth Libraryin Munich. Her books What colour is the darkness, first Slovene tactile picture-book
Snowflower, and Spaghetti Joe Goes Into the Wide World were included in the collection of
Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities, which is compiled every other year by
the IBBY Documentation Centre of Books for Disabled Young People (1997, 2005 and2011). She is the president of the Youth Section of the Slovene Writers' Association and thevice president of Special Education Association of Slovenia.
Jerca Cvetko holds a BA in Pedagogy and is a self-employed cultural worker as a kamishibai
theatre performer. She has worked with kamishibai both in practical and research capacity
since 2014. She performs kamishibai at cultural events in Slovenia and abroad, andresearches its use in pedagogy and therapy. She is a member of IKAJA (the International
Kamishibai Association of Japan) and the vice-president of the Slovenian Kamishibai
Association.
Jure Engelsberger (born in 1977) holds a BA in Design and Illustration. He has always
drawn from his imagination. Because he played in various bands, he used to design numerous
concert posters and album art. In the past couple of years he has begun to focus on
illustrating children’s and young adult literature, as well as creating in the sphere ofkamishibai theatre. He also writes original stories for kamishibai and illustrates them. His
work has earned him several awards and prizes.
Jerca Cvetko and Jure Engelsberger work both individually and as a team – they createkamishibai under the name of “Atelje Slikovedke.” They are the authors of numerous
kamishibai – both original stories and kamishibai retellings of folk tales and poetry. Theirperformances are often accompanied by music or altogether in musical form. They perform
for adults (Stories and poetry with images and music/Zgodbe in poezija ob slikah in glasbi) andchildren. They organize workshops and seminars on kamishibai theatre and the artistic
production involved in making one – they are also the authors of the manual The Artistic
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Production of Kamishibai (Likovna izdelava kamišibaja). Their pedagogical programme called The
Kamishibai Package (Kamišibaj paket) was awarded a badge of quality by being included on theGolden Wand (Zlata paličica) website. In 2014, they received a Special Award from theexpert jury for original contribution in spreading the art of kamishibai. In 2015, 2016 and2017 they were awarded the Golden Kamishibai Grand Prix at the Slovenian Festival ofKamishibai Theatre.
Carmen Aldama Jiménez
Kamishibai Workshop. The Magic of Creating and Telling Stories with Kamishibai
The distinctiveness of our work with kamishibai is our special approach to the kamishibai
workshop. During the workshop, attendants become kamishibai creators and performers.
As kamishibai is a technique that tells stories through texts and images, and both text andimages have to express the same story at the same time – in each slide both have tocommunicate the same ideas. In our proposal we profit from the great opportunity ofworking didactically with texts and images in an integrated way. And we firmly support theidea of considering kamishibai as a narrative genre in itself.
The theoretical frame in which our work is done is Language Project Working. The aim of theworkshop – create a kamishibai and learn to perform it – gives sense to all the activities thatare planned in order to acquire the necessary abilities that will lead to the final result. The
learning takes place during the entire production process in an interactive way – throughcollaborative learning.
All abilities related to communication skills are developed in the workshop: active listening
and public speaking, reading stories and performing kamishibai writing texts for kamishibai,
understanding images and communicating through them, gestural communication, etc. We
point out especially our work with images, so scarce in school curriculums nowadays.
Other aspects worth highlighting that also worked in the workshop are: enhance creativity
both in texts and images, participate and collaborate in the cultural environment, encourage
responsibility towards the commitments undertaken, the effort of a job well done…
This experience facilitates the integration of multiple learnings and the development of key
skills essential to functioning in today’s world.
At the beginning we had many challenges and difficulties. Thanks to IKAJA’s support wewere able to begin our work with intensity and continue making progress. At this moment,
our proposal Kamishibai Workshop is widely implemented in primary and secondary
schools, among both students and teachers, not only in Navarra but also all over Spain andeven in other Spanish speaking countries. In the last three school years, we have
implemented the workshop in the UPNA, Navarra’s Public University.
Carmen Aldama Jiménez is a primary school teacher with a degree in Educational
Science. She has wide experience in the learning environment; she has worked as a teacher
with children from 5 to 15 years old, she has also worked as school counsellor and ascontinuous learning counsellor for primary school teachers.
She began her involvement with kamishibai in 2002 in San Juan de la Cadena’s School in
Pamplona, Spain, starting the experience Kamishibai Workshop.
9Her work is focused on studying the educational applications of kamishibai, highlighting her
educational proposal Kamishibai Workshop developed with primary and secondary school
students and with teachers through seminars given in teaching training centres and libraries
across different Spanish autonomous communities. She considers the Workshop an ideal
environment for developing the key skills essential in today’s world.
In 2006 she won the First Innovation Award given by the Department of Education ofNavarra’s Government, Spain. She made it possible for four kamishibai made in theWorkshop to be published and received a license to research the educational applications ofkamishibai during the school year 2008–2009.
She is the author of kamishibai and the Kamishibai Workshop published in 2015, as well as thecontent of the online course “Kamishibai as a technique to encourage reading.” She has
published several papers and kamishibai. Educational specialized newspapers and magazines
have published extensive coverage of her work. In order to promote kamishibai, her blog
has been very important to her: http://kamishibai.educacion.navarra.es.
Jovanka Ulić
Kamishibai and its Possibilites in an Integrated Approach to the Development of Skillsin Preschool Children
Kamishibai, or originally paper theatre, is a form of performing art, the only one in which
direct contact exists between the sender of the message (the artist) and her recipient (in ourcase, the child). It is this living connection that can affect the child and, in addition toaesthetic feelings and deep emotions, awakens empathy that leads to the spiritualdevelopment of the personality and of its being. In his book Child’s Imagination and Creativity,
Lav S. Vigotsky (Лев Семёнович Выготский) points out that dramatic creativity connects
artistic creativity with a child’s personal experience most efficiently and directly. Stage
expression is thus firmer than any other form of creativity related to the game, which is thebasic functioning form for preschool children. While the Central European form of paper
theatre, originally designed as a form of entertainment for children during winter evenings, isstill present in working with preschool children in its modified form, kamishibai is
unfortunately almost unknown in Serbian kindergartens. Starting from the holistic nature ofchildren, an integrated approach to the development and learning of preschool children isbased on the child’s understanding of a unique, active, interactive and creative being. Apartfrom its basic role – storytelling – kamishibai has the potential to develop all educational
activities in kindergartens (speech development, fine arts and music, adopting basic
mathematical concepts, exploring the environment) and thus directly affects thedevelopment of the overall skills in preschool children. The advantage of kamishibai theatre
is certainly that children can “illustrate” well-known stories, fairy tales, or fables, but they
can also create the text themselves, tell their own stories. What gives charm to this form ofscenic expression is the easy availability of the most diverse materials for its realization. The
specialty of kamishibai is a stage, butai, which can easily be made from an ordinary box. Apartfrom classic art techniques – drawing and painting – children can use collage, grattage, andalso simple printing techniques. The biggest benefit for children is certainly the developmentof creativity as well as the feeling of immense happiness when they finish the show andrealize that they have made great efforts for its realization as they are rewarded withapplause. Thus an individual gains self-confidence. However, it should also be noted that
educators have the benefit of using kamishibai, with which they broaden the repertoire of
their activities in educational work (applying new forms of work, gaining new experience,10

establishing better interaction with children), learn about the children’s creative potential,
stimulate and develop.
Jovanka A. Ulić was born in 1960 in Novi Sad, Serbia. She graduated from the Academy ofArts in Novi Sad and completed post-graduate studies, earning a magister title at the same
Academy.
She works as a professor of Arts at the Preschool Teachers’ Training College in Novi Sad.
She has organized 15 solo exhibitions and participated in well over 150 group exhibitions
home and abroad. Jovanka Ulić participated in the international workshop Kamishibai ingraphic in Izola, organized by Društvo Zapik and Umetniški Klub FolarT.
e-mail: stabloliki@gmail.com
Tatjana Rupnik Hladnik
Kamishibai – a Way into the World of Foreign Languages
During primary school education students are constantly confronted with (public)
performing. Teachers take an important part by creating a stimulating environment wherestudents can be relaxed and creative. That is why I use kamishibai when teaching students
from 4th to 9th grade German and Slovene language.
It is challenging for students to start communicating in a foreign language that they are only
beginning to learn. This is why I initially teach them a simple counting nursery rhyme which
they learn by heart using rhythm and pantomime. After getting to know the sound image ofthe poem, they create kamishibai to perform it in the classroom. They think visually without
using writing and are able to perform in German without fear and with impeccablepronunciation.
In advanced levels students create kamishibai to interpret fairy tales and perform modern
German poetry. In the field of nonfiction texts they describe themselves, their families,
hobbies, German cities, etc. It is easy for them to memorise the words because they use
visual materials in the working process and are distinctly active while doing it. If keywords are
written in the pictures, kamishibai becomes an illustrated didactic accessory for thegenerations to come.
Being a good artist is not a precondition for a good kamishibai. The students who are
reluctant to express themselves visually can be even more successful and wittier as they findunusual and original solutions.
Students appreciate the fact that kamishibai promotes thinking that goes beyond the limits ofthe school curriculum and considers their individuality. That is why they are highly motivatedeven if their work isn’t graded. They identify strongly with their presentations. Therefore, theyeasily overcome stage fright, perform boldly and have fun doing it.
Tatjana Rupnik Hladnik is a professor of Slovene and German language. She has beenteaching Slovene and German language and Rhetoric at the Poljane Primary School in
Ljubljana for 12 years.
In her work she uses kamishibai as a didactic tool as well as a technique for (re)creating
fictional and non-fictional texts. Since 2015 she has performed her own school project
named “Let's exchange our kamishibais” (Izmenjajva si kamišibaj) for second-graders, inwhich older students play the role of kamishibai teachers and mentors.
In 2016 she published an article in the magazine Šolski razgledi about the use of kamishibai inclass. During the school year 2016/17 she was a member of the Innovation Project
Kamishibai at the 8 talcev Primary School in Logatec. She participated at the international
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conference Talent Education in October 2017 with an article titled “Encouraging creativity
with the kamishibai storytelling technique.”She works as a mentor to talented students in the fields of literature, visual arts and movies.
Her students have been successful in various writing competitions. In the competition“Literature on Film” (Književnost na filmu – short movies based on literature) her filmmaking teams have achieved high successes. She also works in the area of promoting
multilingualism at school. In 2017 she had a presentation of the activities of their foreignlanguage working group at the seminar on intercultural and multilingual approaches –particularly the project “Untranslatable Words” (Neprevedljive besede).
She is interested in connections between art and science. She uses kamishibai with all school
subjects and at all student age levels. She performs at kamishibai events for children andadults.

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