1-11: Children

ADDITIONAL INFO: Kamishibai was one of the most popular forms of entertainment for children in the immediate postwar period. Kamishibaiya-san traveled by bicycle from place to place; they told stories that corresponded with the pictures shown, and earned money by selling candies to the audience. The kamishibaya business declined with the rising popularity of TV in the Showa 30s (1955-1964).

ADDITIONAL INFO: The Kamishibai business emerged in the early Showa period. Originally, scripts of the stories were handed down orally from performer to performer, but eventually the stories were written on the back of each slide. As many of the pictures were hand drawn on paper and varnished, they were destroyed during the bombings. After the war, however, the craft revived for several years, but with the advent of television, it once again disappeared.

CAPTION: The picture-card show man (kamishibaiya-san) is telling a story to a group of children. Even a teenager, the tall boy in summer cotton kimono (yukata), is enthralled!

ADDITIONAL INFO: The art was also called gaitō-kamishibai (picture-card show on the street); because they performed on the street crowds often formed, blocking pedestrian and automobile traffic. Local store owners and merchants complained about these obstructions, which led to the further decline of the trade.

CAPTION: A drum on the back of this bicycle produced some of the sound effects for the picture-card show.

ADDITIONAL INFO: To the right of the drum is a stack of pictures that the kamishibaiya-san used to tell his stories. The signs on the wall behind the story teller read “Tokyo-to” and “Minato-ku,” so this photo was probably taken in Tokyo’s Minato ward. This photo was apparently taken in a different season from the previous three photos since the children in this photo are wearing winter cloths.

CAPTION: A group of girls are smiling and laughing for the camera. One of them is carrying a baby on her back.

ADDITIONAL INFO: The shop behind the girls is a beauty salon (biyōin). Its small sign says “Seto Biyōin” in kanji, and advertises permanents in both Japanese letters (katakana) and English. On this small sign, characters and letters are written from the left to the right, but the big sign, partially obscured by the small sign, has only kanji read from the right to the left. Traditionally, Japanese is written vertically (top-down). With exposure to Western languages beginning at the end of the Tokugawa period, horizontal writing appeared. Moreover, Japanese was usually written from the right in the prewar period, but in the postwar period, it is increasingly written from the left like English. The signs in this photo reflect this transition.

CAPTION: A boy is carrying a baby, perhaps his little brother, on his back. Today it is uncommon to see older siblings caring for younger ones in this way.

ADDITIONAL INFO: Behind the boys, we see a bamboo-made fence. Bamboos (because of their flexible quality) were used in a variety of ways in Japanese daily life (furniture, kitchen stuff, fishing rods, etc.).

CAPTION: A girl and boy pose for the camera in their Japanese wooden clogs (geta).

ADDITIONAL INFO: Geta were the traditional footwear of Japan in the pre-modern period, but with the opening of Japan in the Meiji period, western style shoes were available as well.  Geta were popular in the post-war years was partly because cloth and leather shoes were difficult to find. Throughout the 1960s, the popularity of geta declined along with the rise of Japan’s economy.

CAPTION: A little boy in front of a slide at a temple poses for a picture.

ADDITIONAL INFO: Buddhist temples in Japan traditionally took care of the poor and the elderly without family, and also ran schools. The slide in the picture suggests that this temple may have also acted as a nursery school or an orphanage.

CAPTION: Girls playing on a school playground.

ADDITIONAL INFO: Since most of the girls are wearing cloth bands (hachimaki) around their heads, and because children (to the left and rear) and parents (to the right) are looking on, this might be part of a school athletic festival (undōkai). In the background there is a domed building, which appears to be the diet building. Between the domed building and the elementary school, there seems to be some sort of stadium with lights rising high above the ground.

CAPTION: Two women with babies on their backs watch a school sports event from above. Piggybacking (onbu) used to be the way to carry babies in Japan.

ADDITIONAL INFO: The tower in the background of the photo appears to be of similar construction as that in “Children Playing at School 1″, suggesting that these women are watching the same undōkai from that photo. More of the audience can be seen in this picture, as well.