The Suffering Child's Plea for Peace in Japanese Picture Books

The Suffering Child's Plea for Peace in Japanese Picture Books What have we to say to our children about peace and war in these troubled times? What have we to offer in the books which we create for them? One offering is The Big Book for Peace, which appeared last fall and has already sold 140,000 copies. It is a collection of stories, poems, and pictures on the theme of peace. The participating artists and illustrators are donating their royalties to five peace groups. It is a timely publication, a chorus of United States authors, illustrators, and publishers singing together about their desire for world peace. What are other efforts? A search through Bernstein and Rudman's 1989 work. Books to Help Children Cope with Separation and Loss: An Annotated Bibliography, Rudman's 1976 work. Children's Literature: An Issues Approach, and an extensive bibliography on peace and war compiled by the Young People's Services Staff of the Berkeley Public Library indicates a tendency on the part of U.S. authors to speak to younger children allegorically of war, say, for example, as in Dr. Seuss' Butter Battle Book. We here in the United States leave it to authors and illustrators from other countries to speak to younger children realistically about war. Rose Blanche by Christophe Gallaz and Roberto Innocent i , originally published in French by a Swiss publisher. The Angel with a Mouth Organ by Australian author Christobel Mattingley, and War Boy, a new book by British author Michael Foreman, are three such examples of foreign imports. Besides these are two more books from Japan, Hiroshima no Pika by Toshi Maruki, and a recently published autobiographical book, Mv Hiroshima, by Junko Morimoto . The Little Weaver of Thai-Yen Village by Vietnamese American author Tran-Khan-Tuyet, and The Children We Remember by Chana Abells, a book about the Holocaust, are the only two realistic books about war that are originally U.S. publications that I could identify. I think that we Americans struggle with the idea of illustrating scenes of war for children. We approach the subject of death and suffering in general with caution. Masha Rudman noted in her aforementioned 1976 work that up until then children' s books dealing realistically with death were almost considered in the same category as pornography (69) . At that time she found that war was almost always treated allegorically (Rudman 115) . Carol Ordal' s 1983 study on death as seen in books suitable for young children finds that if anything or anyone dies, it is a pet, a grandparent, or a parent. Children dying is almost non-existent in modern United States children's literature (Ordal 250) except in books such as those I listed above which have been imported from other countries. 154 How do other cultures speak about war and peace in the books which they create for children? Today I would like to look at books by Japanese children's authors and illustrators, whose works for younger readers present a different perspective from our own on war and suffering, and who plea for peace in their own way. Many Japanese children's books depict wartime experiences. Yoshiko Kogochi, in her article, "The Depiction of World War Il in Japanese Books for Children, " identifies these books as a genre of Japanese children's books. Kogochi does not, however, discuss picture books, although many examples of these also exist. Besides the two I mentioned earlier, Gennosuke Nagasaki's Empitsu Bina (The Pencil Dolls) , Hiroyuki Takahashi's Chironuppu no Kitsune (The Foxes of Chironuppu) , and Yoshio Kurusu's Mura !chiban no Sakura no Ki (The Best Cherry Blossom Tree of the Village) are just some titles. I have chosen four representative books to talk about today: Hiroshima no Pika and My Hiroshima, because they have appeared in English, and for contrast, two which have not, Okori Jizo by Yuko Yamaguchi and Kuroi Cho by Miyoko Matsutani. The first book, Hiroshima no Pika, is one with which many are likely to be familiar. Its author and illustrator, Toshi Maruki, and her husband, Iri Maruki, are both artists and nuclear disarmament activists. The story Toshi Maruki tells is based upon a...