ABSTRACTSAND
BIOGRAPHIES

10 MAY 2018

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
andSECTION I: THE ART OF KAMISHIBAIKyoko Sakai (cooperated with Hina Nagase)
Kamishibai – its Key Features and Appeal byDoshinsha was founded as a publishing company in 1957. We have published about 2400
kamishibai works as well as 600 children’s books since its foundation. Doshinsha originatesfrom a study group of kamishibai. Kamishibai performances had been used as a means ofpropaganda for lifting the fighting spirit during WWII and therefore left a negative legacy.
When founding Doshinsha, Mr. Kinji Muramatsu declared: “We now say good-bye tokamishibai stories that whipped up the war spirit and hello to kamishibai stories that arepeaceful, respect human life, and love children.” I have edited kamishibai stories and picture
books for Doshinsha for many years. Now I am a chairperson after being an editor-in-chieffor fifteen years, and a president for ten years.
What are the key features and the appeal of kamishibai? A kamishibai story proceeds when
you put a series of separate sheets into the butai (wooden stage) and slide the sheets in andout while reading the text. Since the illustration is on the front of each sheet and the text ison the back, you need a performer who faces the audience. Thus the format of kamishibai
differs from picture books. Pages of picture books are bound, so a reader faces the pictures
while reading the text and turning the pages. This difference in format causes the differencein key features between picture books and kamishibai stories.
A kamishibai work emerges out of the butai and spreads to where the audience is as a resultof sliding the sheets out. The audience then concentrates on the new sheet that appears.
The moment that the performer needs for sliding the sheet back is precious: it allows theaudience to concentrate on the new illustration. We call this moment ma (pause) inJapanese. As a performer, you stand next to the butai with the story in it and you read thetext on the back. You start performing wholeheartedly, empathizing with the characters andcommunicating with the audience. The audience’s concentration and communication
produce kyokan (shared feelings) with the story among the audience. This concept of kyokan
is the basis of a good performance.
Because kamishibai performances create kyokan, their content is important: we need toconsider the subject for which we would like to share our feelings. When we performkamishibai works, we aim to materialize this wonderful world of kyokan, thereby creatinghappiness and peace for all.
Kyoko Sakai was born in 1946. She majored in economics at the Hosei University. After
achieving the role of chief editor, she worked for ten years as the president andrepresentative director of Doshinsha Publishing in Tokyo, which specializes in publishingchildren’s books and kamishibai. She edited many popular works such as Kazuo Iwamura’spicture book The Family of Fourteen. This work is translated in thirteen countries and morethan ten million copies have been sold in the world. Among others, the work Cat Who Likes
to Paint, written and illustrated by Kayako Nishimaki, received the Picture Books Award ofKodansha Publication Culture Award for Children’s Books in 1987. She also edited The
Adventure in the Closet, which achieved record sales. She edited a lot of marvellous kamishibaisuch as The Tongue-Cut Sparrow and the Kamii the Robot series, too. In 2001 she became oneof the founders of the International Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA). She organizes
kamishibai seminars, giving lectures not only in Japan but also in the Netherlands, France,Germany, Switzerland, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and China. At the same time she has
endeavoured to establish the theory of kamishibai in cooperation with Noriko Matsui. It iscompiled in the “How to Perform Kamishibai Q&A” and the “Kamishibai Miniencyclopaedia”. She is an auditor of Iwasaki Chihiro Memory Cooperation Foundation, a2lecturer at the National Rehabilitation Centre, as well as the present chairperson ofDoshinsha Publishing and a representative of IKAJA.
Hina Nagase was born in Tokyo in 1963. She was absorbed in reading children’s books
when she was in elementary school. She encountered kamishibai at that age and was quiteenchanted by it. She lived in the states of Maryland and New Jersey when she was in highschool. After returning to Japan, she went on to Sophia University majoring in English
Language from the Foreign Languages Department and received her Bachelor’s degree in1986. After graduating from university, she worked for Japan Airlines as a flight attendant
overseas. After resigning from the JAL, she started to study for translation, especially in thefield of children‘s books. Her first book translation, Escape from Shangri-La written by Michael
Morpurgo, was published in 2002. That was when she encountered the International
Kamishibai Association of Japan (IKAJA) and started working as its secretary. Her maintranslation works are Tiger Boy, Monsoon Summer, Rickshaw Girl (by Mitali Perkins), Love,Aubrey (by Suzanne LaFleur), Anna Hibiscus (by Atinuke), etc. Among them, Rickshaw Girl wasselected as one of the assigned books for the book report for fifth- and sixth-graders in
2010. Love, Aubrey was selected as one of the recommended books by the Japan School
Library Association. As for kamishibai activities, she has done several lectures in Japan andhas performed kamishibai in English in France, India, Malaysia, and Singapore.
Translator of children’s books and Secretary-general of IKAJA.

Jelena Sitar Cvetko
Beyond Borders in Confined Space: Dramaturgical Perspective on the Art ofKamishibai Theatre
The narrator paints events, spaces, and heroes with his story, evoking feelings and emotions.
The power of a direct live performance, old as humanity itself, helps the spectators
understand themselves and the world. The story takes time, but the painting/image allows
for an immediate response. The suggestiveness of the image influences the senses, feelings,and emotions of the public. The power of the image, old as humanity itself, helps people
become more aware. When we want to paint a story through pictures, when we want toshow the story, as humans often have throughout our history, we need a series of images. Asequence of pictures tells a story. But the narration is no longer set in the past (mukashi,mukashi or “once upon a time”): it has acquired an image of its own, a true embodiment. We
can see it. The words and images in kamishibai intertwine dynamically and are inseparablybound together, creating synergy, a new artistic being. The meeting of words and images inkamishibai happens in the butai, the empty rectangle, and the border that frames the storyand limits the image. The limitation means an exclusion: what takes place inside the frame isexcluded from our world, which is why anything is possible inside the frame. What happens
behind the frame? Does the image continue? Is it free? It certainly extends beyond the frame.
It creates a new space, an unknown world that we never would have discovered if the doorof the stage-butai hadn’t opened. If the frame of the butai enables the creation of a new space– the space of the story – then the door of the butai determines the time of the story. Thedoor determines when the story begins and when it ends. Between the beginning and theending, events play out in a certain rhythm. The rhythm is set by the narrator, who sets thetime and manner of the image sequence and tells the story of what we can see, but mostly
the story of what we cannot see, of what is hidden behind the frame. The narrator thenshows us what is hidden by pulling the paper out of the frame. Behind it, another sheet of3paper appears…we sink into the story, deeper and deeper, with every new sheet, every newimage, every new event. The kamishibai narrator reveals and tells the story. The story iscreated with his hands, his mouth, and his face. He knows the story, leads us into it, andfinally becomes the story. He stands with us, becomes a part of us – and if he does, then hisstory becomes a part of us as well. The narrator is an animator, he gives a soul to each
image, each word. The images relate to each other, meeting the story. They create anundulation that surpasses the rhythm of the sequence of the events, scenes, and images.
When that happens, the audience is animated as well, feeling what it sees and hears, realising
the wisdom that resides deep within each story. And it sees the author whose soul relates
the story and is mirrored in each spectator’s soul. Kyokan.
Jelena Sitar Cvetko is a dramaturge and a puppet artist who has been contributing toSlovenian puppetry for thirty years. She has mostly been researching chamber puppet
theatre as a director, dramaturge, and performer.
She has signed over 40 performances in professional puppet theatres, among which Dr. Faust(Ljubljana Puppet Theatre) and When Shlemil went to Warsaw (Maribor Puppet Theatre) are
best known internationally. Ten performances were created in her own puppet atelier Zapik,
which is known for its minimalistic, interactive, and original approach to puppetry. In Zapik
performances authors Jelena Sitar Cvetko and Igor Cvetko research the borders of theatre
forms such as finger puppetry and kamishibai theatre.
In her professional biography we also find her as an editor of the magazine Lutka (Puppet), a
founder of the Artistic Children’s Museum (Hiša otrok in umetnosti), and an artistic directorof Ljubljana Puppet Theatre.
From 2010, she also works as a professor at The Faculty of Education of the University ofPrimorska, Koper, introducing the magic world of theatre, puppetry, and kamishibai tofuture generations of teachers.

Gerhard Jäger
Kamishibai and its Spirit of Transformation
5 Sub-headings:- Respect for Tradition- Artistic Techniques and Themes- Creative Storytelling Combinations- Variety of Locations and Partnerships- Visual Literacy
Respect for Tradition
For centuries, kamishibai has been in a constant transformation process. It taught Buddhist
philosophy, magic lantern performances, the birth of Manga heroes, and war propaganda
until it changed to the instruction of good manners and moralistic values at schools. Since
the breakthrough in the Western world, where this narrative technique was discovered andembraced in the 1980s, more and more children and adults have had the chance toexperience and enjoy this magic form of storytelling. Besides having profound respect for theJapanese tradition, organisations around the world continued in a broad spirit of adaptionand transformation. In this paper I would like to focus on the diversity of artistic techniques
and themes to create stories, on ways of creative storytelling in combination with ateliers orworkshops and on the variety of locations.
4Artistic Techniques and Themes
Numerous artists and illustrators have been experimenting for years with different
techniques and sizes to create new kamishibai stories. Apart from drawing and/or painting,other popular techniques are collage, shadow-theatre, photography of scene set-ups ordifferent materials, adaptations of printed picture books, and embroidered pictures. Some
examples are chosen to surprise the public on a visual level. Even experiments with white
pages (expressing a snowstorm) or black pages (expressing a dark night) can lead toastounding results through audience participation. The choice of themes for the stories andtheir content has moved from the standard fairy tales, legends, and the educational context
of the school curriculum to a more contemporary level, which is more closely related to thedaily life of children and youngsters, families of divorcees, immigration and gender
problematics, etc.
Creative Storytelling Combinations
Besides working with the cultural background of a specific story through arts and crafts
activities in ateliers after storytelling sessions, there is a range of creative possibilities which
can be used depending on the story’s content and the capabilities of the storyteller.
Combinations with sounds, songs, and musical instruments are quite common, but also
cooking activities or educational lessons on science can be brought into relation. Even links
with digital media are appreciated, so long as the stories do not lose their poetic power.
Long term workshops in schools are certainly good opportunities to use the children’svarious talents and imagination and to make interdisciplinary combinations with various
teaching subjects.
Variety of Locations and Partnerships
The flexibility of this unique instrument can be shown by using a kamishibai bike, acomfortable ‘down to the floor’ setup, or storytelling ‘out of the hand’ – these create abroad range of possibilities. Leaving aside the importance of working with schools, it is
crucial to consider various locations and partnerships to develop and realise kamishibaiprojects: academies for aspiring teachers, in-service teaching courses, artistic-socialorganisations, prisons, homes for elderly and disabled people, tents, street festivals, beaches,
culture centres, immigrant houses, family living rooms, shopping centres, museums, hospitals,libraries, etc.
Visual Literacy
It is three times more likely that immigrant children who had the opportunity to come inregular contact with art activities at school will successfully finish their term. Stimulating
language skills through kamishibai is not only an indirect way of promoting the joy of reading
and the love for books, but also a necessary political input to work on equal opportunities.
In this way, the little paper-drama will be needed more than ever in our postmodern,presumably ‘post-narrative’ world.
Gerhard Jäger (born in 1956, Graz, Austria) worked for 15 years in the Serapions Theatre
in Vienna. From 1990 to 1995 he was involved in cultural projects in the south of Austria
near the Slovenian border.
20 years ago Jäger started the ABC. ART BASICS for CHILDREN is a non-profit
organisation located in Brussels, Belgium, and operates on the border of the arts and5

education as a laboratory for aesthetic experiences and awareness. He is currently theartistic coordinator of the organisation. He lives in Brussels and has two children. www.abcweb.be, gerhard@abc-web.be
Silva Karim
Fine Arts Formal Approaches and Techniques at Designing Kamishibai Illustrations
In kamishibai theatre, the visual part plays the most important role. It is completed bymotion and words, sometimes even music. If we only focus on illustration, a vast field ofpossibility opens up: from realistic to abstract images, from caricature to expressivity, fromcolorist solutions to ascetic, shaded drawings, from planar illustrations to strong illusions ofspace, from line drawings to painting, engraving, photography… Each artistic solution carries
its own message. Just as the spoken part of kamishibai deals with language, so does theillustrated part deal with artistic language, where the grammar is built through points, lines,colour, and the contrast between light and dark. Artistic variables and basic principles ofcomposition building also play an important role. Through examples of kamishibai
illustrations, we will analyse various artistic formal approaches, consider artistic techniques
and their effects, as well as methods that are less useful for kamishibai illustrations.
Silva Karim is a professor of visual art with a scientific MA. She is employed part-time as avisual arts teacher at a primary school, and part-time as a self-employed cultural worker. Sheworks as an illustrator, painter, and potter. In the past years, she has begun to focus moreon kamishibai theatre, with several notable successes marking her work.

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