Teacher's Guide to KamishibaiTeacher's Guide to KamishibaiKamishibai are part of a long Asian picture-storytelling tradition, and though uniquely Japanese, are immediately loved by any child lucky enough to hear them.
Children also enjoy hearing about the history of kamishibai. Kamishibai evolved from a form of itinerant street storytelling art which was popular throughout Japan into the 1950s.
The "kamishibai man" was a candy seller as well as a storyteller. He would enter a village or a neighborhood loudly clapping together two wooden blocks. This was the signal for the young children to come from their homes to gather around him for a kamishibai performance. First, he would sell candy; those who bought received places closest to him.
Traditionally the kamishibai man placed the story cards inside a small stage. He stood beside it, telling and even acting out the story line. The story cards were hand drawn at that time and although beautiful to look at, only a suggestion of the story was written on the other side. Accordingly, the kamishibai man had to be very comfortable performing and ad-libbing in front of an audience.
Often the kamishibai would be in serial form, and the children would eagerly await the kamishibai man's next visit in a day or two. After the introduction of television in Japan in 1953, the role of the itinerant storyteller gradually disappeared.
In recent years, kamishibai have been enjoying a renaissance in Japan, especially in schools and libraries. Because of their large size, kamishibai are easily viewed and are marvelous for reading to large groups of children. We have found that children love kamishibai, whether the reader simply holds them and reads the story on the back (which is the manner most Japanese teachers use) or uses a stage (which many Japanese librarians tend to do).
We are teachers ourselves and know the many demands on your time. What follows is a brief summary of the kamishibai story, "The Ogre Who Sank to the Bottom of the Sea," the main thematic ideas and some open ended questions you might want to use to extend the experience after the children have heard and enjoyed the story several times.
Margaret Eisenstadt and Donna Tamaki
Themes:
Love of Family, Compassion, Courage and Sacrifice
Initiating Activities:
The Ogre Who Sank Down to the Bottom of the Sea is a legend, which by definition is a folktale told in a reminiscent manner as an historical event. In this story, the origin of an unusual rock formation in the bay of Kure (coo-ray), off the island of Shikoku (she-coke-coo), is explained.
Perhaps in your area there are also stories associated with unusual natural formations or phenomena. If not, ask the children if they have ever gazed at cloud formations and made up their own stories about them.
Discussion Questions:
At the end of the story, encourage impromptu responses and then ask more guided questions such
as the following:
1. How did the ogre help the villagers?
2. Did the father ogre love his son very much? How do you know?
Cultural Background:
Japan is an archipelago (a collection of many islands) and this story is based upon a legend from the storm-prone Pacific coast of the island of Shikoku.
1. Ogres are called oni (oh-nee) in Japan. They are usually portrayed as demons and monsters who have a devilish temper, a frightening appearance and who hurt people. Although their appearance is basically human, they are always pictured as being quite gigantic, wearing a tiger skin loin cloth, horns on their head, and red or blue skin. Sometimes they are shown with fangs, three toes, three fingers, and three eyes.
Oni are thought to have been imported from China in the fifth or sixth century, perhaps as one of the demons in the Buddhist afterlife. The portrayal in this story of a kind and gentle ogre or oni contrasts sharply with the more traditionally fearful image found in other Japanese folktales.
2. Shimenawa (she-meh-nah-wah) -Card #4- is a thick, twisted rice straw rope which is used to mark off sacred space in Shinto (shin-toh), the native religion of Japan. The zigzags of paper hanging from the rope are called gobei (go-bay). These are a kind of antenna which attract the kami or local deities that are celebrated in Japan's many communities.
Shinto literally means "way of the gods." It is characterized not by scriptures and churches as are organized religions, but rather by a set of attitudes about life. A remarkable aspect of Shinto is not its national organized form, but the persistence of its local "kami" or deities. These kami vary according to local custom. They can be entities that govern food production, water, fertility, the cycle of the seasons, etc.
Making individual or group kamishibai stories is a natural response to hearing the Japanese kamishibai.
Other language extensions might include dramatization of a kamishibai story or the making of masks and creating of dialogue, inspired by the kamishibai.
Photocopy the text on the back of the kamishibai cards and use that as a script. Assign one child to be the narrator, one to hold the cards, and other children to specific character roles.
For children with no bi-lingual experience, an interesting discussion might focus on their impressions of an entirely different alphabet.
Instead of individual letters, Japanese is composed of syllables, most of which begin with a consonant and end with a vowel. When saying these words, one pronounces each syllable separately and stresses evenly. (In English, we have a tendency to stress certain syllables.)
Consonants are pronounced approximately as in English, with the following exceptions: g is always hard, as in the word "get."
There are only five vowel sounds in Japanese. Here they are in Japanese order:
a sounds like the a in "father"
i sounds like the i in "pizza"
u sounds like the u in "flu"
e sounds like the e in "egg"
o sounds like the o in "most"
Japanese also has some dipthongs:
ai sounds like the ai in "kaiser"
ei sounds like the ei in "rein"
Japanese writing is entirely different from the writing of English and other European languages with which the children might be acquainted. Depending on the age of your children, it might be interesting to ask them how many symbols they learned to read and write English. Explain that with the 26 letters or symbols in our alphabet, we can write all the words in our language. (Again, depending of their age, you might also mention that they are Roman in origin.)
Explain that Japanese children must learn many more symbols:
KANJI--Imported from China, kanji are made up of ideographic and pictographic elements; each kanji represents a complete word or idea. In order to graduate from high school, a student must know more that 1800 kanji.
The dilemma is that Japanese syntax is different from Chinese and to compensate for this inadequacy in expressing their language, the Japanese developed two phonetic systems of syllable notations by the ninth century, with 48 characters in each system.
HIRAGANA--These are symbols developed from the Chinese characters, which were borrowed by the Japanese for sound, and written in smooth, round, flowing lines. The hiragana system can be used for any purpose including "spelling out" difficult kanji. Hiragana is the first writing system Japanese children learn. Hiragana is also used in "easy" texts such as children's books.
KATAKANA--These symbols are similar to hiragana although they are written in sharp lines and angles. Katakana is used primarily for foreign words.
Hiragana is the first writing system Japanese students learn. Hiragana is alos used in "easy" texts such as children's books and kamishibai.