What Is Kamishibai?

Kamishibai is a traditional form of picture card storytelling from Japan that has its origins in early Buddhist picture scrolls. A kamishibai consists of a series of illustrated picture cards showing the events of a story in order. The text of the story is written on the reverse of the cards so that the story can be read while the pictures are shown to an audience. Storytellers travelled between villages using the picture cards to tell stories.

What we do...

We offer traditional interactive kamishibai performances for age groups from nursery to P7. Along side the kamishibai stories we sing Japanese and Scottish songs, use costume and teach Japanese vocabulary. We can cater for audiences from small groups to whole schools.

In addition to performances we provide workshops where children have the opportunity to create and use kamishibai. We also provide CPD for educators in the use of kamishiabi in literacy and cross-curricular learning.