Episode 27: Japanese Children’s Literature

Check out Episode 27 of the Read Literature podcast.

Transcript available.

In this episode, we’re talking about Japanese children’s literature.

• The history of children’s literature in general
• The history of children’s literature in Japan
• And Sachiko Kashiwaba and Temple Alley Summer—a story that is about Japanese children’s literature (at least a little bit!)

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• Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa)

More by Sachiko Kashiwaba:

• “First Claw” (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa)
  • Read for free at Words without Borders.
• The House of the Lost on the Cape (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa)
• “House of Trust” in Tomo—Friendship through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa

RJL’s list of Japanese children’s books in English translation.

This episode also mentions:

• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol
• Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables by Eri Muraoka (translated by Cathy Hirano)
• Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman*
• Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe
• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson*
• The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss*
• The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald
• The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli*
• How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (translated by Anthea Bell)
• Gay-Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Mukerji*
• Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes*
• Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadano
• Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (translated by Richard Howard)
• M. C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton
• The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (translated by Ralph Manheim)
• Night on the Milky Way Train by Kenji Miyazawa (translated here by Roger Pulvers, but available in many translations)
• The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton*
• Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lingrid
• The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister (translated by J. Alison James)
• The Secret of the Blue Glass by Tomiko Inui (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
• A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park*
• Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars*
• The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon*
• The Thorn Puller by Hiromi Ito (translated by Jeffrey Angles)*
• The Whale That Fell in Love with the Submarine by Akiyuki Nosaka (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)*
• The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare*
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum*

*These stories are only mentioned in the extended version of the episode available to Patreon supporters.

Find Out More

“Through the Looking Glass: Has Children’s Books Have Grown Up” at NPR, 2016.

The official website of the Newbery Medal.

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The National Diet Library’s Japanese Children’s Literature: A History from the International Children’s Literature Collections. In English.

The Freer-Sackler Library’s collection of Illustrated Japanese books.

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCWBI) Japan’s Blog

A list of “One Hundred Japanese Books for Children (1868-1945”) from the International Institute for Children’s Literature, Osaka. In English.

On How Do You Live?—”How a Once-Banned Japanese Children’s Book Became a Classic… and the Next Studio Ghibli Film”, 2021. Note that Studio Ghibli’s move turned out to be completely unrelated to the novel, which is nevertheless worth reading.

My review of How Do You Live? in the Asian Review of Books, 2021.

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“A Japanese Author, Her Translator, a New Classic” at Kirkus, 2021. Laura Simeon interviews Sachiko Kashiwaba and Avery Fischer Udagawa.

The Japan Foundation New York Presents a Conversation with Kashiwaba Sachiko and Avery Fischer Udagawa, 2021. English and Japanese.

“Interviews with Tomo Contributors Author Sachiko Kashiwaba and Translator Avery Fischer Udagawa” at the Tomo Blog, 2012.

My review of Temple Alley Summer in the Asian Review of Books.

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Japanese Literature at Facebook

Japanese Literature at Goodreads

Other RJL Episodes of Interest:

• Episode 5: Setsuwa and Medieval Japanese Buddhism. A look at some of Japan’s earliest recorded folktales.
• Episode 6: High and Low Literature in Edo Japan. Includes a history of Japan’s early book culture. This episode is marked mature.
• Episode 8: Meiji Literature & Japan’s Most Famous Literary Cat. Includes a brief overview of the fall of the last shogun and the rise of Meiji Japan, including a look at Meiji-era education.
• Episode 9: The Women Writers of Meiji Japan. A fuller history of the generation of women writers in the late 1800s. Some of these women also took on roles as translators of children’s literature.
• Episode 10: Taisho Magazines and Akutagawa’s Vision of Hell. A history of Japan’s literary magazines.
• Episode 12: Japanese Literature in WWII. Discusses WWII-era censorship. This episode also addresses the work of Akiyuki Nosaka, which comes up in the extended episode for Patreon supporters.

Sources

Allen, Celeste. “‘Alice in Wonderland’ Changed Literature Forever, by Not Trying to Teach Kids, Just Entertain Them” at Timline.com, 2017. (free)

Copeland, Rebecca. Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan, U of HI Press, 2000.

–, ed. Women Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing, U of HI Press, 2006.

Doppo Kunikida. “On Women and Translation” in Women Critiqued: Translated Essays on Japanese Women’s Writing. Rebecca Copeland, ed. U of HI Press, 2006.

Frustuck, Sabine and Anne Walthall. “Introduction” in Multi-Sensory Histories of Children and Childhood in Japan, Sabine Frustuck and Anne Walthall, eds. UCA, 2017.

Grenby, M. O. “The Origins of Children’s Literature” at The British Library, 2014. (free)

Hewins, C. M. “The History of Children’s Books” in The Atlantic, 1888. (free)

Huffman, James L. Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan, University of Hawaii, 1997.

“Japanese Children’s Literature: A History from the International Library of Children’s Literature Collections.” National Diet Library, 2017. (free)

“Kashiwaba Sachiko” at SFE: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 2023. (free)

Kashiwaba Sachiko and Avery Fischer Udagawa. “JFNY Literary Series: Sachiko Kashiwaba x Avery Fischer Adagawa”, 2021. (free video)

Korniki, P. F. “Literacy Revisited: Some Reflections on Richard Rubinger’s Findings” in Monumenta Nipponica, 2001.

Mack, Edward. Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value. Duke, 2010.

Moretti, Laura. “Kanazoshi Revisited: The Beginnings of Japanese Popular Literature in Print” in Monumenta Nipponica, 2010.

Pinkerton, Byrd. Through the Looking Glass: How Children’s Books Have Grown Up. NPR, 2016. (free)

Rubinger, Richard. “From ‘Dark Corners’ into ‘The Light’: Literacy Studies in Modern Japan” in History of Education Quarterly, 1990.

Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories” (1947). (free)

Treat, John Whittier. “Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home: Shojo Culture and the Nostalgic Subject” in The Journal of Japanese Studies, 1993.

Wakabayashi, Judy. “Foreign Bones, Japanese Flesh: Translations and the Emergence of Modern Children’s Literature in Japan” in Japanese Language and Literature, 2008.