Reading children's books from Japan

THE BARBER’S DILEMMA AND OTHER STORIES FROM MANMARU STREET

By Koki Oguma and Gita Wolf, illustrations by the author, Tara Books, 2017, pp. 44, Rs. 450.

Young children play in the most unstructured manner. A child holding a ladle may decide it is a mike and begin to sing a song. Moments later, the ladle becomes an umbrella, or a bus, or a spoon to stir her mother's coffee. A game of pretend swordsmanship transforms into one playing with fallen flowers and seeds, or a classroom game. There is a marvellous sense of fluidity in the way children negotiate their way through a world that seems infinitely wondrous and ever-changing.



Koki Oguma's stories and illustrations attempt this unstructured, even stream-of-consciousness method of negotiating with the world. He is an art teacher in Tokyo and created this book when he was artist-in-residence at Tara Books, Chennai, a couple of years ago. Oguma writes about the people who live and work and play on Manmaru Street. 

There's Ms. Oda who made a giant candy which reminds her of a slide, and so she and her friend slide down the candy, licking it as they go along.

And there's Mr. Tuchida who wants to build a house on his head. As the house takes shape, his neck begins to hurt with the weight of the bricks. A kind builder gently puts a compress on it. 






Mr. Isoda, a fisherman, listens to the river and begins to speak its language. HeMr. is so good at it, that a shoal of fish mistake his mouth for the river and enter it. Oguma writes, "Mr. Isoda didn't mind at all."

Oguma's tales are more like slice-of-life renditions. The word 'stories' in the title may mislead you into expecting traditionally structured tales. But as you read further, you realise that these are tales of the everyday - of the ridiculous, the philosophical, the quirkiness, and the profundity in the quotidian.

The spare quality of the text is complemented by the rich creativity of the drawings. Oguma's paintings are full of whimsy and flights of fancy rendered in a pastel palette which gives it a dream-like feel. 

Where are the children's books from non-English speaking countries?

It’s strange that while printed children’s literature in India had its origins in translation, today we rarely come across translated children’s books in bookshops. Many of the books first published in India for children in the 19^th or early 20^th century were well known English books such as Aesop’s Fables, Alice in Wonderland and stories from the Bible translated into Indian languages. In the second half of the twentieth century, along with a flood of books from UK and USA, Indian children also enjoyed perusing Russian stories translated into English and made available by the Soviets for throwaway prices. 

As a child, I remember reading the Bobbsey Twins series and being especially delighted with those books in which the twins travelled to other countries. Ironically, my introduction to Japan came through The Bobbsey Twins and the Goldfish Mystery in which the children visit Japan and learn several Japanese customs (heavily stereotyped and orientalized, no doubt), and I learnt to say Sayanora and Konnichiwa. I read the English translation of that most famous of Japanese children’s books, Toto-Chan only years and years later.

Ilan Stavans, a publisher of children’s books says, “It is precisely at a young age … when the strongest impact can be made in terms of exposing people to other cultures. A new sensibility can emerge”. However, if you visit a school library or the children’s section of a circulating library, you will probably find a large collection of books from USA and UK and a few from India, and almost nothing else. I do not recollect seeing books from any of our neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Bangladesh or other Asian countries such as China, Singapore, Thailand or Vietnam. 

Just imagine, if three generations of Indian and Pakistani and Bangladeshi and Sinhalese children grow up reading books from each other’s cultures, South Asians could live without mutual hatred and suspicion. We fear that which is unknown. If we grow up reading stories from other countries, they will become as familiar and beloved to us as stories and people from our own country.

It is true that there has, in recent times, been some recognition of the need to expose our children to multicultural literature. Like Rudine Bishop said, children deserve to read both mirror and window books – books that reflect a culture and society that they are familiar with, and books that offer them a glimpse into other cultures. There have been some attempts on the part of enlightened publishers like Ekalavya, Pratham, Tulika and Tara to offer books that reflect the vast and rich multiple Indian cultures. However, this is not the case with translated books. Forget about translations from other countries, we rarely translate children’s books from one Indian language to another.   The problem is not with publishers alone, as the market reality is such that parents (if and when they buy books) would rather pay for a well-known ‘phoren’ (US/UK) author rather than venture to read an interesting book by an ‘unknown’ author from an ‘unknown’ country.

Sigh!