The Jakarta Post
Children and their parents looked excited and entertained as they listened to Yoko Takafuji at the National Gallery in Central Jakarta.The audience listened attentively as the Japanese woman related a story using the traditional Japanese storytelling art of Kamishibai during the Indonesian Children’s Visual Art Festival on Thursday.Kami means paper and shibai means play or theater, so Kamishibai uses pictures on paper to accompany the words of the storyteller, like Wayang Beber in Indonesia.Kamishibai uses a set of pictures inserted into a wooden frame and taken out one by one as the story goes on.During the play, Yoko was accompanied by Indonesian storyteller Agus Nur Amal, also known as PM Toh. They combined Kamishibai with the traditional Acehnese rapai instrument.They told a Japanese story titled “Smong” or tsunami, which was written in the 1930s. Since then, it has been told o...