Sunny Seki, author-illustrator,
Yuko-Chan and the Daruma Doll: The Adventures of a Blind Japanese Girl Who Saves Her Village
Tuttle, 2012.

Age: 5 and up

Sunny Seki’s latest children’s book is set 200 years ago in the village of Takasaki, 90 miles from Tokyo, just after a devastating volcanic eruption of nearby (and still active) Mt. Asama. Yuko-chan, Seki’s spunky little fictional heroine, is a blind orphan, cared for by the monks at Daruma Temple there.

Yuko-chan’s intelligence, compassion and complete lack of self-pity are evident early in the story. She knows all about how Daruma (Bodhidharma to westerners) brought the Buddha’s teaching to China. Daruma was famous for continuing to meditate even after his arms and legs became numb. He exhorted followers, “If you fall seven times, you must pick yourself up eight times! You need strong faith, and the belief that you can accomplish your goals!”

The indomitable Yuko-chan, inspired by Daruma’s words, helps deliver food to bereft villagers who have lost their homes and farms. One day, she notices that her tea gourd always returns to upright after being dropped, and she likens it to Daruma, never giving up. She gets the villagers to begin painting gourds with Daruma’s famously fierce face. The Daruma dolls quickly gain popularity. Her ingenious idea provides a new livelihood for the community.

Takasaki is in fact famous today for its Daruma dolls. Visitors purchase the dolls with the eyes blank. They paint in one eye when they make a wish or vow and add the other when their goal is achieved. Actually an old tradition with a murky history, the eye painting has been criticized in recent years by Japanese organizations for the blind. Perhaps their protest inspired Seki’s story; it’s poetically appropriate that his vision-impaired little girl would resolve a village crisis with goal-inspiring, blank-eyed Daruma dolls.

Award-winning author-illustrator Sunny Seki brings the feisty and adorable Yuko-chan vividly to life in word and image. He captures the simple beauties of nature and the rustic built environment of the time as well. A Japanese translation follows the English text on each page, with hiragana (phonetic) symbols printed in superscript so novice Japanese readers can more easily follow the story. The back matter gives additional information about Daruma and the Daruma doll tradition. Tuttle’s expert design and high production quality further enhance the experience of Yuko-chan and the Daruma Doll. Its impact will deepen with repeated reading.

Charlotte Richardson
April 2012

Willamarie Moore, illustrated by Kazumi Wilds,
All About Japan: Stories, Songs, Crafts and More
Tuttle Publishing, 2011.

Age: 8-12

All About Japan presents an assorted array of information about Japan.  It’s a good contemporary introduction to the country’s culture, language and lifestyles.  There is a mix of the old (traditional festivals and folktales) and the new (anime and video games).  The book begins with a greeting from two typical Japanese children – a girl, Momoka, the only child of a professor mother and a business man living in the city, and Yuto, a boy with two younger siblings living in the countryside with their parents and grandparents.  The country of Japan is then presented through their eyes in a variety of sections entitled “Everyday Life,” “Holidays and Celebrations,” and “Language and Culture.”  Song, stories, foods and crafts are all presented to inform readers about the country. The illustrations by Kazumi Wilds are colorful and accurate in their portrayals of contemporary Japan.

My only quibble with this book is that it presents a somewhat too uniform picture of a country that I know is less homogeneous than it appears to be on the surface.  I would have liked to have seen mentioned the indigenous people of northern Japan (the Ainu), for example, and some mention also of the huge Korean diaspora (known in Japanese as Zainichi Kankokujin)  that has been present in the country for over a century.  Too often books about Japan pitched towards children neglect to mention these salient details of the country’s makeup.  But this is an error of omission that might see change in future editions.  This book is largely aimed at the North American reader, and it does a good job of presenting Japan in a general but engaging manner.  As well, in the back are listed good resources for further study, many of them easy-to-consult websites.  All About Japan is a highly interactive and fun way for children to learn about the country.

Sally Ito
January 2012

The Ainu are the indigenous people of northern Japan.  I have been reading about them lately through books like Kayano Shigeru’s The Ainu (Tuttle Publishing, 2004).  Kayano Shigeru, who died in 2006, was himself an Ainu and worked tirelessly to preserve and disseminate elements of Ainu culture to the world.

The Ainu had an oral tradition of tale-telling and one of their oral tales or songs known as kamuy yukar is translated into English by Kyoko Selden and given here on the website of the Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.  As typical of many oral tales, it is presented as poetry.  As it explains on the website, kamuy yukar are songs of gods and demi-gods.  This particular story is of the wind goddess, Pitatakamuy and her encounter with the demi-god Okikurumi.    It is a revealing tale insofar as it shows how the Ainu relate to their deities — they relate to their gods not just with reverence, awe and respect but they also challenge and chastise the gods for wanton and destructive behaviour!  I remember being surprised by that when I read The Song of the Cicada by Shizue Ukaji, another Ainu writer and storyteller.  The old woman swept away in the typhoon gets angry at the goddess who has caused the terrible typhoon much like the demi-god Okikurumi becomes angry with Pitatakamuy.

The Ainu have a rich oral tradition of poetic tale-telling, but little of it has been translated into English.  However, this is slowly changing with the efforts of a variety of scholars and students of the culture.  I’ve discovered a wonderful blog called Project Uepeker: Introducing the Ainu Oral Tradition to the English-Speaking World that is chock full of information about Ainu culture in English.   In fact, it was at this blog that I discovered a new book called Ainu Spirits Singing: The Living World of Chiri Yukie’s Ainu Shin’yoshu by Sarah Strong (University of Hawaii Press, 2011), a study and translation of Ainu kamuy yukar as originally translated into Japanese by Ainu writer Chiri Yukie.  I hope more developments like this keep happening and that word gets around about the oral storytelling traditions of this indigenous people of northern Japan.

Poetry Friday this week is hosted by Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe.

Written and illustrated by Eleanor B. Coerr, Japanese translation by Yumi Matsunari,
Circus Day in Japan
Tuttle Publishing, 2010.

Ages 6-8

When Joji-chan and his sister Koko-chan wake, they cannot contain their excitement. They are going to the circus! They race to light the charcoal fire, dash down to the rice fields to deliver their father’s lunch, and run to catch the train that will bring them to the big city housing the big circus tent. As the brother and sister delight in unfamiliar city sights, including a man dressed like a bull to advertise a local store, and a policeman on a box, directing traffic like a graceful ballerina, readers will delight in equally unfamiliar sights of Japanese culture and childhood. The siblings’ triumphant day peaks when the elephant of Joji-chan’s dreams finally arrives and they are chosen to ride it around the ring above the smiling faces of onlookers.

Originally published in 1953, this new bilingual edition of Circus Day in Japan captures the timelessness of childhood adventures, while introducing vivid details about life in Japan in the 1950s.  Illustration and text work hand in hand to integrate the familiar and the foreign, making Circus Day in Japan a perfect read-aloud for a story time librarian or a social studies teacher. For example, after Joji-chan hurries into the kitchen, where we read that his mother “Mrs. Shima was preparing lunch,” the accompanying illustration reveals what that might be, showing her with an oversize whole fish on the cutting board and a cleaver in hand. Such attention to detail makes the warmly illustrated text a continual nostalgic remembrance of childhood and exploration of Japanese life.

Universally beloved for Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, author and illustrator Eleanor B. Coerr found inspiration for Circus Day in Japan after visiting a local circus during a one-year stay in Japan as a newspaper reporter.  While it lacks the same captivating magic of Sadako, its lengthier text, plus the addition of the Japanese translation by Yumi Matsunari, make this a valuable resource for bilingual classrooms, and in both English and Japanese speaking homes, communities and countries. In addition to subtle cultural lessons, Coerr integrates a more instructive approach in the warm-hued illustrations, sprinkling language lessons composed of images, English and Japanese words, and phonetic pronunciation throughout the text.

Sara Hudson
July 2011

Norman Hinsdale Pitman,
The Chinese Wonder Book
Tuttle Publishing, 2011.

Ages 9-12

Though little is known about Norman Hinsdale Pitman (1876-1925) today, his effort to bring Chinese folklore to Western readers continues to be influential.  Indeed Pitman, who taught at Chinese colleges and authored several novels and short story collections, brought these ancient tales to a new audience much as the Brothers Grimm preserved the fairytales of central Europe for generations to enjoy.  These tales, not unlike those gathered by the Grimms in Europe, are full of magic, mysticism, and a certain amount of gore.

Tuttle’s latest edition of The Chinese Wonder Book, originally published in 1919, includes the beautiful and highly detailed full-color illustrations by Li Chu Tang originally published in the book’s first edition and printed here on high-quality glossy paper.  There is also an engaging foreword by Sylvia Li-Chun Lin, associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame.

The tales include some of the best known fairytales of China, among them  ‘The Golden Beetle or Why the Dog Hates the Cat’, ‘The Strange Tale of Doctor Dog’ and ‘The Talking Fish’. Many of the themes and even the plots and characters resemble those found in Western fairytales: but these are not your cleaned-up, Disneyfied stories.  Happy endings are in short supply, and the brutality is every bit as intense as that of the original tales of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen.  At the same time, there is lighter fare to be found in stories such as ‘Bamboo and the Turtle’ and ‘The Mad Goose and the Tiger Forest’, stories which will be enjoyed by even very young listeners.

In these rich and exciting tales, virtue, including hard work and filial piety, is rewarded, and wickedness is punished, though the version of justice reflected in the stories is clearly of a particular time and place and may not resonate with children of today.  For instance, it may seem of little consolation to be immortalized in a famous monument after an unjust death (‘The Great Bell’).  On the other hand, when a lazy thief and would-be liar turns his life around rather than be turned into a duck (‘The Man Who Would Not Scold’), children and their parents will delight in the tale’s humor and theme of redemption.

The Chinese Wonder Book has served as an introduction to the folk tales of classical China for generations and remains Pitman’s best-known work.  This lovely new edition will sit proudly alongside other folklore and fairytale collections and open up the world of ancient Chinese stories to today’s readers and generations yet to come.

Abigail Sawyer
June, 2011

He Zhihong and Guillaume Olive,
My First Book of Chinese Calligraphy
Tuttle Publishing, 2010.

Ages 9-12

Chinese calligraphy has always held a mysterious allure—at least to me and many others who grew up without this remarkable language in our lives. The fact that more than a billion of the earth’s inhabitants communicate using a language with such a complex writing system amazes me. My First Book of Chinese Calligraphy is an effective means of cutting through the mystery of this unique and ancient system while still preserving the mystique of Chinese calligraphy.

This attractive how-to book is a great introduction to this ancient Chinese art, though it should be stressed that it is very much an introduction and one that focuses on the technique and artistry of calligraphy more than on the practical aspects of learning written Chinese. The book gives an overview of Chinese writing and its evolution, introduces the concept of radicals, illustrates the eight basic strokes and how to write them, and discusses practical matters such as proper posture and tools.

Created by the husband-and-wife team of expert sinologist Guillaume Olive and illustrator He Zhihong, the book is both lively and informative. Actual photographs of a little girl, Mimi, using the “four treasures” of calligraphy (paper, ink, ink stone, and brush) depict proper posture and technique for the several characters introduced in the text. Readers are left to figure out for themselves how to write or paint the different characters based on what they have learned in the book about brush technique, character size and spacing, and stroke order.

Games and illustrations, both in the book and on the accompanying CD ROM, help reinforce the learning, and kids who enjoy this introduction will be eager to expand their knowledge of Chinese so that they might begin writing sentences and eventually written communication. My First Book of Chinese Calligraphy is approachable and entertaining for the budding scholar of Chinese as well as the more experienced student who may be interested in calligraphic principles or in the writing system’s history.

Abigail Sawyer
June 2011