Читать книгу Vanishing Japan - Elizabeth Kiritani - Страница 10

Picture Theater

When the hyoshigi, or wooden clappers, rang out, children knew which of the theater men had arrived. Each had his own rhythm that served as a calling card, one that children could understand. This was because many bicycle-riding theater men showed up at the same park or quiet street, and each man had to establish himself as a special storyteller in order to make a living.

The golden age of kamishibai (picture theater) was right after the war when many people were out of work. At this time there were over 3,000 kamishibai in Tokyo alone. It was a job that required little capital to pursue—a bicycle, a drum, and a frame for the theater with drawers under it for candy. The hand-painted pictures that were displayed in the frame were rented by the month. The trick was having the kind of candy kids liked and being able to spin a yarn in an engrossing way. Every day, just at the height of the drama, the play was stopped, to be continued in installments.

The storytelling itself wasn't so difficult because the rented pictures that were pulled one at a time from the theater frame had the story written on their backs. All the performer had to do was read. But the audience was discriminating. Voice and expression were important. The drum had to be used to good effect—rumbling ominously to indicate danger, accentuating the action, surprising the audience. And all this was only to attract the audience. The kamishibai man made his living from selling the candies that the kids ate while watching his show.

Ask any elderly Japanese about kamishibai and you are likely to get a nostalgic response. But the men performing it were living precariously; they had no health or retirement insurance, and, of course, they had no income on rainy days. It was for this reason that so many of these men and their picture painters became Communists. They were struggling and needed organized help. Even today, the Communist link still exists. It was at a party given in honor of Seiji Asai's book about the history of labor unions and kamishibai that I first became aware of this. A Communist Party politician made a congratulatory speech, and after he disappeared there was a lot of discussion about Communism and the struggles of the past.

There were several kamishibai men at this party, as well as Koji Kada, one of the main painters for the theater. Misao Naito pulled out a harmonica and played for us, after which he gave a humorous speech. A natural performer, he was eager to entertain, and did so with ease. The others competed in their own ways—men in their seventies, all with that warm talkative quality peculiar to successful festival merchants.

A few weeks later, Mr. Naito gave his first performance in thirty years at the Katsushika Techno-Plaza. Mr. Naito's appeal was obvious from the start in his smile, his gruff voice, his ease and shine with the audience. But we were indoors, the children were used to TV, and a microphone was in full squeak. It was a complicated story, Golden Bat, about the war—one of the few original picture sets that had not been lost.

During the performance the adults recalled those afternoons when they had sat on the ground, chewed on candy, and puzzled over quizzes while watching this theater. It had been their sole entertainment after school—they had had no cram schools, no TV, no computer games. If they could bite a pink rice cracker into a certain animal figure, they would get a prize; if they could crack the quiz they would win free candy. Some thirty years had passed, but the parents at the Techno-Plaza were playing with the old toys and eating candy, enraptured. Their kids stood nearby with bored-looking expressions.

Today, there is still one kamishibai man working in Tokyo. He appears occasionally near the Nippori JR Station. He is worth searching for because he is the last chance to see the real thing. He works outside, regaling his audiences in the traditional way, without microphones, electric lights, or other modern paraphernalia.