Japanese Picture Books Research Articles

How are mental state references represented in English and Japanese picture books? An analysis of the frequency of emotional and cognitive words and their relation to the self or others

AbstractThe text of picture books is a fertile source through which young children learn about mental states. By focusing on English and Japanese books (N = 100; for children aged 3–5 years) as respective representatives of independent and interdependent cultures, the present study examined the cultural differences in the use of two types of mental state language: emotion and cognition. While our findings revealed no cultural differences in emotional word tokens or types, cognitive word tokens and types were higher in English picture books than in Japanese ones. Importantly, English picture books exhibited more self‐oriented mental state references, while Japanese picture books had more other‐oriented mental state references. Our study suggests that mental state references in picture books reflect culture‐specific characteristics.

Japanese Picturebooks. 100 Years, 100 Illustrators, 100 Books by Yukiko Hiromatsu (review)

Japanese Picturebooks. 100 Years, 100 Illustrators, 100 Books by Yukiko Hiromatsu (review)

絵本の読み聞かせによる日韓表現考察が日本語学習者に与え る影響: 初級翻訳レベルを中心に

This study aims to investigate how the differences in expression caused by different ways of how to see and think affect the students learning Japanese at basic levels. The participants were 30 Korean students, learning translation into Japanese at basic levels. In the class, they read Japanese picture books and their Korean version ones and discussed the differences between them. A simple survey was conducted, and a m ini-exam w as g iven. The participants recognized the difference in how to see and how to think between the two languages, such as why particular expressions were used. The results showed an effect on enhancing their learning motivation and it also confirmed that there is an effect enhancing the learning motivation in the students who were interested in reading picture books while sitting in a circular fashion. In addition, the mini-exam results showed an improvement in the students' interest and concentration in class. As can be seen from these results, recognizing the difference between Korean and Japanese expressions in picture books can positively impact on raising students’ interest, motivation, and enthusiasm in beginner level of learners of Japanese.

‘Can You Hear My Cry?’ Representing War and Trauma in Picturebooks for Peace from China, South Korea, and Japan

This article discusses the Picturebooks for Peace series, a collaboration between China, South Korea, and Japan focusing primarily upon World War II. In examining this series, we ask what these works are testifying to, how they represent trauma, and how picturebooks from countries with distinct political and cultural outlooks have been conceived and received in the different milieus. Our major contention is that it is through the manipulation of time and space that the creators of these works seek to persuade readers of the validity of their message. We look first at the picturebooks from China and South Korea, which share an ideological position inasmuch as they use the trauma caused by the Japanese invasion and its aftermath (including the Korean War) to criticise war's inhumanity. The second part of the article deals with the four Japanese picturebooks, which reflect on the reasons for or essence of war. The article then discusses the narrative and aesthetic devices these books employ to represent war.

Japanese Picturebooks for Children in the Fight against COVID-19

Japanese Picturebooks for Children in the Fight against COVID-19

Cultural Differences in Visual Contents in Picture Books.

Previous studies investigating cultural differences in attention and perception have shown that individuals from Western countries (e. g., the U.S.) perceive more analytically whereas individuals from East Asian countries (e.g., Japan) perceive more holistically (e.g., Nisbett and Miyamoto, 2005). These differences have been shown in children as young as 3 years old (Kuwabara and Smith, 2016). To reflect cultural influences on cognition, specifically on attention and perception, this study investigated potential differences in the visual environment. In this study, we focused on one of such visual environments that young children are exposed to regularly and influence other domains of development, picture books (Horst and Houston-Price, 2015). Thirty seven U.S. picture books and 37 Japanese picture books were coded for visual contents—how visually crowded—by computer software from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and human coders. Results show that the U.S. picture books are more visually crowded than the Japanese books by the software, but contained more objects than the Japanese books as expected, which reflect well with the cultural differences in attention observed in young children in previous studies. However, the results differed based on the target ages of the books. The implication of the current study is discussed as a reflection of the mutual constitution between culture and psyche.

A Study on the Publishing Korean Translation of Japanese Picture Books in Korean Book Market

국내 어린이책 출판시장에서 일본 그림책의 국내 번역출판은 그림책 장르에 대한 관심 증가뿐만 아니라, 그림책을 흥미롭고 매력적인 출판콘텐츠로 인식되는데 영향을 미쳤다. 그러나 지금까지 일본 그림책 번역출판에 대한 역사적 배경과 그에 얽힌 사실들에 대해서는 구체적으로 다루지 못했다. 이에 국내 어린이책 출판시장의 시대적 배경을 간략하게 살펴보고, 일본 그림책을 가장 많이 전문적으로 출판했던 출판사의 사료를 중심으로, 번역출판 과정에서 발생했던 문제점들을 분석했다. 특히 저작권에 대한 이해와 로열티 개념, 편집과정에서의 갈등, 그림책이라는 출판 장르를 국내 독자들에게 알리기 위해 실시했던 마케팅 기법, 제작공정과 원고를 전달받는 과정에 발생했던 역사적 사실들을 짚어보고자 했다. 아울러 최근 국내에서 일본 그림책의 판매 감소 및 신간 번역출판이 둔화되고 있는 상황에서 본 소고를 통해 일본 그림책 번역출판에 대한 고민을 나누어 보고자 한다.One of the reasons that interest in picture book genres in Korea’s children’s book publishing market has increased and picture books have been recognized as interesting and attractive contents was the Korean translation of Japanese picture books. However, the historical background of Korean translation of Japanese picture books and the facts related to it have not been discussed in detail. Therefore, this paper discusses the background of the children’s book publishing market in Korea briefly and analyzes the problems that occurred during the publishing process centering on the contents of the Korean publishing company, which professionally translated Japanese picture books. It especially examines the understanding of copyright, the concept of royalty, the conflicts in the editing process, marketing techniques that were used to inform Korean readers about the genre of picture books, and the historical facts that occurred during the process of receiving manuscripts in the production process. It also discusses the recent decline in the sales of Japanese picture books in Korea and the decreasing frequency of new Japanese picture book publications.

Stories of the Ainu: The Oldest Indigenous People in Japanese Children’s Literature

The Ainu are Japan’s oldest indigenous people, and they have survived and maintained their culture from the Late Paleolithic Period through today. However, the Japanese government did not formally recognize the Ainu until 2008. The visibility of the Ainu in literature is limited, especially in realism-based genres such as historical fiction and contemporary realistic fiction, but they do appear in fantasy stories and traditional folk literature. The Ainu play the role of familiar strangers in Japanese children’s literature. Arjun Appadurai argues that imagination has grown a collective social product while fantasies are private and even individual (7). The idea of the Ainu as neighbors in Japanese nationhood has appeared in the literary world as collective forms of imagination in which they are depicted as ancient, mysterious people who are deep parts of nature. Using Appadurai’s distinction between imagination and fantasy and a framework of postcolonial ecocriticism, we studied representations of the Ainu in Japanese picture books. Laura Wright examines the ways that authors of fiction represent postcolonial landscapes and environmental issues and how “the realm of the imaginary” is positioned within postcolonialism and environmentalism (1). Ecocritical themes in Ainu folk literature include respecting nature and appreciating what is given by the Earth. Ainu culture is viewed through its epics, myths, and folklore, and a range of ecocritical themes that mirror contemporary Ainu life are brought up. This paper concludes that Ainu fantasy texts for Japanese children convey ecocritical values and support cultural ecoliteracy. The development of cultural ecoliteracy leads to a critique of the anti-ecological effects of ruling-class culture, which requires that humanity be defined by its superiority over lesser humans, animals, nature, and all that is “other” (Gaard 326). The significant lack of Ainu presences in historical and contemporary stories reinforce the Ainu people’s long standing status as one of the most marginalized and stereotyped groups in the literature.

Why not Japanese names? Reader response to character name translation

Children’s literature invariably reflects the views of adults. Likewise, what they think is desirable or not for children is also reflected in children’s literature translations. Yet adult assumptions, or ideology, may not always be in line with how children actually respond. This paper delves into this issue of ideology in terms of character name translation in Japanese picturebooks translated into Korean. While the majority of source text names are retained in English-to-Korean translations through transliteration, they are often changed into Korean names in Japanese-to-Korean translations. Interviews and an online questionnaire survey were conducted with Korean adult readers to find out how they respond to such differences, followed by an experiment with Korean children to see whether what adults think, revealed through the interviews and a survey, is consistent with how children actually respond. This paper hopes to shed light on how adult ideology affects children’s book translation, and how this can sometimes be misleading to children.

Endlessly Variegated Pictures: A Pictorial Encyclopedia of Old Japanese Life (An Introduction to Hokusai Mangaas Full Edition with Commentaries)

Hokusai Manga (HM) is the biggest and the best known work of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) which consists of ca. 900 pp. published in 15 volumes from 1814 to 1875. This publication discusses the phenomenon of HM and its place in the context of Japanese picture books. Was it a drawing manual or comic cartoons or perhaps a pictorial encyclopedia? What are the historical meanings and etymology of the word manga? The special attention is devoted to the principles of compilation of HM and to the ways of organization of the compositional unity of its volumes. This research offers a major revision of the textual nature of this famous, yet insufficiently studied, masterpiece. Contrary to the common belief that HM is a chaotic jumble of random disjointed pictures, every volume is actually composed as a sophisticated whole with the help of elaborate schemata deeply imbedded in the traditional Japanese ways of textual organization.

Hokusai Manga: Contextualisation of Its Title and Genre

Is devoted to Manga as the biggest and the best­known work of Hokusai (北斎, 1760-1849). The paper discusses the phenomenon of Hokusai Manga and its place in the context of Japanese picture books. Was it a drawing manual or comic cartoons or perhaps a pictorial encyclopedia? What are the historical meanings and etymology of the word manga and its little­understood supra­heading “Denshin Kaishu”?

Envisioning the Shôjo Aesthetic in Illustrations of Miyazawa Kenji’s Literature.

Despite an ever-growing body of scholarship on the shôjo (girl) in manga and anime, little has been written about representations of the ‘girl’ in Japanese picture books. Shôjo literature and culture have grown exponentially in Japan since about the 1980s, but there has been a tendency in popular media to overemphasise the 'cute', disempowering aspects of the ‘girl’. By using Takahara Eiri's (1999) concept of “girl consciousness” and Honda Masuko's (1992) envisioning of the girl’s imagined freedom through a hirahira (fluttering) aesthetic, notions of the powerless or mindlessly consuming shôjo can be dispelled. Such concepts help demonstrate that the girl ‘has her own creative, critical and cultural, if not social or political, power’ (Aoyama 2008: 286). 
 
 This paper examines the shôjo tropes in contemporary illustrations that were produced to accompany two tales by the renowned author Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933), Futago no Hoshi (Twin Stars) and Ginga Tetsudô no Yoru (Night of the Milky Way Railway). Although Kenji (as he is known) is not generally considered a shôjo author, some of his works incorporate gently transgressive shôjo themes reminiscent of, for example, Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana Monogatari (Flower Tales) from the 1920s. I argue that the current artwork of two award-winning artists, Makino Suzuko and Azuma Itsuko, reflects and enhances Kenji’s ‘girlish’ verbal images, bringing them to the fore in their accompanying imagery for Futago and Ginga by drawing on shôjo art, manga and literature. The artists thus bring into play intertextual references that occur not only across different historical temporalities but also through relations between the author, the artist, the text(s), the protagonists and the reading/viewing audience. The analysis of their striking artwork shows how they bring Kenji’s 1920s’ works firmly into the arena of the contemporary ‘girl’, expanding the abstract consciousness of the shôjo to emerging audiences in Japan.
 
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 This essay won the 2013 Inoue Yasushi Award for the best article or book chapter on Japanese literature published in Australia or New Zealand.

Translating Direction: Illustrations in Native and Translated Japanese Children's Literature

This paper examines the interaction of the visual and verbal texts for picture books and illustrated chapter books published in Japan. Japanese picture books are produced in both left-to-right and right-to-left gross textual directions. Visual-verbal interactions are examined for both directions, and the same kinds of interaction are found as for picture books produced in mono-directional languages such as English. Chapter books, however, are conventionally published in a right-to-left format. This means that unless some kind of action is taken by publishers, there is likely to be a conflict of direction between the visual and verbal texts. The publishing choices made for chapter books are discussed in terms of Even-Zohar's literary polysystem theory, and the reading effects of these choices are discussed in terms of Venuti's concepts of domestication and foreignization in translation.

Mental state expressions in US and Japanese children’s books

US children’s books are a rich source of information about mental states (Dyer, Shatz, & Wellman, 2000). Examining books from other cultures can determine whether and how such information is conveyed by other languages. Forty US and 40 Japanese picture books for preschoolers were compared. The books were coded for references to mental state via expressions in the texts. The sentential contexts of those expressions were further coded for individual or group-oriented connotations. Results revealed that mental state terms were highly frequent in both US and Japanese books. In addition, 9 of the 11 most frequent terms were the same across the two languages. Finally, the two sets of books did not differ significantly in the frequency of terms that had individual or group-oriented connotations. These findings suggest that children’s books convey not just culture-specific but universally useful information about mental states.

The Suffering Child's Plea for Peace in Japanese Picture Books

The Suffering Child's Plea for Peace in Japanese Picture Books