Kamishibai

"paper play" is a form of Japanese street theater and storytelling that was popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the post-war period in Japan until the advent of television during the mid-20th century. were performed by a (" narrator") who travelled to street corners with sets of illustrated boards that they placed in a miniature stage-like device and narrated the story by changing each image. has its earliest origins in Japanese Buddhist temples, where Buddhist monks from the 8th century onward used ("picture scrolls") as pictorial aids for recounting their history of the monasteries, an early combination of picture and text to convey a story. The exact origins of during the 20th century are unknown, appearing "like the wind on a street corner" in the Shitamachi section of Tokyo around 1930. It is believed, however, that has deep roots in Japan's ("pictorial storytelling") art history, which can be traced back to the 12th-century scrolls, such as the ("Frolicking Critters"), attributed to the priest Toba Sōjō (1053–1140). The scroll depicts anthropomorphised animal caricatures that satirise society during this period but has no text, making it a pictorial aid to a story. It can therefore be considered a direct precursor of . During the Edo period (1603–1868), visual and performing arts flourished, particularly through the proliferation of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world"). once again became popular during the later 18th century as storytellers began to set up on street corners with an unrolled scroll hanging from a pole. In the Meiji period (1868–1912), ("stand-up pictures"), similar to those in the Edo period, were told by performers who manipulated flat paper cutouts of figures mounted on wooden poles (similar to the shadow puppets of Indonesia and Malaysia). The Zen priest Nishimura is also credited to have used these pictures during sermons to entertain children. Another form of was the Japanese-modified stereoscope imported from the Netherlands.