Kamishibai – Japanese Story Boards

Kamishibai are fantastic story boards used mostly for children. Unlike regular story books, these are large boards with full colour images on the front, and the writing on the back.

Last year, I taught at a number of daycares throughout Tokyo and other areas. The children loved kamishibai stories, and asked me if I had any english ones to show them. Naturally, I didn’t have any and finding english version ones in Tokyo would be very difficult and expensive, so I decided to make my own.

Here’s an example of my Halloween Story of a kitten’s halloween adventure:

large fun image without written distractions

written story at the back for narrator

I find kamishibai very fun and practical to read to children, since you can clearly show the images while comfortably sitting back and reading from the back – no more trying to angle your head to read the story and blocking the view of some children!

6 Comments

  1. avettilla
    Apr 18, 2010

    I’ll have to try this, thanks Miho!

  2. Kelly
    Apr 18, 2010

    Cute idea! I guess it’s good for teaching and teachers. I’ll have to show this to some of my friends.

  3. Debbi Rali
    Apr 22, 2010

    Sorry for my bad english. Thank you so much for your good post.

  4. Sara
    Apr 25, 2010

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    Apr 27, 2010

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  6. Elio
    Jun 4, 2010

    Interesting post. Reminded me of a guy and his work on video art movement, highlighting the simultaneity as one of the columns of that art movement. Western society is mostly about simultaneity and having the head & eyes in many places at the same time.

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