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Paper short abstract

This research examines how kamishibai, once tied to state propaganda and considered obsolete, has re-emerged as a medium for communicating disaster experiences in Japan, mediating individual testimony and visual storytelling while raising concerns about the instrumentalization of trauma.

Paper long abstract

Narrating traumatic events presents profound challenges, yet such experiences also generate innovative forms of storytelling that convey lived realities and communicate moral or educational messages. Kamishibai, a traditional Japanese form of visual storytelling that pairs illustrated panels with oral narration, exemplifies this dynamic. Popular as street entertainment in the early twentieth century, it later served as a vehicle for wartime propaganda before declining in the 1960s. In recent decades, however, kamishibai has experienced a notable revival, particularly as a means of recounting personal experiences of disaster. This research asks how a medium once tied to state propaganda and presumed nearly obsolete has re-emerged as a compelling tool for communicating disaster experiences in contemporary Japan. Drawing on anthropology, history, and material culture studies, we examine kamishibai’s unique features that make it suited to post-disaster storytelling: its embodied and performative qualities, its tactile and visual immediacy, and its grounding in communal memory practices. We argue that the renewed appeal of kamishibai stems not only from its accessibility and emotional resonance but also from its capacity to mediate between individual testimony and collective memory in the aftermath of trauma. At the same time, the medium’s historical entanglement with shifting political and educational agendas underscores the need to remain attentive to the risks of instrumentalizing traumatic narratives. Through this lens, kamishibai emerges as a significant and ambivalent cultural form within Japan’s evolving landscape of disaster storytelling.