ABSTRACT
As mentioned in the introduction, kamishibai in its current format developed in Japan in the early 20th century out of a national fascination with “moving pictures” or silent film. The inventors of kamishibai deliberately emulated visual techniques from film “to create a sense of dynamic movement from one card to the next so that the images could play an active role in narrating the events” (McGowan 2010, 5). This accentuates what Burn and Parker (2003) have dubbed the kineikonic mode (Greek for “moving image”) and is in sharp contrast to the visual modes that are conventionally favored in classrooms. In “Multiliteracies and a Metalanguage for the Moving Image: Multimodal Analysis of a Claymation Movie,” Kathy Mills observes that “The kineikonic mode differs in particular ways to the semiotic codes and conventions of still images, upon which existing multimodal grammars for teachers and students have tended to focus” (2008, 3; emphasis added). Because teachers and students tend to focus primarily on the creation of still images, kamishibai illustration challenges conventions of drawing that are subtly and sometimes overtly enforced in classrooms.
