golden age of kamishibai (picture theater) was right after the war when many people were out of work. At this time there were over 3,000 kamishibai in Tokyo alone. It was a job that required little capital to pursue—a bicycle, a drum, and a frame for the theater with drawers under it for candy. The hand-painted pictures that were displayed in the frame were rented by the month. The trick was having the kind of candy kids liked and being able to spin a yarn in an engrossing way. Every day, just at the height of the drama, the play was stopped, to be continued in installments.
The storytelling itself wasn't so difficult because the rented pictures that were pulled one at a time from the theater frame had the story written on their backs. All the performer had to do was read. But the audience was discriminating. Voice and expression were important. The drum had to be used to good effect—rumbling ominously to indicate danger, accentuating the action, surprising the audience. And all this was only to attract the audience. The kamishibai man made his living from selling the candies that the kids ate while watching his show.
Ask any elderly Japanese about kamishibai and you are likely to get a nostalgic response. But the men performing it were living precariously; they had no health or retirement insurance, and, of course, they had no income on rainy days. It was for this reason that so many of these men and their picture painters became Communists. They were struggling and needed organized help. Even today, the Communist link still exists. It was at a party given in honor of Seiji Asai's book about the history of labor unions and kamishibai that I first became aware of this. A Communist Party politician made a congratulatory speech, and after he disappeared there was a lot of discussion about Communism and the struggles of the past.
There were several kamishibai men at this party, as well as Koji Kada, one of the main painters for the theater. Misao Naito pulled out a harmonica and played for us, after which he gave a humorous speech. A natural performer, he was eager to entertain, and did so with ease. The others competed in their own ways—men in their seventies, all with that warm talkative quality peculiar to successful festival merchants.
A few weeks later, Mr. Naito gave his first performance in thirty years at the Katsushika Techno-Plaza. Mr. Naito's appeal was obvious from the start in his smile, his gruff voice, his ease and shine with the audience. But we were indoors, the children were used to TV, and a microphone was in full squeak. It was a complicated story, Golden Bat, about the war—one of the few original picture sets that had not been lost.
During the performance the adults recalled those afternoons when they had sat on the ground, chewed on candy, and puzzled over quizzes while watching this theater. It had been their sole entertainment after school—they had had no cram schools, no TV, no computer games. If they could bite a pink rice cracker into a certain animal figure, they would get a prize; if they could crack the quiz they would win free candy. Some thirty years had passed, but the parents at the Techno-Plaza were playing with the old toys and eating candy, enraptured. Their kids stood nearby with bored-looking expressions.
Today, there is still one kamishibai man working in Tokyo. He appears occasionally near the Nippori JR Station. He is worth searching for because he is the last chance to see the real thing. He works outside, regaling his audiences in the traditional way, without microphones, electric lights, or other modern paraphernalia.
Potato Vendors
Do you know the night ramen vendor's distinctive three-toned whistle? How about the knife sharpener's or the bamboo seller's special calls? Or the tofu man's whistle? They can still be heard in Tokyo's shitamachi (old, working-class neighborhoods). Certainly one call that everyone can recognize is the yakiimo man's. If you're lucky, you'll hear it coming from a cart pushed along the street and not from one of those trucks that fume up our environment. Who are these men who brave the cold to sell us those delicious potatoes? What do they do from late March to November when the season is over? Their life is not easy, and their tradition continues from centuries ago.
Monouri, or street vendors, were at work in the Heian Period (794-1185) although it wasn't until the Muromachi Period (fourteenth century) that they became a vital part of the economic system. They not only sold food, tools, toys, medicine, and small things for daily use, but some also bought used articles such as old clothes, umbrellas, and metal, and still others served as repairmen for knives, clogs, and the like. Some monouri specialized in seasonal goods such as decorations for the New Year, irises for Boy's Day, goldfish for summer, lanterns for Obon, and insects for children in the summer.
The life of the monouri was a hard one. During the Edo Period (1603-1868) selling became desperately competitive, and vendors began to don exotic costumes, use amusing and attention-getting calls, and even perform engaging antics in order to attract business.
The tojiname uri, for instance, who sold candies to children, wore Chinese clothes and a Chinese hat. He played a flute and drum, and delighted his young audience with dancing whenever he made a sale. The takarabune uri, active until the mid-Meiji Era, sold prints of the Seven Lucky Gods (shichifukujin) that you see here and there every New Year. People slept with these prints under their pillows to induce a lucky dream for the year. Soba vendors hung furin (chimes) on the carriers worn on their backs and jangled their way along the narrow streets. It must have been a noisy city even without the help of motorcycles and loudspeakers.
Although yakiimo (baked sweet potatoes) were popular in the Edo Period, they were sold only in stores—probably due to fire laws. Only boiled and steamed potatoes were sold by the street vendors. Today, in shitamachi, yakiimo are baked in pebbles that are heated by a wood-burning stove in the bottom of a wooden cart. Once fully cooked (after about one hour), they are raked out of the pebbles and placed in the adjacent warming compartment until they are sold.
My favorite yakiimo man, Mr. Nagao, is from Aomori. I came to know him because of his call. A veteran minyo and enka (traditional Japanese styles of singing) performer, his call is a distinct and beautiful distraction among the confusion of everyday noise. He is one of twelve men who are under his oyakata (boss) in the Ueno area. He says there are about ten bosses in Tokyo now, and each is in charge of a certain area. Mr. Nagao has been working my street for twenty winters. He sleeps in a nearby six-mat room that he shares with two older yakiimo men in their seventies, also from the Tohoku district.
Mr. Nagao is a rice farmer. After the harvest at the end of October, he comes to Tokyo to work until the end of March while his rice paddies are under snow. He sells sweet potatoes from 10:00 A.M. until 9 or 10:00 P.M., six days a week. He cooks for himself in his small room and, occasionally, goes out for drinks and karaoke at a local bar. Being away from home and eating the limited menu that he cooks are the hardest parts of his job, he says.
Just as in the Edo Period, he must rent his cart (2,500 yen a month) and buy potatoes (9,000 yen per 40 kilograms) from his oyakata. Things are tight now. As recently as 1981, he sometimes sold 100 kilograms of potatoes per day, but now he is lucky if he sells 20. At about 600 yen per kilogram, this doesn't leave much to take home after rent, food, and expenses. His most frequent customers, he says, are middle-aged women, and the best time of day for business is 3:00 P.M. The tall, noiseproof new buildings and the popularity of Western-style candy have reduced his sales.
At the end of last year he wasn't sure whether it would be worth his while to come again this season. So, one day in late October when we heard his distinctive cry, we smiled, knowing he was back. Whether he'll be back again next year is another question. Have you had a yakiimo lately?
