Title
The History of Japanese Kamishibai and Animation
Abstract
Tara McGowan examined the emergence of kamishibai out of Edo-period (1603-1868) magic-lantern shows and showed how it continued to evolve as a form of animation in relation to early cinema. The immense popularity of kamishibai in the 1930s and its effectiveness as a tool for communication led to religious missionaries and educators appropriating it for their own purposes and ultimately to its use as a tool for propaganda during World War II. She engaged with some of the materials from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library’s collection of propaganda kamishibai to better understand this aspect of kamishibai’s past.
Biography
McGowan is an artist, storyteller, and Japan scholar, who has spent the last two decades studying the visual techniques involved in kamishibai (Japanese “paper theater”). She is the author of The Kamishibai Classroom: Engaging Multiple Literacies through the Art of ‘Paper Theater’ (2010) and Performing Kamishibai: An Emerging New Literacy for a Global Audience (2015). Tara is co-founder with Walter Ritter and Donna Tamaki of the World Kamishibai Forum, an online and in-person series of events focusing on various aspects of kamishibai. She has been invited to present kamishibai workshops and storytelling events in Mexico, Peru, France, Slovenia, and Japan and, in 2017, was awarded the Horio Seishi Award from the Center for Research on Japanese Children’s Culture (子供の文化研究所) in Tokyo for her international work with kamishibai.