![[Image]](images/Kamishibai-2.jpg)
written and illustrated by
ALLEN SAY
Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 2005
Walter Lorraine Books
For Margaret Eisenstadt, Donna Tamaki, and Tara McGowan
Walter Lorraine Books
Copyright © 2005 by Allen Say
All rights reserved. For information about permission
to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Say, Allen.
Kamishibai man / Allen Say.
p. cm.
"Walter Lorraine books."
Summary: After many years of retirement, an old Kamishibai man—a Japanese street performer
who tells stories and sells candies—decides to make his rounds once more even though such
entertainment declined after the advent of television.
ISBN-13: 978-0-618-47954-2
ISBN-10: 0-618-47954-6
[1. Kamishibai—Fiction. 2. Street theater—Fiction. 3. Storytelling—Fiction.4. Japan—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.S2744Kam 2005
[Fic]—dc22
2005006319
Printed in the United States of America
WOZ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
When I think of my childhood in Japan, I think of kamishibai. It means "paper theater." Every afternoon, the kamishibai man came on a bicycle that had a big wooden box mounted on the back seat. The box had drawers full of candies and a stage at the top. We bought candies and listened to the man's stories.
As he told the stories, the kamishibai man would slide out the picture cards in the stage one by one and put them in the back, like shuffling a deck of cards. The stories were actually one never-ending tale, with each installment ending with the hero or heroine hanging from a cliff or getting pushed off it.
"To be continued," the kamishibai man would say with a grin, and we children would groan, but not too much. Tomorrow the hero and heroine would be saved for new adventures, and we would have our candies.
Yes, they were cliffhangers. So when I came to America, that was one expression that nobody had to explain to me. Today, any sort of cliffhanger reminds me of the happy memories that kamishibai had given me. And with this book, though it has no high cliffs, let me be your "paper theater man" for a day. You'll have to get your own sweets.
Allen Say