Lecture 2005-06
"Kamishibai as Entertainment and Propaganda"
Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh

Once again we had a good attendance at what was the last meeting before the summer recess. We heard a fascinating talk by Dr. Sharalyn Orbaugh of the University of British Columbia on "Kamishibai as Entertainment and Propaganda". She had brought with her some visual aids in the form of a portable kamishibai "stage" and a number of picture cards, and had prepared a handout with photos of kamishibai performances. Once again, also, the meeting closed with modest refreshments (but we are not planning to continue with these in September!).

Occupation forces in Tokyo after World War II had the chance to see kamishibai for themselves from early in 1946, though the SCAP censorship authorities were not immediately aware of the existence of such a performing medium. In its original form, called gaitô kamishibai or machikado kamishibai, it was performed on street corners by professionals who made their money by selling candy to their audiences of small children. They travelled around by bicycle with a box-like stage in which they showed a series of picture cards, telling a story as they changed the cards one by one. The cards were provided by agents called kashimoto, who kept a stable of artists to paint them by hand, and made their money by renting them out to the performers. As the stories were serialised, the children would come back day after day to see the next instalment, assuring the performers of a regular clientele.

There was another form of kamishibai called kyôiku kamishibai, which, as their name suggests, were designed for education, not for entertainment. The cards were mass-produced and sold in stores, for performance principally by amateurs. This medium became a favourite tool of the government during the period when Japan was under the control of the militarists, and was used to disseminate all kinds of official messages and propaganda.

There is no record of when kamishibai began, but it had clearly emerged by the late 1920s. Its antecedent was the tachie of the Meiji period, small flat pictures or paper puppets mounted on sticks, used for performing plays on small portable stages; but by 1927 this form of entertainment had been driven out by police interference. Around the same time, a Zen priest named Nishimura had begun entertaining children by illustrating his sermons with pictures, and this may have given the now out-of-work tachie performers the idea of using pictures to tell stories. By 1930 this new medium had become commonplace, and had been organised under the kashimoto system. The most popular serial of that time was "Ogon Batto", in which a warrior for justice did battle with all sorts of evil creatures. This kind of story was designed for boys, but there were also "tear-jerkers" for girls, and simple cartoonish stories for the very young.

One factor that may have encouraged the spread of kamishibai was the changeover from silent movies to talkies; the silent movie narrators were put out of work, and may have turned to this new medium. Another factor was the emergence of new newspapers designed to appeal to the labouring classes. Such papers featured renzoku shôsetsu, serialised stories, which could even be enjoyed by children, as all the kanji were accompanied by furigana. Some also carried serialised comics, and comic magazines for children were also published. Finally, the economic recession that followed the Great Kanto Earthquake and the subsequent worldwide depression left many Japanese men out of work, and it was a simple matter to become a kamishibai performer, as little equipment and only a minimum of skill was required.

So it was that kamishibai became wildly popular in the 1930s, until, with the escalation of the war in China, more and more men were conscripted. But as soon as the war was over, kamishibai again flourished, so that by the early 1950s there were an estimated 50,000 performers scattered throughout the country. But by the mid 1960s it had disappeared as mysteriously as it had started, possibly because of the advent of television, and also a sudden boom in manga magazines. The appeal of the street kamishibai could be summarised under six headings: the special atmosphere created on the street corner; the appeal of the stories; the skill of the performer, who acted all the parts; the special bond between the children and the ojisan, who was no wealthier than they were; the fact that the experience engaged all the senses and faculties at once; and the fact that it was a group experience.

Some educators voiced their criticisms of the kamishibai for their vulgarity and the gruesome nature of their popular stories, and many parents expressed their concern about the unhygienic nature of the sweets sold. But other educators countered by pointing out the instructive potential of the medium, and felt that it could be used to extend education to impoverished areas. So a Nippon Kyôiku Kamishibai Kyôkai was formed to provide educational resources for people outside the organised school system, and this association made kyôiku kamishibai story cards available to urban groups and rural teachers. One simple story, with a simple appeal, was "Uzura" (The Quail), which tells of a little girl who goes to town with her father, but instead of buying something for herself, buys a quail to provide nourishment for her sick mother, who in turn takes pity on the bird and sets it free; this story of unselfish kindness in the midst of poverty became very popular amongst rural educators.

As the China War escalated, the government began to realise the potential of this effective popular medium for disseminating its own messages, and government organs began sponsoring the production of kyôiku kamishibai, and as a clearing-house a kamishibai section of the Nippon Shôkokumin Bunka Kyôkai was established, staffed, among others, by people who had been involved in earlier progressive education movements. The works produced between 1941 and 1945 came under the general category of kokusaku kamishibai, which included (1) works encouraging those on the home front to do all they could to back up the fighting men, (2) works about Japanese history, (3) legends about Japanese heroes, and (4) news about the war situation and world news.

This kamishibai section, besides producing the stories and pictures, sent lecturers — mostly former gaitô kamishibai professionals — out to all parts of the country to train local amateur performers. They were taught to efface themselves so as to emphasise the stories, 70% of which were aimed at adult audiences. Here Dr. Orbaugh stressed that the government made intensive use of this medium to promote its policies and ideology, a point that has largely escaped the notice of later historians.

One genre of wartime kamishibai, she said, was stories that linked soldiers on the front lines with the home front back in Japan. One of the most intriguing and puzzling aspects to her was the emphasis on turning young men into soldiers who were prepared to die violently but beautifully for the sake of the emperor and the nation, and return home only in spirit. Images of the Japanese soldier as a dead body had already abounded as long ago as the Russo-Japanese War, and one song which was a sort of second national anthem had its words taken from a poem in the Man'yôshû which speaks of the corpses of those who had died at sea or in the mountains for their great lord. In the Russo-Japanese War soldiers were sent to a certain death — essentially suicide in battle — against insuperable odds, and such units were immortalised in story and song, embodying the idea that Japan's true strength lay in the indomitable spirit of its people, willing to perform any sacrifice for the greater good.

Many stories were disseminated about the exploits of young heroes, whom soldiers were encouraged to emulate. Among them were the ten soldiers sent to Pearl Harbor in two-man suicide submarines. But it seems clear that most of this rhetoric was intended to encourage those on the home front more than the soldiers themselves, as is shown by a song in which those at home are thinking about the hardships endured by their menfolk at the front line. Such products were unmistakably designed to inspire such pity in those at home that they would be willing also to endure hardships with uncomplaining loyalty and a willingness to sacrifice everything, a spirit that was especially needed towards the end of the war, when the impossibility of victory became all too obvious.

Dr. Orbaugh then outlined some stories illustrating this theme, the first of which was "Jūgo no chikara" (The strength of the home front); this shows the chain of relationships stretching from the home front to the war front which makes for the death in battle of a willing soldier. In it an elementary school boy, the son of a widowed mother, does all the housework so that his mother can go off to work to pay off a debt, while the elder brother goes to war. The upshot is that the creditor, hearing of this, forgives the debt, and when the elder son gets the news he asks to be sent to the front line, where he fights bravely but becomes "a flower of the imperial army". Another story "Nanatsu no ishi" (Seven stones) showed how even a poor child could contribute to the war effort. His widowed mother could not afford to send a parcel of treats to a soldier at the front, so the boy picks up seven pebbles from the parade ground in front of the imperial palace to send to the front, with a message saying that the voices of millions singing "Kimigayo" or shouting "Banzai!" have sunk into these stones. The soldier who receives them dies with a smile, clutching a stone in his hand.

One type of play concerned the model war heroes. In this case the narrative always followed the same plotline: a boy from a rural area, usually the son of a widowed mother, overcomes difficulties and grows into a fine young man who goes off to the war, with his mother urging him to die gloriously for his country. In a play about the suicide mission at Pearl Harbor, a young hero dies shouting the words "Tennô heika banzai!" and mouthing the word "mother" with his last breath. This play focuses on the deep love between mother and son as much as it does on the soldier, and such plays had an appeal for all members of the viewing audience.

The last play that Dr. Orbaugh showed told of an uneducated widow, who was something of an outcast in the community but was adored by her son, who was now under constant air attack in the South Pacific. His mother decides to work in an aircraft factory to make more planes to help her son, and she sends him a laboriously penned letter to tell him this, having got her daughter to teach her the rudiments of writing. A few days later her son is dying in his buddy's arms, and his buddy tells him he can see Japanese planes coming, though they are in fact enemy planes. So the boy dies peacefully, in the belief that his mother's hard work has brought planes to their aid. His mother brushes away her tears and goes on working, though there was now no reasonable hope of victory. This was the bleak message of this play, but the bleakness was mitigated by the fact that the mother was motivated to go on working by the knowledge that she had her son's love. Such plays, rather than trying to whip up hatred of the enemy, stirred up love of family, making them very hard to resist.

In conclusion, we could see that it was the simplicity and directness of kamishibai that made it such an effective vehicle for this sort of message. The qualities also made it accessible to people of all classes, especially those of the labouring class from whom so much sacrifice was expected during the war. Above all, kamishibai was always about a group experience; what better medium could there be for encouraging people to think of their loved ones as they struggled to endure and continue fighting in the final days of an unwinnable war?

There followed a short question time in which a German member of the audience commented that this idea that the object of a soldier's duty in going off to war was to lay down his life for emperor and nation, was very different from the thinking even in Nazi Germany, where Adolf Hitler once stated that a soldier should have at least a 1% chance of returning home from the front.

A question came up about how much it cost to watch a kamishibai play, to which Dr. Orbaugh said that in the pre-war period it cost about one sen. In 1937 it was thought that most children saw kamishibai at least twice a day and some even watched six times a day! Friends of Dr. Orbaugh had told her that in most neighbourhoods kamishibai performers came round two or three times a day. It was possible to tell which one was which from the different sounds their clackers made and these particular people only went out for the best performers.

The last questioner asked that surely it was puzzling that kamishibai had not developed in the Taisho era. Dr. Orbaugh answered that that was the period when tachie was dying out and it was not really until the Showa era that the worst effects of the recession were felt — perhaps until then there was not a big enough supply of performers (that is, men who had lost their jobs because of the recession).

The vote of thanks was given by Dr. Lee Colegrove who observed that perhaps the audience was wondering why he had been chosen for the task. The answer was that when this topic had been raised at the ASJ Council not one of the Japanese members would admit to ever having seen a kamishibai performance, whereas Dr. Colegrove had seen it himself. The other members of the Council had said that as children of somewhat refined homes, they had not been permitted by their parents to watch. Dr. Colegrove's own experience had been in 1955 when walking in uniform from Hibiya to Iidabashi. He saw a man telling a story and, wondering what it was all about, decided to stop and watch. He was not asked to buy candy! Over the years, Dr. Colegrove had asked his Japanese friends about their experiences of kamishibai. One friend had said that it had been a great sensation the one time she had seen it. Her father, an official at the Ministry of Agriculture, had one day brought home a set of pictures and told a story to the whole family. This story, however, was not about dying and good mothers, but instead told of fighting against the enemy who were devils and Roosevelt himself was depicted as a red devil who was a very frightening individual! Dr. Colegrove said that he thought that all Japanese had had strong impressions instilled in them from these stories. He was surprised at the bleak nature of the stories mentioned in this evening's lecture and could not imagine how the Japanese government would have managed to obtain the sacrifice they were seeking from the people. He added that in the US at the time, from his own personal recollection, there was never any hint that the war would be lost and he also recalled how, in much more recent times, President Bush had opposed the showing of images of the bodies of US soldiers killed in Iraq. Whereas, here in Japan, in the Second World War, it would seem that the talk had been all of the corpses of dead Japanese soldiers. In summary, this evening's lecture had been a real eye-opener and was very much appreciated.