The Asian Conference on Media, Communication and Film 2022: Official Conference Proceedings

Abstract

Histories of kamishibai (paper theater) typically trace its roots to early magic lantern shows, but Iwamoto Kenji questions this development: "At a time when many different audiovisual technologies were tied in some way to modern scientific instruments, kamishibai was made of just pictures and narrative and seemed to be a throwback to Edo-period spectacles" (2002). Iwamoto's dismissal of kamishibai as a "throwback" exposes the limitations of examining any medium in isolation rather than viewing it within an interconnected media ecology. Lyons and Plunkett argue, "In contemporary media practice, 'convergence' stands for the dominance of fusion and transferability between different forms…we are in an era in which media are always used in relation to each other" (2007). While acknowledging that the scale and interconnectedness of new media may be unprecedented, this paper asks whether theories of convergence in media ecologies may also provide new opportunities to reassess older media formats. Through a historical mapping of the transnationally shifting ecologies of magic lanterns and kamishibai through a series of omocha-e (toy-prints) from the Cotsen Children's Library collection (Princeton University Library), this paper demonstrates that kamishibai not only converged with magic-lantern technology through the mediation of omocha-e, but also that the two audio-visual media-kamishibai and magic lanternscontinued to develop in relation to each other, as they moved in tandem over time. The imaginative leap that transferred cinematic animation techniques to paper offers insights into kamishibai's resilience as a medium and its growing popularity around the world today.