Public Domain Review introduce in un articolo ricco di immagini la serie di libri illustrati Japanese Fairy Tale Series, pubblicata nel tardo XIX e all’inizio del XX secolo dalla casa editrice giapponese Kobunsha sotto la guida di Takejiro Hasegawa.

At the turn of the last century, the illustrated children’s books of the so-called “golden age” provided readers with many unforgettable images: think of John Tenniel’s blue-aproned Alice looking up at the sneaky grin of the Cheshire cat, or Walter Crane’s pink-dressed Belle falling in love with the boar-headed Beast. Such works are usually viewed as the exclusive realm of the great London and New York publishing houses. But on the other side of the globe, around the same time, Japan was opening its ports to the world, and in Tokyo the Kobunsha publishing company would put its own unique mark on illustrated books for children. Under the leadership of Takejiro Hasegawa, the Japanese Fairy Tale Series captured the imaginations of countless young readers with books that combined the work of western writers and translators with Japanese artists.

Questi libri hanno ha catturato l’immaginazione di numerosi giovani lettori, poiché combinavano il lavoro di scrittori e traduttori occidentali con artisti giapponesi. Furono pubblicati in venti volumi tra il 1885 e il 1922 e la serie ha introdotto al pubblico inglese, francese e successivamente anche tedesco, spagnolo, portoghese, olandese e russo, le tradizionali fiabe giapponesi.

From gift-bestowing sparrows and peach-born heroes to goblin spiders and dancing phantom cats — in a series of beautifully illustrated books, the majority printed on an unusual cloth-like crepe paper, the publisher Takejiro Hasegawa introduced Japanese folk tales to the West. Christopher DeCou on how a pioneering cross-cultural endeavour gave rise to a magnificent chapter in the history of children’s publishing.

Le storie stesse hanno diverse origini. Ad esempio, il primo libro della serie, Little Peachling, racconta la storia secolare di Momotaro. Un giorno, una coppia di anziani ha portato a casa un enorme pesco trovato lungo il fiume e, aprendolo, ha scoperto con stupore un bambino al suo interno.  Momotaro, viene cresciuto dalla coppia di anziani, ma poi li lascia per intraprendere una serie di avventure e tornare poi a casa come un eroe. La storia di Momotaro è affascinante e coinvolgente e la serie di libri ha contribuito a diffonderla al di fuori del Giappone.

Looking back, we can see that the books in the Japanese Fairy Tale Series blended simple storytelling and striking images with an elegance comparable to any of the more widely known masterpieces of the golden age of children’s illustrations. At a time when publishing houses in London and New York dominated the market, Hasegawa’s press in Tokyo was producing equally beautiful volumes using traditional Japanese craftwork and broadcasting Japan’s culture to the world. Today, anime and manga represent flourishing new forms through which that culture is reaching global audiences, but, in the words of arts and crafts historian Ann Herring, “in the area of export in the form of translations for young readers, the record of the Meiji era remains unexcelled.”