2. Women were prominent among the Western translators who helped produce chirimen books.
The translators included Western scholars, missionaries, and government officials. Some of the most prolific were women. Kate James, who focused on retelling Japanese classical stories, translated more chirimen titles into English than any other translator, according to the exhibit text.
“When you start studying crêpe-paper books, you find her name everywhere,” Yamamoto said, adding that James’ husband was stationed in Japan with the British Navy.
An example of James’ work on view is her translation of a story about two forgetful brothers from the Konjaku monogatarishu (“Anthology of Tales Old and New”), a collection of more than 1,000 stories from Japan’s late Heian period, 794 to 1185 C.E.
“That night he dreamed a dream, and to his dream the events of the next day were clearly revealed,” reads her translation. “And so every night in his vision it was shown to him what would happen, and in what manner he should act.”
The brightly colored illustration on the opposite page from the text shows the character sleeping. A wispy thought bubble traverses the pages and blends into an illustration of the sleeping character’s dream.
Lafcadio Hearn and British Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain praised the quality of James’ work, Nakamura said.
3. Chirimen books were collaborations between Japanese illustrators and Western translators.
The illustrators tended to be students of traditional Japanese-style painting, but were also interested in Western artistic techniques, Yamamoto said.
Exposure to Western stories and art gave them the ample opportunity to consider the directions that Japanese art could take, he said. Some of the artists were well known while others were obscure.
Kobayashi Eitaku, a renowned artist, was a leading illustrator of chirimen books, according to the exhibit label. An 1886 copy of “The Serpent with Eight Heads,” translated by Basil Hall Chamberlain, features Eitaku’s illustration of the titular beast, a scaly monster with a coiled tail. Its fearsome heads twist together in a nightmarish knot.