National Diet Library Newsletter
No. 166, April 2009
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Selections from NDL Collection
The Children’s Japan by Mrs. W. H. Smith (1892)
Chirimen-bon: picture books disseminated to overseas
Yukiko MATSUO
Book Service Division
Public Services Department
This is a translation of the article of the same title
in the NDL Monthly Bulletin No. 571 (October 2008).
Front cover of The Children’s Japan
The cover of this book is adorned with a picture in brilliant color. Taking a closer look, you will find fine crinkles all over its surface. The paper is so supple that it fits into your hand with a surprisingly soft texture. This kind of illustrated book in European languages and bound in Japanese style is called chirimen-bon (or chirimen book). The word chirimen originally means crape, silk fabric, and the paper finely wrinkled up, which has a similar appearance to crape, was used for books mainly in the Meiji era (1868-1912).
The process of making a chirimen book is rather complicated. The first thing is to make the Japanese paper. A wood engraver makes a printing block based on pictures drawn by a painter, and a printer puts prints on the paper multiple times with different colors. Texts are laid out to make a good balance with the illustrations on each page, and are added. Supposedly, some printers were treating exclusively pictures and others were specialized in texts.
Surface of chirimen (crape) paper (a part enlarged from p.7)
According to the experiment of reproduction conducted by the Open University of Japan Library, the crinkled paper is an 84 % reduction of the original paper.
The process of crinkling the paper is as follows. Several sheets of Japanese paper printed with illustrations and texts, slightly moistened, are rolled into a cylinder, which is then placed with the long side vertical, and compressed from above. The same process of reopening the sheets, rolling them again, and pressing, is repeated more than ten times, changing each time the direction of the sheets when re-rolling. In this way, the Japanese crape paper finally comes out. The pages are aligned on the edges, cut, and bound with threads, to become a book at last.
Takejiro Hasegawa is well known as publisher of chirimen books. He was originally engaged in a store management and in commerce, taking advantage of his ability in foreign languages. Then he started to import, sell and publish textbooks for learning foreign languages, establishing a company named "Kobunsha," which launched around 1885 the publication of an illustrated "Japanese Fairy Tale Series" in European languages.
Some of the extant chirimen books have equivalents with the same texts and pictures, but printed on plain paper. These books were probably published for Japanese learners of foreign languages.
The ones printed on chirimen paper, on the other hand, attracted foreigners by their peculiar texture, and became popular as souvenirs of Japan with excellent translations and beautiful Japanese style illustrations. Some renowned people are named on the list of translators for this series, among others, Basil Hall Chamberlain, well known for his English translation of the Ko-Ji-Ki and his book Things Japanese and Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, author of the Kwaidan. This shows the broad network of connections Takejiro had at the time. With many different kinds of translators, versions in many other languages besides English, including German, French and Spanish, were issued. The book contents also went beyond fairy tales, introducing overseas translations of Japanese poems and classic literature, and "Japan seen by foreign people" treating the daily lives of Japanese people, etc.
With the wave of mass publications in the Taisho era (1912-1926) and early Showa era (1926-1989), however, publications using this special paper diminished to only a small amount of calendars and other special products, as the chirimen books did not naturally fit in with mass production. On the other hand, the exact same paper cannot be reproduced even with the current technology, which enables us to make a rough approximation, because we cannot get the raw materials used at the time.
p. 8-9
The character "T" from the first word on this page is drawn as the design of a kite, a part of the picture on the left page depicting various children’s games. The illustration has dynamism and energy with children running around, and featuring a shuttlecock hit so high into the air that it goes beyond the page frame.
The book introduced here is rather large-sized among chirimen books. The author, about whom we do not know much except for the description in the colophon: "Igirisujin Sumisu Fujin (Mrs. Smith, English lady)," describes freely and easily children’s daily life in Japan as well as its background of traditional Japanese lifestyle. Illustrations on each page, corresponding well to the texts, depict Japanese culture and customs with a rich sensibility. The witty and artful treatment of texts and pictures by Takejiro, who really enjoyed himself producing a book, can be seen in the arrangement of the title words on the front cover and of the first character of a chapter embedded in the illustrations.
p. 17
The character "J" from "JAPANESE" takes the shape of the paper strip of a wind bell. The picture introduces Japanese manners such as taking off shoes before entering a house and bowing in salutation. The fluttering strip makes us feel the breeze blowing through the house.
The Printer of this book, Yasushichi Hirose, was an excellent artisan-printer belonging to Takejiro’s wife’s family Komiya. His name appears as the printer of a number of chirimen books.
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Bibliographic information of this book |
Related article: Chirimen-bon: books made of Chirimen Paper (crepe paper) (NDL Newsletter No. 135, February 2004)
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