Sharon Domier's blog

I have a few favorites that I would love to see included in all collections that include Japanese picture books.

??????????????????????????is advertised as ?????. It would be easy to misinterpret this as an “adult picture book” but really the series is a collection of really famous stories beautifully illustrated that all Japanese likely read as children either in picture books or in school textbooks.

These books are all listed in the Kaiseisha catalog as ????????. There is a lot of text on each page with kanji that has furigana. I often recommend these books to 3rd and 4th year students who want to read Japanese literature and enjoy picture books. They could also read the same text in text-only collections like the Saito Takashi Ikki ni yomeru series.

This series includes a range of authors that you would expect to see in picture books like Miyazawa Kenji ???? and Niimi Nankichi ????, but also includes Akutagawa Ryunosuke ????? and Lafcadio Hearn ????.

Another favorite is the ????? published by Iwasaki Shoten. There are at least 15 titles in this series now. They are favorites of our students – although the onomatopoeia is a challenge to them.

The popularity of this series has spawned another series that I am looking forward to reading called Ehon Tono monogatari ?????? published by Chobunsha ???.

Fukuinkan has a number of good series. One that is really worth checking out – especially for readers who are not fond of “baby books” is ???????????. This is a subseries of the ???? and many of my favorite are tagged as ?????????????). There are lots of wonderful books about Japanese sweets, the history of books, wildlife, etc. Others are history books illustrated by Nishimura Shigeo ???? like ????????? and his ?????????.

I have in my personal collection (that I haven’t yet donated to the library) books published by ???? on kabuki and sumo. These are beautiful picture books published as part of ???? series. They are long since out of print, but Alice-kan has several other series that are worth considering.