Time travels with kamishibai : the ongoing adventures of a magical moving medium

english

2019

volume 7, issue 1

convergence   kamishibai performance   magic lanterns   multimedia history   new literacy   transmediation

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

In the late 1920s, the inventors of kamishibai (Japanese "paper theatre") took simple materials and created the magical illusion of the "big screen" in miniature. When television first entered Japan, it was called "electric kamishibai" because of the outward similarity of a screen with moving images and audio enclosed within a frame. Twenty-first-century technologies, which still rely on moving images and screens, are often credited with enabling a "new" remixing of modes and media, but kamishibai's history illustrates that technological progress, like a möbius strip, often folds back upon itself, offering scholars and practitioners opportunities for time travel, as forgotten ideas are rediscovered and taken in new directions. Drawing upon examples of early kamishibai-related artefacts in the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University, this article traces how kamishibai developed in close relation to other audio-visual media, such as magic lantern and film, until the 1950s, after which kamishibai has been increasingly compared with picture books and other paper-based media. Placing kamishibai within a global audio-visual history that extends from the magic lantern to the internet provides us with fresh perspectives and opens up new possibilities, as artists, storytellers and educators from around the world engage with kamishibai in relation to media from their own traditions, as well as new developing technologies. The non-digital, audio-visual aspects of kamishibai free it from the constraints of technological development and provide the versatility and potential for play that continue to inspire multiple, hybrid adaptations of the form.

19.02.2020