Beinecke exhibition tells the textured story of Japan’s crêpe-paper book traditions

“Textured Stories: The Chirimen Books of Modern Japan” celebrates the island country’s long tradition of telling stories through texts and illustrations. This extensive exhibition features a wide variety of “chirimen-bon”—illustrated fairy tales, folktales, language lessons, music, photography, travel, and history books, all produced on “chirimen,” a handmade, textured, fabric-like paper. The colorful illustrations are hand-drawn, hand-painted, and block printed.

The exhibition also includes other examples of Japanese printmaking and book art, like these pages from “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,” a two-volume manuscript decorated with gold leaf, likely dating from the 17th century. This tale, “Taketori monogatari”—the story of Princess Splendor, a princess from the moon—is considered the oldest surviving work of fiction written in the Japanese language. 

Examples of manga (Japanese comics) and a clip from the 2010 animated film “Spirited Away,” also on view, trace the long Japanese tradition of visual storytelling and graphic book making into the 21st century.

“Textured Stories: The Chirimen Books of Modern Japan” is on view at Beinecke Library through May 3.

Read more about the exhibition in Yale News and in Yale Daily News.

—Deborah Cannarella