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CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

First, become familiar with the terms and the form of the tanka by reading the excellent essays found at AHA! Poetry tanka page, available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Academy of American Poets. Between that and the website for Tanka Splendor, also available through the Academy of American Poets, you can experience such a variety of tanka that you get a feel for the form. Become familiar with the Japanese poetic terms and practice identifying how they apply to the sample tanka.

A form growing in popularity in Western culture is the tanka, a five-line extension of the hokku pattern. In simplest terms, the traditional tanka is a poem of 31 on which expresses a personal response to an image in nature. In Japan, a tanka consists of 31 on, usually patterned as 5-7-5-7-7. There should be two separate divisions, the dominant pattern being 5-7-5 / 7-7, as if the last two lines acted as commentary on a haiku.

The kigo, or nature word, is important to the tanka, but rather than simply observing the image, as in a haiku, the tanka links the image to a personal emotion or a feeling about the topic. Its roots are the Japanese Imperial Court and the intrigue of lovers, so the language is elevated, the tone formal, yet intimate. Violence or images of war are not considered proper, or is humor or satire.

On a more advanced level, the tanka, like the haiku, demands a pivoting on a word or phrase, a shift from the examination of the image to the examination of the personal response.

In the West, tanka poets sometimes choose to retain the strict pattern of 31 syllables and the line divisions of specific counts. However, others feel it is more important to preserve the content and simplicity of the intent of the poem rather than adhere to arbitrary syllables, which are not the equivalent of Japanese on.

Second, become familiar with the variety of terms you will encounter in the study of Japanese poetry. World Literature students should master them and be able to identify them. Younger students enjoy learning the Japanese words and become enthusiastic about discovering their application.

Glossary of Japanese poetic terms (from Jane Reichold), available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Academy of American Poets:

haiku (HI-COO)-a verse of haikai- Thus it originally meant a verse taken from a renga, but in this century, it was coined by Shiki to be synonymous with hokku. From this came the idea that haiku had to have the elements of the hokku, a kigo and a kireji, but most important was the linking of images completely within the three lines without relying on connections with other elements to make a completed thought.

kigo (KEY-GO)-seasonal word-Nouns which imply the season because they have been traditionally associated with certain times of the year in Japanese literature and/or real life. There are winter bird and summer plants, spring activities and winter skies, fall trees and summer holidays and the list goes on and on.

on (OH'N)-sound symbol-We refer to the things the Japanese count on their fingers when writing poetry simply as "sound units." Tokyo has three Japanese sound units: to- k-yo.

(Hence, in Japanese, it's not a syllable; yet in English, we use syllables, so many Japanese poetry forms adapt the on counts to become syllable counts.)

renga (RAY'N-GAH)-linked elegance-The Japanese poetry form in which three-line stanza of 5-7-5 on are linked to a two- line 7-7 on, usually written by two or more persons. Renga baffle Westerners because as a poetry form it lacks a narrative, actual time sequence, and seems to only provide random images without any connection or underlying rationale.

senryu (SEN-YOU-RUE)-river willow-The pen name of the most famous poet who conducted maekuzuki (linking contests) has been given to this genre in his dubious honor. Because haiku and senryu are written much alike, often on the same subjects and usually by the same authors, great controversies have ensued over which is what. For a time, in America, senryu were considered to be faulty haiku. Actually, if one must differentiate, the senryu form is satiric, concerned with poking fun at human behavior as opposed to the profound, sublime world of nature where haiku shine. In Japan the distinction is easier to find because all of their haiku contain a season word- kigo-and senryu do not. Haiku are published with the author's name and senryu are not.

tanka (TAH'N-KAH)-short poem-Consisting of 31 on in five units of 5-7-5-7-7, this lyrical form has existed since earliest recorded Japanese literature. Along the way it has also been called uta or waka. In many ways it is like the first two stanza of a renga or is a tan renga written by one person. For writers who find haiku too plain and lacking in emotion, the tanka is a great way to express feelings and let your love live. The trick is not to sound sentimental, and this is usually done by anchoring the thought in the reality of the natural world.

tan renga (TAH'N-RAY'N-GAH)-short linked elegance-A renga consisting of only two linked stanza of 5-7-5 and 7-7, but written by two people.

Finally, select the samples from the Tanka Splendor 2000 and sites, both available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource Academy of American Poets.

The following examples are selected for their exemplary nature; you may find others more suitable to your purpose. Most of the poems from Tanka Splendor do not follow the structural rules, so when choosing a variety, you should use ones which best teach the lesson.
For structure (5-7-5-7-7)
Moon madness makes me
Dance in delight under stars
I lift up my hands
And feel my arms grow longer
As they wrap around the moon
-Margaret Cheaseboro

The blue heron cries
White capped waves search for the shore
We walk hand in hand
Finding gentle harmony
Shaping a life together
-David Glass

A lone saxophone
Cries out on the street corner
Sweet, sweet intrusion!
Grim faced commuters rush past -
No time for amazing grace
-David Kirkland
For content and spirit
Expecting you
In the garden at dusk
I found a glowworm
In the soft earth - warm
And radiant, waiting too
-Sydney Bougy

Years on my own
I still stare after
A white-haired couple
The way his body
Shields her from the wind
-Thelma Mariano

Activity 1. Analyzing Tanka

In this cooperative activity for all levels of language arts, in groups of four, students will discuss imagery and its impact on poetry and on the listener in order to arrive at an understanding of the use of kigo. One student will read the poem, a second will note any images from nature that might serve as kigo, a third will interpret what season and emotion is represented by the kigo, and the fourth will record the learnings to be read to the class. Students then analyze a poem for its structure, then for content. Through discussion, students will arrive at a consensus definition for a tanka.

Ask: Why do you suppose so many love poems contain images of flowers or sunsets or other images of nature? (open-ended, but somehow related to emotions. Advanced students may observe that some natural images serve as symbols, such as the rose or the lily, the ocean, or the sunrise and sunset.)

Explain: In Japan, a reverence for nature is an important part of their culture, so it appears throughout their poetry. They don't have to use nouns that come from nature. Sometimes certain nouns represent the season and carry their own symbolic meanings. These seasonal words are called " kigo."

Ask: What nouns might tell you it's winter? (snow, bare trees, fir tree, sleds) summer? (beach, sunglasses) What if I said "sunglasses, snow, mountains"? (skiing) How do the seasons represent our emotions? (winter = cold, death, sorrow, emptiness; spring = new life, renewal, hope, joy)

Distribute the five sample tanka. Instruct each member of the cooperative group in his or her role, encouraging them to provide good reasons for their arguments regarding seasons and emotions. Allow ten minutes, then call on each group to report. Ask one group to report on one poem only, then ask the rest of the groups for support or dissent.

Note: The Kirkland poem may prove discomfiting, but students may argue that amazing grace suggests hope, or that grim-faced suggests winter. Allow for open discussion, encouraging the students to support their position.

Explain: These poems are in a form called a tanka. Most tanka are five lines of 31 syllables, and usually the pattern for a tanka is 5-7-5-7-7 syllables in a line.

Ask: Which of these tanka follow this pattern? (Cheaseboro, Glass, Kirkland) Why do you think the others don't follow this pattern? (open-ended)

Ask: What does Japanese look like when it's written? (characters instead of letters)

Explain: Each individual character represents a sound in Japanese. It could be a whole word, or it might be part of a word, or it might represent an entire phrase. These units of sound are called " on ." Japanese poetry is most often based on numbers of lines and numbers of on in a line.

Ask: In English, what do we call a unit of sound? (syllable)

Explain: When English-speaking writers compose Japanese poetry forms, they try to match the number of syllables to the number of on. This is very hard to do in English because it sometimes takes a lot of syllables just to say one idea. Today we're going to examine a very old Japanese poetry form called a tanka. See if you can determine what the rules of structure are for composing tanka based on these English versions.

Distribute the Cheaseboro and Glass poems. Allow five minutes for students to scan and arrive at the conclusion of 31 syllables in five lines, distributed in a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7.

Ask: What else do both poems have in common? (images of nature, expressing emotion, shifting from image of nature to image of people) What do you imagine the people in the poem are feeling? (delight, love)

Explain: These images and emotions are also part of the structure of a tanka. Put it all together and give me a definition of a tanka. A tanka is a Japanese form of poetry that uses 31 syllables in five lines, in a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7, to examine an image of nature and connect it to a person's emotions.
Extensions:

1. Have students create lists of kigo for seasons or emotions.

2. Play a matching game by writing a kigo word on a card and have someone guess the season or emotion to which it corresponds.

3. Have students use their kigo lists to create a tanka of five lines.

4. Combine with extensions for Lesson 1 to have students compose structurally accurate tanka that include the kigo and the emotional response.

5. Have students compose tan-renga with a partner, where one composes the first three lines using a kigo and the partner composes the final two lines suggesting an emotional response to the kigo. Then reverse roles and compose the first three lines with an emotion and the final two lines with the corresponding kigo. Ask students which form they prefer, and why.

Activity 2. Tanka - Take Two

This activity for mid-level to advanced students is designed to follow the previous lesson. Students should have an understanding of the basic structure and form of a tanka and synthesize this with new learnings to draw a conclusion about the content of a tanka.

Distribute the remaining sample tanka. Have students form groups of three. One student should read each aloud; then the group should discuss whether these actually fit the definition of tanka they have devised. A second student should record the responses for the third student to report to the class. This activity should generate a heated discussion regarding syllable count, kigo, and emotional responses: the Kirkland poem doesn't have an obvious kigo; the Bougy and Mariano poems don't have the requisite syllable count. Inform the students that all of these poems are award-winning tanka and ask them to explain what all five tanka have in common. Students should conclude that emotion is expressed based on an image.

Ask: Why do you suppose these authors chose to ignore the syllable count? (because the Japanese on isn't exactly the same as the English syllable, so they chose to capture the spirit instead)
Extension:

1. Have students compose a tanka, structured or unstructured, without using a kigo, but some other non-natural object.

2. Have students compose one of each kind of tanka and comment on the process. Which did they prefer, and why?

Activity 3. As the Tanka Turns

This activity for advanced students is designed to follow Lesson 2; students should have a full understanding of the tanka in English and will synthesize these learnings, using critical thinking skills to analyze various tanka for their "pivoting" moment.

Explain that the fine point of a Japanese poem in almost any form is the point where the poem "pivots." In most Japanese short forms, one line of the poem might serve to conclude the first half or begin the second half; or, it could stand on its own apart from the rest of the poem, as a commentary on the whole poem. Ask students to identify the "pivot" of each of the sample tanka. This is a challenging exercise, and they may have difficulty. This is not intended to have a fixed response, but students must be able to defend their choices.
Extension:

1. Have students analyze their own tanka for the pivotal line.

2. If students find they don't have a pivot, encourage them to edit their work to conform to the advanced form.

1. Encourage students to explore all the sample tanka found in the Tanka Splendor pages.

2. Encourage students to submit their tanka to the Tanka Splendor competition.

3. Organize groups to compose renga and tan-renga. Hold a "Renga Party" with appropriate Japanese music, decorations, and tea.

Selected EDSITEment Websites

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This unit on the Japanese poetic form tanka encourages students to explore the structure and content of the form and to arrive at a definition of the tanka's structure in English. Students will read and analyze the tanka form and compare it to English structures of poetry, and will finally compose their own tankas.

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Middle school lesson plan

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A haiku is most notable for the syballic rules one must follow when composing such a poem, as explained on the Haiku by Basho and Haiku for People! websites:

A haiku is a three-line poem in which the first line has five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the final line five syllables. These syllable counts are strictly observed in Japanese but can be loosely observed when haiku are written in other languages. The Haiku by Basho website provides examples of haiku in transliterated Japanese and in English which illustrate this point. For example:
in the misty rain
Mount Fuji is veiled all day--
how intriguing!

(From Makoto Ueda, Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary [Stanford University Press, 1991] p. 102.)

A haiku should contain a kigo, a word that gives the reader a clue to the season. The kigo anchors the haiku at a specific moment in time, setting the experience it describes in a poetic here and now. The kigo can be the name of the season (autumn, winter) or a subtler clue, such as a reference to the harvest or new fallen snow. Through the years, certain signs of the seasons have become conventional in Japanese haiku: cherry blossoms are a kigo for spring, mosquitoes a kigo for summer. Sometimes, too, the kigo may refer to a specific moment -- the dawn or moonrise -- without reference to a specific season.

Finally, a haiku has two parts. The poem divides after the first or second line, so that it seems to make two separate statements that are related in some unexpected or implicit way. As Professor Haruo Shirane explains on the Haiku by Basho website, this structure "leaves the poem open for the reader to complete," creating "an open space which the reader ... is supposed to enter into." The two-part structure can also make reading a haiku feel like discovering something hidden that suddenly becomes very clear. In Japanese, the dividing point between the two parts of a haiku is marked by what haiku poets call a "cutting word" (kireji). In English, the division is often marked with a colon, a dash, or an elipsis.

As you read the following poem by Natsume Soseki (1275-1351), count the syllables in each line and compare what the author has written with the information above:

Over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow.

The Haiku Foundation offers examples and more elaborate discussion of what haiku poetry captures and expresses.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.

Activity 1. Read classic examples of Japanese haiku

Begin by having students read some classic examples of Japanese haiku in English translation. Divide the class into small groups and have students read several haiku aloud to one another. To help sharpen their critical responsiveness, have each group reach a consensus about the poem they like best and agree on three reasons why it is superior.

Haiku by Basho
An interactive introduction to this seventeenth century master who pioneered the haiku tradition. Click the "Class Materials" button for a collection of student readings that includes six haiku by Basho.

Haiku for People!
A website celebrating the history of haiku and its development into a form of poetry practiced around the world. Scroll down for a broad selection of haiku by many classic Japanese poets, including Basho, Buson, and Issa.

Activity 2. Read each group's preferred haiku aloud

Have a spokesperson read each group's preferred haiku aloud to the class and explain the group's reasons for its choice. List these reasons on the chalkboard, noting where groups have identified similar characteristics or registered a similar impression. Keep this list on view for later reference.

Activity 3. How the art of the haiku developed

To enrich students' appreciation for the art of the haiku, provide them with a brief outline of its history and development, drawing on the background available at Haiku by Basho and Haiku for People!:

Explain that the haiku tradition dates back to the late seventeenth century, the Tokugawa Period, when Japanese society was emerging from the aristocratic culture of the samurai and developing a middle-class culture based on trade, commerce, and mass education. Traditional haiku reflect this shift in their subject matter, focusing on everyday occurrences and ordinary people instead of legendary figures and royal intrigues. It is poetry intended for a popular audience and remains the most popular form of poetry in Japan today.

Use the Class Materials available at Haiku by Basho to show students how haiku developed from haikai, a longer poetic form made up of linked verses that were contributed by different writers. The first verse in this chain, called a hokku (literally "starting verse"), became the model for haiku, setting the pattern for its metrical structure, its focus on a specific time and place, and its thought-provoking, open-ended quality.

Point out that haiku became an independent verse form in the 1890s when the poet Masaoka Shiki formalized this centuries-old tradition by setting down rules for writing haiku.

Activity 4. What the literary tradition tells about haiku

Return to the list of reasons students gave for choosing their favorite haiku and explore similarities between what they had to say about this form of poetry and what the literary tradition tells us about it. For example: Were they attracted by the everyday subject matter that distinguishes haiku from "high class" styles of poetry? Were they impressed by the immediacy of haiku, its sharp focus on a specific time and place as signaled by the kigo? Were they drawn in by the haiku's two-part structure -- surprised by a sudden turn of thought or shift of perspective? Were they inspired by their favorite haiku, prompted to respond with a thought of their own, like a hakai poet of the seventeenth century? Work with the class in this way to extend and sharpen their list of critical insights into haiku, eliciting student comments on characteristic haiku moods and themes (e.g., travel, transitional moments, juxtapositions of the sublime and mundane).

Activity 5. Compare scenes evoked by haiku with those portrayed in ukiyo-e woodblock prints

To broaden students' perspective on Japanese culture, have them compare the types of scenes evoked by haiku with the scenes portrayed in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which also became popular during the Tokugawa period. Like haiku, this was an art rooted in everyday experience, as indicated by its name, "ukiyo-e," which means "pictures of the floating world." Ukiyo-e captured the ephemeral aspect of life, finding a timeless beauty in the here and now that has made it the best known style of Japanese art today. Background on ukiyo-e is available through EDSITEment at the Teaching (and Learning) About Japan website, which provides links to several online galleries:

The Ukiyo-e Museum of the Nagoya Broadcast Network. A collection of characteristic examples of ukiyo-e organized into thematic galleries. For images that bear comparison to the world of haiku, direct students to the galleries called "Rain and Snow," "Sightseeing in the Town of Edo" (Edo is present-day Tokyo), and "A Sense of Journey." In each gallery, click on the small image to view a larger version with an interpretative caption, then click the larger version to view the image at maximum size.

Ukiyo-e: The Pictures of the Floating World -- A collection organized for art collectors, with galleries devoted to individual ukiyo-e artists and characteristic visual themes. Click "Guide to ukiyo-e websites" on this site's homepage and scroll down to the Hiroshige heading for a link to "Fifty Three Stations of the Tokaido," a website that leads visitors through the most famous series of ukiyo-e prints, Hiroshige's "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido" (1833), which depicts scenes along the highway connecting Edo, the Tokugawa capital, with Kyoto, Japan's ancient imperial city. The captions in this exhibit provide background on Japanese history and geography, and include a question that must be answered correctly to continue the journey, making this site an effective online learning tool as well as a resource for comparing the world of ukiyo-e with the world of haiku.

A Visual Literacy Exercise
A special presentation of the Teaching (and Learning) About Japan website, which can be accessed by clicking the third small picture (an architectural detail) on the site's homepage. This online learning exercise leads visitors through a series of fifteen ukiyo-e images, many from Hiroshige's Toakaido series, allowing one first to look at the images without explanation, then providing background and pointing out focal points for each one.

Activity 6. Examine and note similarities and differences

Have students examine a selection of ukiyo-e prints in small groups, listing points of comparison between these images of everyday life and the scenes called to mind by haiku. Students might notice, for example, that ukiyo-e frequently convey a sense of season and seem to capture a specific time and place. Likewise, these pictures typically draw a viewer into the situation and open a fresh perspective by including a "cutting" detail, such as a person whose posture or facial expression at first seems out of place, or a tiny human figure who at first seems lost in the landscape. Encourage students to note other similarities and differences, then share observations in a class discussion. Ask students what conclusions one might draw about the relationship between ukiyo-e and haiku, and how one might substantiate (or refute) those conclusions through further research.

Activity 7. What these two art forms reveal about Japanese culture and society in the Tokugawa period

Close this discussion by asking students what these two art forms reveal about Japanese culture and society in the Tokugawa period. Direct students' attention first to physical aspects of the culture portrayed in traditional haiku and ukiyo-e: What does Japan look like to the Japanese? How do they respond to the weather and climate? How do they perceive their country's landscape, vegetation, and wildlife? What is their attitude toward nature, country life, and the urban scene? Probe more deeply by asking what haiku and ukiyo-e might reveal about Japanese social relationships, gender roles, class divisions, and cultural values. Note students' observations on the chalkboard and encourage them to range widely in this discussion, aiming to open their eyes to the wealth of information concentrated in these popular art forms. Be alert at the same time, however, to guard against sweeping generalizations by reminding students that haiku and ukiyo-e are only a tiny part of Japanese culture.

Activity 8. Write two or three haiku

Conclude this lesson by having students write two or three haiku based on their own everyday experiences. Be sure to emphasize that a haiku can be funny, serious, or even just a "snapshot" of a moment or a scene. Allow no more than 15 or 20 minutes for this assignment, then have students share their best poems in their groups or with the class.

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A haiku is most notable for the syballic rules one must follow when composing such a poem, as explained on the Haiku by Basho and Haiku for People! websites: A haiku is a three-line poem in which the first line has five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the final line five syllables.

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"Beastars"

All Series art courtesy of Viz Media

The best-selling manga in the United States are almost all shonen series, and all of those top titles are published by Viz -which, as we will see, is no coincidence.

"Shonen" is Japanese for "boy," and shonen manga is targeted at teenagers, although many series are popular with teenage girls (and older readers) as well, both in the United States and in Japan. The shonen category encompasses different genres: science fiction, action, mystery, romance. When Americans speak of "shonen manga," however, they are often referring to action-adventure tales with a bit of comedy mixed in, which is the most popular type of story.

In Japan, the best-selling manga magazine is Weekly Shonen Jump, which has dominated the market for decades and is home to such classic manga series as "Naruto," "One Piece," and "My Hero Academia."

Viz has emerged as a manga powerhouse in North America, in part because the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump is a parent company of Viz, granting it direct access to many of the most popular series in Japan. Viz has published an American version of Shonen Jump for years, first as a paper magazine, then as a digital publication, and now as an app. Viz also uses the Shonen Jump imprint for many of its series, whether or not they actually run in the Japanese magazine.

Shonen manga with the broadest appeal generally have the same features as other popular stories. Shonen heroes are often underdogs or, at best, average guys who have a special ability or destiny-much like Harry Potter. Most series feature a large cast of memorable characters, which not only makes the stories more interesting but also allows for lots of cosplay. A few factors are specific to manga, however.

Anime, which has a wider audience than manga, often drives the popularity of a series, and if the story is further along in the manga, readers may cross over to see what happens next. Long-running series usually have a number of story arcs, which correlate with anime seasons, so the story refreshes from time to time. The most popular type of manga, shonen is commonly pirated. Numerous "scanlation" sites carry bootleg translations or even outright scans of American editions. In response, manga publishers have stepped up their digital presence. For Shonen Jump, Viz offers the first three chapters and the most recent chapters on its website and apps for free. For other series, it offers the first chapter. In addition, all series are available digitally on ComiXology, Kindle, and the Viz apps. And the Shonen Jump series are also available on Viz's Shonen Jump app, which offers unlimited reading for $1.99 a month.

With that, here's a look at the best-selling shonen manga in American bookstores. These series are ongoing in Japan.

"Beastars." Paru Itagaki. Viz (Viz Signature).
Gr 10 Up -Cherryton Academy is a school for anthropomorphized animals. The carnivores and the herbivores, predators and prey, are housed in different dorms but mingle in classes and clubs, which, predictably, leads to tension.

The story opens with the brutal murder of a student in the Drama Club, and the herbivores suspect a carnivore is the culprit. Legoshi, a gray wolf, is the chief suspect, but he seems like a gentle, quiet guy, and he has a crush on Haru, a dwarf rabbit (and a friend of the murdered classmate). The friction between the groups and the characters' struggle to keep their animal instincts in check have obvious parallels in the real world, and Itagaki's skillfully drawn characters are human enough to make them recognizable as people one might encounter in real life. Launched just last year, the series quickly built a following. Volume 6 released in mid-May, and the anime started its Netflix run in March.

Read: Free Comics and Resources on COVID-19 in Graphic Form

"Boruto: Naruto Next Generations." Masashi Kishimoto. Script by Ukyo Kodachi. illus. by Mikio Ikemoto. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up-"Naruto" was the best-selling manga in the U. S. during its run, which concluded in 2014 with Volume 72. "Naruto" was in many ways the classic shonen manga: The hero, Naruto, was the village outcast, but he trained hard to become a ninja, went on numerous missions with a group of loyal friends, and ultimately became the Hokage, or leader of his village. "Boruto" is the story of his son, who has special talents and adventures of his own. Kishimoto, creator of "Naruto," supervises this series, and Ikemoto was his chief assistant. So "Boruto" has a similar feel to the original. The first story follows the plot of Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and a television anime picks up the story after that. There are eight volumes available in English so far, with Volume 9 publishing in August.

"Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba." Koyoharu Gotouge. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up -In this story set in early 20th-century rural Japan, teenager Tanjiro supports his family by selling charcoal after the death of his father. One night while he is away, demons slaughter his family, leaving only his younger sister Nezuko-who has become a demon. With some vestiges of human emotion, she seems to recognize that Tanjiro is her brother. The series follows Tanjiro's quest to avenge his family and find a way to make his sister human again. The manga and anime have striking visuals; Gotouge uses hatching and patterns, departing from the smoother effect favored by other manga creators; Tanjiro's checked coat is particularly recognizable. Not surprisingly, this series is popular with cosplayers. There are 12 volumes available so far.

"Dragon Ball Super." Akira Toriyama. illus. by Toyotarou. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up -Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball" was one of the first manga/anime series to come to English-language audiences and one of the most popular as well. The series followed the adventures of Son Goku, who grows from a boy to a man as he masters the martial arts, channels his own super strength, and seeks out the seven Dragon Balls. In "Dragon Ball Super," Goku has defeated the villain Boo, saved Earth, and settled down to an ordinary life as a farmer. But the God of Destruction, Beerus, breaks the monotony when he arrives to challenge Goku. To fight Beerus, Goku channels the energy of five other heroes and becomes the Super Saiyan God, which endows him with new powers and sends him off on a new set of adventures, battling old and new enemies throughout the universe. In other words, if you liked "Dragon Ball," you'll like "Dragon Ball Super." Volume 9 debuts in early June, and there is an anime as well.

"Boruto: Naruto Next Generations"

"Dr. Stone." Riichiro Inagaki. illus. by Boichi. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up -High school student Taiju is about to confess his love for classmate Yuzuriha when a sudden flash of light fills the sky and all humanity turns to stone. Taiju breaks from his stone cocoon, 3,700 years later, to learn that his genius friend Senku has already emerged and is busy re-creating all of 21st-century technology from this literal Stone Age. Together they revive Yuzuriha, but when conflict and violence enter their Eden, Senku and Taiju split up and go in different directions to evade their antagonist. Senku finds a village where people escaped petrification, so they have a primitive lifestyle but also some knowledge of science. What makes this series so fun is watching Senku make gunpowder, soap, even a bottle of cola out of materials at hand. Senku applies real scientific methods, definitely of the "don't try this at home" variety. Volume 11 was released in May, and there is an anime, too.

Read:7 Graphic Novels That Offer Powerful Mirrors & Windows for Teens

"Komi Can't Communicate." Tomohito Oda. Viz (Shonen Sunday).
Gr 7 Up -This is the only romance on the list, and it's a comedy. Komi is incredibly beautiful and she never speaks, so her classmates find her elegant and standoffish. In fact, she's extremely shy, as her classmate Tadano discovers. Tadano is pretty shy himself, and his initial goal was to get through high school without being noticed, but when he finds out about Komi's problem, he is determined to help her overcome it by making 100 friends. That takes them both way out of their comfort zone. And hilarity ensues. This manga has been a best seller since the first volume came out in mid-2019. The artwork is smooth and easy to follow, and the story is broken into very short chapters, so it's easy to dip in and out. Volume 7 is scheduled for June.

"My Hero Academia." Kohei Horikoshi. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up-Currently the best-selling manga in America, "My Hero Academia" is set in a world where more than half the population is born with "quirks," or specialized superpowers. Izuku Midoriya is born quirkless, and on of his schoolmates, Katsuki Bakugo, mocks him. That all changes when the most powerful superhero, All Might, bestows his power on Midoriya and has him attend UA, an elite training school for superheroes. There's a large and varied cast, plenty of humor, and battles to boot. Best of all, Horikoshi gets free rein to create bizarre heroes and outlandish villains. Volume 24 publishes in June, and there is an anime series. Spin-offs include "My Hero Academia Vigilantes," a manga series set in the same world with different characters, and the four-panel parody manga "My Hero Academia: Smash!!"

"One Piece." Eiichiro Oda. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up -Although "One Piece" is not as popular in the U. S. as in Japan, it does have a devoted fandom in North America. The series centers on Luffy D. Monkey and the Straw Hat Pirates, who roam the Earth in search of the mythical treasure One Piece. This takes them to strange lands and leads them into epic battles with entire armies, all filled with outsize personalities and crazy details. Even after 93 volumes, Oda's still shines. In this shonen series, a lot of the fun comes from the sheer variety and weirdness of the characters. But "One Piece" has a strong friendship theme, which also accounts for reader loyalty. This long-running series has an anime, and both the anime and the manga are broken into discrete story arcs. Viz published Volume 93 in April.

"One-Punch Man." ONE. illus. by Yusuke Murata. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 7 Up -Bored with life, a young man, Saitama, sets out to become a superhero. He trains so hard that his hair falls out, but he is so strong that he can defeat any villain with a single punch. So he's still bored. Saitama and his cyborg sidekick, Genos, join a superhero guild and are tasked whenever supervillains attack their city. ONE and Murata delight in creating a huge cast of heroes and villains, some totally badass, some ridiculous (such as Pineapple, whose costume is festooned with giant pineapple rings). Blending action and comedy, "One-Punch Man" is both a great superhero comic and a loving parody of the genre. Nineteen volumes are currently available in English, and there is an anime.

"The Promised Neverland." Kaiu Shirai. illus. by Posuka Demizu. Viz (Shonen Jump).
Gr 10 Up -The orphans of Grace Field House lead a seemingly idyllic existence, with good food, spacious grounds to play on, and a loving "Mom." Yet they all have numbers tattooed on their necks. In fact, as the three oldest and smartest children, Emma, Norman, and Ray, discover one night, the orphanage is actually a farm, and the children are being raised as meat. Those who leave are not going to foster families but to a monster's dinner table. So the three plot their escape. Emma insists on rescuing all of the children, which Norman and Ray fear will be impossible. This plays out as a cat-and-mouse game with Mom. Once the orphans escape, the world around them is unrelentingly hostile. The art is beautiful and detailed, but there are some gruesome sequences; the first volume includes disturbing images of a young girl who has been killed by the monsters. For those who can handle that, it's a great action/suspense story. Volume 15 and an anime arrive in June.

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10 Shonen Manga Must-Reads | Mondo Manga

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"Beastars" All Series art courtesy of Viz Media The best-selling manga in the United States are almost all shonen series, and all of those top titles are published by Viz -which, as we will see, is no coincidence.

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Before spring's arrival, we became inspired by yet another amazingly beautiful Japanese garden method, Kokedama. Kokedama is a style of Japanese bonsai, where a plant's root system is simply wrapped in sphagnum moss and bound with string, transforming it into a sculptural art form. Loosely translated, 'koke' means moss and 'dama' means ball. The original Japanese form of kokedama had miniature sculptured bonsai trees displayed on handmade pottery or pieces of driftwood. They encapsulate the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi, which can be explained as an appreciation of the imperfections of nature and the transience of natural beauty. Characteristics of Wabi-sabi include simplicity, warmth, earthy, irregular, rough, natural, acceptance and observation. Kokedama are created as a reflection of the Wabi-sabi principles.

Kokedama has since been adapted from its traditional bonsai to offer a new string garden approach, allowing one to use many different types of plants. String gardens take this tradition a step further by suspending these little green orbs in the air. They're a great way to bring the outdoors to your home and are easy to care for. Plant choices can vary from orchids, grasses, ferns, houseplants, citrus trees, herbs, annuals, perennials or even bulbs. Kokadama can hang indoors and out, be placed in a bowl, or displayed on some other decorative object. Group together your Kokedama creations for an even more dramatic display.

Team Bloom was lucky to spend the afternoon making our messes on Crystal Floyd's fantasy plant porch. Seriously she must have had over 100-something different varieties of just succulents and cacti. She's an incredibly talented visual artist in Jacksonville, FL and uses her green thumb to make the most iconic and whimsical terrariums. Her glassy little natural worlds are just an expression of the influences and interests of her as a person. Best part was chatting her up about succulent faves and peeking into her world of art, botany and naturalism. I could keep going, but I think we should save the rest for a whole other story, just be sure to check out her work! Ok, I digress, clearly being plant fanatics we were all stoked for this new string garden endeavor.

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Before spring's arrival, we became inspired by yet another amazingly beautiful Japanese garden method, Kokedama. Kokedama is a style of Japanese bonsai, where a plant's root system is simply wrapped in sphagnum moss and bound with string, transforming it into a sculptural art form. Loosely translated, 'koke' means moss and 'dama' means ball.

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This haiku generator is a lot of fun to play with and sometimes spins out a winner.

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This haiku generator is a lot of fun to play with and sometimes spins out a winner.

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A Haiku is a short Japanese poem used to evoke images. Our Haiku generator lets you choose a few words then it automatically counts the syllables and brings in synonyms where necessary, to help fit the 5-7-5 poetic style.

Please keep your input family friendly.

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Automatic haiku generator tool. Choose some keywords and we will automatically create a poem in seconds.

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Voted one of the best picture books of 2019 by Kirkus reviews. It is lovely.

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Voted one of the best picture books of 2019 by Kirkus reviews. It is lovely.

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Mt Fuji is an active volcano sitting on a "triple junction" of tectonic activity. For grades 6-12.

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Mt Fuji is an active volcano sitting on a "triple junction" of tectonic activity. For grades 6-12.

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T o prepare for this third- through fifth-grade art project, I made a poster with pictures found through a Google image search for "Japanese cherry blossom paintings." During the search, I realized that art-appreciation could easily be added to this lesson, as there are abundant sources of images on the Internet. A number of Japanese artists have painted pictures featuring cherry blossoms, including Utagawa (Ando) Hiroshige, Kitao Shigemasa, and Suzuki Shonen.

Adding background information at the start of a lesson can enhance learning. I shared a number of facts-in Japan, cherry blossoms are called "Sakura," and during the early 1900s, the people of Japan sent over 3,000 trees to Washington, D.C., as a gift to our country.

Two related books that are great to read to students are Eliza's Cherry Trees: Japan's Gift to America by Andrea Griffing Zimmerman and Ju-Hong Chen (Pelican Publishing; 2011), and Japanese Celebrations: Cherry Blossoms, Lanterns and Stars! by Betty Reynolds (Tuttle Publishing; 2006).

After a brief demonstration of techniques we would be using to create our cherry trees, the art making began. First, using a plastic lid, we traced a small circle on our papers for a sun or moon. The circle was left white or painted in with yellow glitter paint.

Blue and violet watercolor paint was used to create a sky by alternating the colors from the top to the bottom. (Tip: Some students left the lids on their papers for this step, to prevent paint from getting into their suns/moons.)

Tree trunks were then painted with brown watercolor, with students carefully adding a bit of extra paint to the trunks, which was used in the next step: The extra paint was blown through cut soda straws to create smaller branches reaching up and out from the trunks. (Tip: In their enthusiasm, some students may forget to stop and take a break to avoid getting dizzy!) The paintings were then allowed to dry.

The cherry blossoms came next, which were painted with pink tempera. Students added the blossoms' stamens with red markers after their blossoms' paint dried.

As a final touch, students were shown the Japanese (kanji) character for "Sakura" and other words, which they could paint or draw with thin markers along a lower side of their paintings, if they desired. As an alternative, black ink pads and rubber stamps of Japanese or Chinese characters could be used instead.

When students first saw the sample I made, they could not wait to try it themselves. They really got a kick out of using the straws to blow paint into branches. The were pleased with and proud of the outcome of their hard work. In fact, several parents have told me that they framed their child's picture. It's always so nice to hear about the appreciation of our young student artists' work.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Elementary students will ...
* view artwork by Japanese artists who have painted cherry blossoms.
* learn the historical significance of cherry blossom trees in Japan and America.
* use different techniques and media to create artwork.

NATIONAL ART STANDARDS
* CREATING:
*Create personally satisfying artwork using a variety of artistic processes and materials.
*Explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches.
*Experiment and develop skills in multiple art-making techniques and approaches.

* 5.5″ x 15″ watercolor paper
* Concentrated brown, blue and violet watercolor paint
* Pink tempera paint, yellow glitter paint
* Paintbrushes, straws, red markers

ONLINE EXTRAS
click here for resources related to this article
Suzanne Dionne is a visual art teacher at Rotella Interdistrict Magnet School in Waterbury, Connecticut.
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T o prepare for this third- through fifth-grade art project, I made a poster with pictures found through a Google image search for "Japanese cherry blossom paintings." During the search, I realized that art-appreciation could easily be added to this lesson, as there are abundant sources of images on the Internet.

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Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

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Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

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Koi fish are colorful, ornamental versions of the common carp. Modern Japanese koi are believed to date back to early 19th-century Japan where wild, colorful carp were caught, kept and bred by rice farmers. The word “koi” comes from the Japanese word for “carp.”

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E-Jump Fuji: Team Skipping Champions - Meet The Record Breakers Japan

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Language learning app free to all PPL card holders:

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Language learning app free to all PPL card holders:

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Whether you're getting ready for a trip to a new country, want to practice speaking, or looking to learn a new language from scratch, Mango Languages can help. Use online or download the app - it's all free with your Portsmouth Public Library card!

Mango Languages is an online language study tool that allows you to learn at your own pace, with grammar explained in English and conversation examples provided by native speakers. It is colorful and approachable.

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Whether you're getting ready for a trip to a new country, want to practice speaking, or looking to learn a new language from scratch, Mango Languages can help. Use online or download the app - it's all free with your Portsmouth Public Library card!

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Teaching young writers renga (a Japanese poetry form).

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Teaching young writers renga (a Japanese poetry form).

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is an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry. The Renga platform in the UK provides this introduction for beginners.

A renga is a series of short verses linked into one long poem, composed collaboratively by a group. Each constituent verse must make sense independently. It should also connect in some way with the verses that follow and precede. The verses alternate between 3-lines and 2-lines throughout.

The opening verse of a renga is called the hokku. It takes the same form as haiku - three short lines. A renga opens with some reference to the season of composition and moves - not necessarily in orderly sequence - through all four seasons, generally ending with a spring verse. Seasonal themes are generally sustained for at least a couple of verses, and the passage from one season to the next is often broken by one or more non-seasonal verses.

Seasonal reference is made through the use of a season-word, which may be obvious, like 'autumn rain' or 'snow', or more subtle, for instance, 'watermelon' for summer. Season words include cultural as well as natural references; for instance, you might use April Fool's Day for spring. The two key principles of renga are link and shift. Link means that each verse should connect in some way with its immediate predecessor. Shift means that, with the exception of the link just noted, each verse should move on, drawing on imagery, which is new (for that particular renga). That is, repetition is to be avoided. Even when linking, although there will be some implicit connection, actual words and phrases should not be repeated.

Birds On A Wire: A Renga 'Round Town (2008, OP), written by J. Patrick Lewis & Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Gary Lippincott, is a series of interlinked verses that describe life in a small town on a single day. Instead of the usual renga pattern with authors alternating each verse, the poets here have chosen to alternate PAIRS of verses. They do acknowledge this break from tradition in the introduction, explaining that "We each wrote five lines and broke them into three-line and two-line stanzas.'

The introduction to this book actually provides quite a bit of information about the form. Here's an excerpt.

What, you might be wondering, is a renga? Like a haiku, a renga is an ancient Japanese verse from in which poets take turns adding verses. The word is both singular and plural, like sheep or salmon. A renga (meaning "linked verse") isn't nearly as well known as a haiku, and that's too bad because haiku really evolved from renga.

A traditional renga is written by two or more poets. The first poet writes three lines (similar to haiku), the second poet follows that with two lines, the first poet comes back with another three lines, then two, three, two, and son on. Like railroad cards in a line, each verse links in some way with the one preceding it, but not with the others. That means that each new verse can send you off in a completely different direction. And the next poet must discover how to connect to the new verse.

The book opens at the beginning of a day with these verses.

in the blizzard
of apple blossoms,
a road edged in white

old spotted hound
stops to sniff

As readers are taken on a trip through the town they encounter a creek, grasshopper, florist, doughnuts, hardware store, old Ferris wheel, ballpark, and much more. By day's end and the end of the journey, readers have had a lovely glimpse into small town life.

My favorite verse from the book hearkens to a poem of William Carlos William's that I love.

glazed with rain
a red wheelbarrow headstands
by the hardware store

the old doctor recalls
childhood barnyard

Poems ©J. Patrick Lewis & Paul Janeczko, 2008. All rights reserved.

If you wish to try writing renga in the classroom, you need to settle on some rules that will work for you and your kids. I particularly like those set out at My Need to Write in a post entitled How To Write Poetry: Renga.

You may also find some helpful resources at these sites.

Finally, here is a renga project you should be aware of. Even though it isn't meant for the elementary classroom, it will give you a feel for the the beauty and challenge of writing a renga.

In 2011, a group of 54 poets contributed 10 lines each to one poem about America. Called Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, this amazing collaboration includes the likes of Robert Pinsky, Rita Dove, Philip Levine, Edward Hirsch, Billy Collins, and more. This project was commissioned by America: Now and Here, an organization founded by Eric Fischl to promote conversation about contemporary America through the arts. This 45 minute film is a reading of the resulting renga.

Crossing State Lines: An American Renga from Drew Harty on Vimeo.

NPR also did a story on this project. You can hear Carol Muske-Dukes, one of the book's editors and a poet, along with two additional poets talk about the project in the piece 'Crossing State Lines': 54 Writers, One American Poem.

It's hard to pick a favorite here, but I'm quite drawn to these lines by Edward Hirsch.

How many state lines did we cross
as we drove across a wide country
sometimes divided sometimes united

Every state is a state of mind

Every love is a drive
toward a move perfect union

I hope you've enjoyed this brief introduction to the renga. I'll be back tomorrow with another Asian poetic form.

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is an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry. The Renga platform in the UK provides this introduction for beginners. A renga is a series of short verses linked into one long poem, composed collaboratively by a group. Each constituent verse must make sense independently.

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Newest novel from Cynthia Kadohata for grades 5+. "Superb characterization and an evocative sense of place elevate this story that is at once specific to the experiences of Japanese-American expatriates and yet echoes those of many others."

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Newest novel from Cynthia Kadohata for grades 5+. "Superb characterization and an evocative sense of place elevate this story that is at once specific to the experiences of Japanese-American expatriates and yet echoes those of many others."

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From the School for Good and Evil series , Vol. 1

by Soman Chainani ; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno ‧

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.

Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire's Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.

Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess-like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they've been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually-too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic-it becomes clear that the placement wasn't a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).

Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)

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A family battered by war crosses an ocean to settle in a land still mired in suffering.

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Enter any Japanese text or English word in the search box and Jisho will search a myriad of data for you.

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Enter any Japanese text or English word in the search box and Jisho will search a myriad of data for you.

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Powerful and easy-to-use online Japanese dictionary with words, kanji and example sentences.

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An intro to  hiragana, a primary component of the Japanese writing system taught to children:

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An intro to  hiragana, a primary component of the Japanese writing system taught to children:

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Any intensive Japanese course includes study of the Hiragana and Katakana. Also known as the Japanese syllabary, Hiragana is a primary component of the Japanese writing system (along with kanji, katakana, and the Latin alphabet). Pronounced hee-ra-GA-na, it is the most useful and the simplest to write.

Writing Basics Hiragana are parts of words and sentences (like "and" or "is"), and they are used in kids' story books. Japanese children learn Hiragana first, then moving steadily through Katakana and kanji.

The 46 Hiragana letters are sounds that make up syllables. For instance, the first 5 Hiragana letters are A, I, U, E and O. The remaining letters are built from the first 5 vowels. As soon as you master the vowels, the pronunciation of the rest of the letters will follow the same pattern. For example, the next 5 letters are ka, ki, ku, ke and ko.

Hiragana are usually arranged in groups of 5. Although Ks are constant, some groups aren't. The 3rd group, for instance, is sa, shi, su, se and so. Shi is obviously different: a Japanese letter for Si doesn't exist. This can be confusing and intimidating at first, but with constant practice, you'll remember them easily. Some other inconsistencies:

Ta, chi, tsu, te and to. Tu and Ti don't exist.

Ha, hi, fu, he and ho. Hu is not a letter.

The W (only wo and wa) and Y (ya, yu, and yo) groups

N, the last letter, is the only one that doesn't have a vowel. In Japanese writing, all words end N or a vowel.

Practice, Practice, Practice! There are other rules for writing Hiragana. If you plan to enroll in an intensive Japanese course, learn one Hiragana letter daily and practice writing it thoroughly. Get used to writing these Japanese characters and you will become a pro in no time.

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Hiragana: The First Japanese Alphabet | KCP International

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Any intensive Japanese course includes study of the Hiragana and Katakana. Also known as the Japanese syllabary, Hiragana is a primary component of the Japanese writing system (along with kanji, katakana, and the Latin alphabet). Pronounced hee-ra-GA-na, it is the most useful and the simplest to write.

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School Lunch in Japan - It's Not Just About Eating!

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Short video about school culture (clean up time).

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Short video about school culture (clean up time).

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Japanese Students Clean Classrooms To Learn Life Skills

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THE origami resource for teachers (think steam):

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THE origami resource for teachers (think steam):

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I'm back again with another post for the A-Z STEM for Kids series hosted by Little Bins for Little Hands. Each day, bloggers will take on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math concepts starting with A all the way to Z. I, of course, am turning STEM to STEM by adding A rt into my posts.

I already wrote about Coding for Kids, and today I am tackling "O for Origami."

When I was brainstorming ideas for the series, I had just recently watched a really cool documentary on Netflix called Between the Folds about Origami.

I found this documentary to be incredibly mesmerizing. You would just not believe what these artists can produce with a single (huge) piece of paper. Not only was the artwork made by these origami masters totally, unfathomably cool, but it was also really amazing to see all the connections Origami has to the STEM fields of science, math, engineering, and technology.

Definition and History of Origami

Origami is the art of paper folding which originated in Japan as early as the late 17th century. Classic origami usually consists of one sheet of paper (with no cuts) that is folded using a series of standard origami folds to create intricate designs. Origami is now practiced around the world and has exploded to new heights in the 21st century (see the TED Talk video below).

My favorite Origami tradition is the legend of the thousand paper cranes . It is said that if anyone who folds one thousand paper cranes will be granted a wish or good luck. One of our local art museums here in Dallas, the Crow Collection of Asian Art, has (or had, it's been a while since I visited) a hallway with a thousand paper cranes folded by school students, and it is so joyful and colorful.

The legend has added significance with the story of a young girl, Sadako, who was 3 years old when the atomic bomb dropped just a mile from her house in Hiroshima, Japan. After being diagnosed with leukemia at age 12, Sadako began folding paper cranes in order to ensure her defeat of cancer. She only was able to fold 644 cranes before she died. You can read about her story in the classic children's book, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (affiliate link).

STEM Applications of Origami

Origami artists have been called to work in many fields to share their expertise. Often, the origami comes in to play when engineers need to have something into a compact shape to get it into something or somewhere, so they can expand it at its destination. Here are just a couple I have found. The links take you to the article where I found the information if you want to read more.

The Math and Magic of Origami, Robert Lang

Also, check out this awesome TED Talk that talks about the progression of origami and how they applied mathematical principles to origami to make it the incredible art form it is today. It may be the nerd in me, but I can't get enough of this.

Benefits of Origami for Kids

I had an origami station set up in my elementary classroom available for students to work on if they finished their work. The kids LOVED this. It was probably the most utilized activity in my "Creativity Corner." I filled it with origami paper and laminated instructions for origami animals and paper airplanes (now you see why they loved it so much).

Seeing them work out how to create the origami sculptures on their own really showed me how beneficial origami is to student's brains.

In addition to the sheer fun of the activity, origami helps students with:

fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination

following directions

focus

math skills (fractions, symmetry, geometry)

spatial reasoning

problem-solving skills

I also saw great examples of students working together to figure out how to make the paper sculptures. It was so fun to see. Sure some students got frustrated and needed some help, but a challenge is a good thing.

I tried to find some research on Origami for Kids, and I came across this article. It has some links to research and talks about this stuff in a lot more detail.

Origami Instructions for Kids

I was going to link to a bunch of posts from around the web with great origami activities, but I found one that trumps them all! You must check out Origami Club! It has tons of templates (hundreds at least) with printable step-by-step instructions plus animations that show you how to do it. It even has a rating system from 1 star for easy to 5 stars for very difficult. What a great resource for your classroom!

Origami Resources
I have provided Amazon affiliate links for your convenience. Purchases made through these links help support the work I do for you on Art Class Curator. Thanks for your support! Try out an origami design and let me know how it goes in the comments. Be sure to visit this landing page for an introduction to the A-Z STEM for Kids series as well as links to all the other amazing posts for the month!

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I'm back again with another post for the A-Z STEM for Kids series hosted by Little Bins for Little Hands. Each day, bloggers will take on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math concepts starting with A all the way to Z. I, of course, am turning STEM to STEM by adding A rt into my posts.

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The benefits of origami (think math) and jumping frog instructions:

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The benefits of origami (think math) and jumping frog instructions:

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Good educators are those who engage a number of different learning styles. Visual, kinesthetic, and auditory are among the most commonly discussed of these, though philosophers of pedagogy recognize dozens more. Lesson plans that appeal to multiple styles at once not only boost classroom engagement, but also increase performance and rates of transfer.

Bringing origami into the classroom is one of my favorite teaching strategies to involve multiple intelligences for students in grades three and up. It has some fairly obvious applications in mathematics; fractions and geometry lend themselves well. But origami can be used to illustrate other concepts, as well.

As with mathematics, science teachers don't have to stretch their imaginations too far to see how to fit this strategy into their classroom activities. By folding or designing a variety of models, students can explore aerodynamics, velocity, motion and volume. For younger students, origami animals are an engaging way to teach the basics of environmental science (habitat, food webs, etc.).

Where it comes to language and visual arts, folding origami can invite discussions of pictorial representation and symbolism. Lessons that include origami put geography, social studies, and world history into students' hands.

Using origami as a teaching tool comes with other benefits, too. Coordination, concentration, an ability to follow directions, and communication skills (seriously, ask students to give each other instructions for folding a simple piece of origami using only words and then see what happens) improve when students practice origami in the classroom.

Now here's a challenge for you. Check out this set of illustrated instructions from Kids Web Japan and brainstorm how to fit this origami project into your next lesson plan. Leave a comment with your favorite ideas and success stories!

Origami Jumping Frog

1. Fold the paper in half sideways to make a rectangle.

2. Fold the corners down and unfold them right away, repeating this for both top corners of your rectangle.

3. Flip the paper over and fold the top of the paper down at the spot where the diagonal creases meet. Unfold right away.

4. Flip over once again, and fold the two edges toward you so they meet each other. The top of your rectangle will fold down to form a triangle.

5. Fold the bottom of the paper up so that its edge meets the bottom of your triangle. Fold the two corners of the triangle up to form the "front legs" of the frog.

6. Fold the sides inward to meet at the center.

7. Fold the bottom of the paper upward so its edge touches the bottom of the "legs," and unfold right away.

8. Insert your fingers into the inside of the flaps, and pull the bottom corners outward to the sides, so that the bottom edge comes up to touch the bottom of the "legs."

9. Fold the corners down so they meet at the bottom of the figure.

10. Fold the bottom corners outward to form the "back legs" of the frog.

11. Create a zigzag fold at the bottom of the figure, folding the bottom half up and then the bottom quarter back down.

12. Your frog is ready to go.

Press its back and release to make it hop!

Fiona Mayberry is a retired teacher, occasionally substituting for some of her old classes while she pursues some of her lifelong ambitions of authoring a book and growing a garden. She maintains her daily writing practice by blogging for Teaching Degree Link, an online resource for those interested in pursuing a teaching career.

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Origami in the Classroom - Hands-On How-To - The Inspired Classroom

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Good educators are those who engage a number of different learning styles. Visual, kinesthetic, and auditory are among the most commonly discussed of these, though philosophers of pedagogy recognize dozens more. Lesson plans that appeal to multiple styles at once not only boost classroom engagement, but also increase performance and rates of transfer.

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A wonderful addition to any quiet corner for all ages (staff too!) .

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A wonderful addition to any quiet corner for all ages (staff too!) .

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We noticed you have more than 10 items in your cart. We recommend that you log in to be sure to preserve your order. It's quick and easy, and you'll then be able to access it at any time, from any device.

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practical life language music & movement geography & culture card materials elementary science classroom activity sets traditional toys books community & peace preparing the environment sensorial art time & seasons wooden tray for metal inset

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In Japan, Zen Buddhists rake sand in stone gardens as a meditative act. Raking this tabletop version can be just as peaceful for young children. A simple yet powerful calming activity. Includes: wooden tray, sand, rakes, rocks, and a booklet of meditations.

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Some good stuff here for middle and high school artists:

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Some good stuff here for middle and high school artists:

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The unique and bold characters is a modern twist on traditional Japanese works of art. The colours and lines are bold and detailed as North American comics, however there is more emphasis on the characters, than the background.

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The unique and bold characters is a modern twist on traditional Japanese works of art. The colours and lines are bold and detailed as North American comics, however there is more emphasis on the characters, than the background.

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The educator's page at the official site of the Olympic Games.

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The Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP) is a series of free and accessible teaching resources that have been created by the IOC. Using the context of Olympic sports and the core principles of Olympism, participants are encouraged to experience values-based learning and to assume the responsibilities of good citizenship. It communicates the benefit of sport and physical activity through an understanding of Olympism and its impact on individual health, enjoyment, and social interaction.

SPORT IS A SCHOOL FOR LIFE

Blending of sport with education and cultural expression continues to be the foundation of the IOC's Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP), version 2.0. Interlinked with the global education priorities related to promoting skill sets for the 21st century, OVEP uses the universality of sport in the Olympic context to support delivery of curriculum in and outside of the classroom. OVEP is based on the Olympic philosophy that learning takes place through a balanced development of body and mind. OVEP allows young people to experience life values such as excellence, respect and friendship.

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The Olympic Values Education Programme (OVEP) is a series of free and accessible teaching resources that have been created by the IOC. Using the context of Olympic sports and the core principles of Olympism, participants are encouraged to experience values-based learning and to assume the responsibilities of good citizenship.

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Children's Day (May 5) is a national holiday. Here is how to make the traditional carp flown for each child:

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Children's Day (May 5) is a national holiday. Here is how to make the traditional carp flown for each child:

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Koinobori Song

Yane yori takai koinobori
Ookii magoi wa otousan
Chiisai higoi wa kodomotachi
Omoshirosouni oyoideru

The koinobori are higher than the rooftops
The big black carp is the father
The small golden-red carp is the child
How pleasing it is to swim!

Children are stars. Fish fly. Schools have the day off.

Every May 5, it is Kodomo no Hi or "Children's Day" in Japan. Families fly koinobori banners in the shape of a carp (a type of fish) for each child in their house. In Japanese folklore, the carp is a symbol of determination and vigor, overcoming all obstacles to swim upstream. Samurai warrior figurines and samurai kabuto helmets are also displayed in homes to inspire strength and bravery.

Children indulge in kashiwa-mochi, sticky rice cakes wrapped in oak leaves, and other sweets. Around the country there are many events for children and families. Children take center stage in traditional Japanese plays. Thousands of children compete in the "Kids' Olympics" held at the National Kasumigaoka Stadium in Tokyo. Children also use the day to thank and show respect for the teachers, parents, and relatives who care for them.

Until 1948, May 5 was called Tango no sekku and only honored boys. A separate holiday called Hinamatsuri or "Dolls' Day" celebrated girls on March 3. Even now, on this day girls still receive dolls that had been passed down to their grandmothers and mothers. For many families, May 5 still centers on boys. Some people say that Hinamatsuri for girls should become an equal holiday instead of combining them into one. How about you? Would you want a holiday for all kids, or one for boys and another for girls?

Create Your Own Koinobori

Materials:

24" x 18" piece of fabric or heavy paper.

fabric paint, paintbrush, markers, and colored tissue paper

glue

ribbon

stapler

strip of thin cardboard (about 17 inches in length and between ½-1" wide)

hole puncher

string (about 16 inches in length)

Instructions:

1. Fold the fabric in half lengthwise (so it is 24" x 9").

2. Draw a fish with an opening for the mouth and tail (at least 6 inches wide at each end). The body should be about 12 inches at the widest.

3. Cut along your lines so you have two identical fish shapes.

4. Using paint, markers, glue and tissue paper, decorate both fish.

5. Wait until dry. If using fabric, lay one decorated fish face-up on a table. Lay the other piece decoration-down on top of it. (The two decorated sides will be touching each other.) Smear glue along the sides of the fish, creating a ½ seam. (Leave the mouth and tail with no glue so the wind can blow through.) When glue is dry, turn your koinobori right side out.

6. If using paper: lay first fish face-down on table and smear glue along edges, leaving mouth and tail with no glue so wind can blow through. Place other fish on top of first, face-up and press down along seams.

7. Glue pieces of ribbon to the end of the tail.

8. Fit the piece of cardboard around the inside rim of the koinobori mouth. Staple the ends together so it forms a circle.

9. Push the cardboard circle about an inch inside the mouth and secure with glue. Fold the inch or so of excess fabric or paper over and glue to the inside rim.

10. Using the holepunch, make a hole on either side of the fish mouth. Cut a piece of string or ribbon about 16 inches long. Tie each end of the string to the holes.

11. Hang your koinobori outside and watch it swim in the breeze!

Author: Heather Clydesdale

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Koinobori Song Yane yori takai koinoboriOokii magoi wa otousanChiisai higoi wa kodomotachiOmoshirosouni oyoideru The koinobori are higher than the rooftopsThe big black carp is the fatherThe small golden-red carp is the childHow pleasing it is to swim! Children are stars. Fish fly. Schools have the day off.

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Since most kids need practice reading analog clocks, it would be fun to have one set to Japan time (14 hours ahead).

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Since most kids need practice reading analog clocks, it would be fun to have one set to Japan time (14 hours ahead).

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It is a beautiful language for all ages to study.

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It is a beautiful language for all ages to study.

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Posted by Coto Academy on July 8, 2019 - Japanese Study

Have you learned hiragana and katakana? Now you can step up your Japanese learning game by taking on some basic vocabulary.

We have selected the top 100 Basic Japanese words you need to know and sorted them into 8 lists.

This blog is meant to help you learn the words so that you can try to form basic Japanese sentences with them.

For the next step after learning these vocabularies, equip yourself with basic Japanese grammar.

If you wish to have a short-term study in Tokyo, Check out our 3-month intensive Japanese courses. Also, feel free to send us an inquiry if you have any questions!

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japanese language school in japan for foreigners

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japanese language school in tokyo for foreigners

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tokyo international japanese language school

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short term japanese language course tokyo

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Posted by Coto Academy on July 8, 2019 - Japanese Study Have you learned hiragana and katakana? Now you can step up your Japanese learning game by taking on some basic vocabulary. We have selected the top 100 Basic Japanese words you need to know and sorted them into 8 lists.

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I'll be using this book to guide adults through the PPL project but it is suitable for MS and up.

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I'll be using this book to guide adults through the PPL project but it is suitable for MS and up.

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Pls don't limit your students to haiku, but this is a good intro:

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Pls don't limit your students to haiku, but this is a good intro:

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Haiku can be a way through which children can express their inner souls, a window through which one can see a child's world.
Poetry can be a way through which children can express their inner souls, a window through which one can see a child's world. Good poetry, like good prose, is efficient, but the beauty of poetry is that it is extremely efficient. Poetry can be the essence of what one is trying to say; without the adjectives or the extra articles, it is the core of what one means.

Haiku is one of the poetry forms I introduce to my junior high students, but it is not one of the first poetry forms I introduce. I usually wait to introduce the haiku. I introduce it when my students' world is most beautiful. If I am in a geographic area in which fall is glorious, I introduce the haiku in the fall. If I am in an area in which spring is an exceptional season, a time bursting with fragrance and hope, I introduce the haiku in spring. Haiku is a poetry form that needs beauty to become a thing of beauty.

The haiku is a very structured poetry form. Initially introduced by the Japanese, they are three-lined poems containing five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Containing just seventeen syllables, the haiku cannot capture a "big picture." One depicts in them tiny images of incredible beauty, something glorious that might be missed if the writer had not taken the time to point it out. In a haiku one may depict a drop of water on a leaf reflecting early morning light, the smell of the evening dew, the answer of one bird to another's call, the persistence of a flower pushing its way through the cracks in the pavement to touch the sky. A haiku is about serenity and peace. It is getting in touch with nature; it feels like a walk in the woods.

As a teacher, first explain the haiku's rigid structural format of five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Read several to the class. There are some wonderful Japanese haiku available, several of which I have included at the end of this article. Establish a mood. To do so, use visual imagery and/or music or pictures of pastoral scenes, and when the students seem to have some glorious scene in their mind's eye, challenge them to record it -- in seventeen syllables. Do not break the mood until poetry is produced. Then read the products to the class. Students who have written a haiku might try a senryu, poems with the same format as haiku but about any topic, or a tanka, a five-lined poem about nature with syllables per line of five, seven, five, seven, seven. Students can then recopy their poetry and illustrate it, decorating the room with their images of beauty. This type of poetry is like a walk in the park. It is perfect for those break-away days when the world is too beautiful to do anything else but write poetry.

EXAMPLES OF HAIKU

Fallen sick on a journey
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor
by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

The first snow! Enough to bend the leaves Of the jonquil low. by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

A giant firefly: that way, this way, that way, this -- and it passes by. by Issa (1762-1826)

First autumn morning: the mirror I stare into shows my father's face. by Kijo Murakami (1865-1938)

For love and for hate I swat a fly and offer it to an ant. by Shiki (1867-1902)

After killing a spider, how lonely I feel in the cold of night! by Shiki (186

SOME HAIKU BY STUDENTS

Soft little droplets
Which quench mother nature's thirst
making the world green
by Kristen Armand A gentle breeze blows Taking the scent of a bud Along for the ride.by Samantha Keim

SOME TANKA BY STUDENTS

Outside the rain pours
Tapping against the window
Do you hear the sound?
It is like a melody
Softly it whispers to me
by Samantha Keim

A small green oval Falling free and gracefully Through the dark blue skies Never seeing the tall tree It once lived peacefully on by Jeanne Jord

SOME SENRYU BY STUDENTS

The tears of a girl
With a crushed and broken heart
Hidden from her friends
by Jeanne Jordan

"Sleep" Completely motionless Discovering strange worlds Where no one bothers you by Aaron Ryan

A soft gentle touch Only a woman could give To the man she loves by Samantha Keim

Feelings flow freely Stress is gone, I can relax I find inner peace by Melissa McDowel

Article by Glori Chaika

Copyright© 1998, 2015 Education World®

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Haiku: Teaching Japanese Poetry Writing | Education World

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Haiku can be a way through which children can express their inner souls, a window through which one can see a child's world. Poetry can be a way through which children can express their inner souls, a window through which one can see a child's world.

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About a thousand years ago, a poet named Ki no Tsurayuki wrote:

"The poetry of Japan has its roots in the human heart and flourishes in the countless leaves of words. Because human beings possess interests of so many kinds it is in poetry that they give expression to the meditations of their hearts in terms of the sights appearing before their eyes and the sounds coming to their ears. Hearing the warbler sing among the blossoms and the frog in his fresh waters - is there any living being not given to song!"

The "song" he meant (uta) was a waka. It is a poem in thirty-one syllables, arranged in five lines, of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables respectively. For example, here is a poem written by a famous Heian-period woman, Ono no Komachi:

The flowers withered, (5)
Their color faded away, (7)
While meaninglessly (5)
I spent my days in the world (7)
And the long rains were falling. (7) (1)

The waka is often said to have an "upper verse," which refers to the first three lines, and a "lower verse," the last two. The haiku form is based on the "upper verse"; another form, called a renga, is made from alternating the two - first a three-line, seventeen syllable verse, then a two-line, fourteen syllable one, each by a different poet for up to a hundred verses!

Often when we read Japanese poetry in translation the syllable count seems wrong. One reason is that Japanese words often cannot be translated by a single equivalent word in English. More important, however, is the fact that English poetic forms are not usually based on syllables, but on stress. Where Japanese poems rely on internal rhythms and sounds for their effects, English poems often use rhyme. Each language uses its special characteristics to form poetry - but all poetry "has its roots in the human heart."

Traditionally, it was the heart responding to nature that was most sung about: Ki no Tsurayuki asked, "Hearing the warbler sing among the blossoms and the frog in his fresh waters - is there any living being not given to song?" Even in modern times, nature - and our response to it - is a frequent topic, as in this poem by Saitô Mokichi (1882-1953):

Is this what
quietude is like?
On a winter night
the sounds of the air
which surrounds me. (2)

Modern poets are less likely to write exclusively about the "beauties of nature" than their ancestors were, however. At one time the topics to be treated by a waka, and even the words a poet was allowed to use, were subject to strict regulations. In modern times, however, any topic is acceptable, and any of the "countless leaves of words" may be used. A good example is this poem by Ishikawa Takuboku (1885-1912):

These "short poems" have been important to the Japanese throughout their history. These have been used to celebrate special occasions since ancient times, and indeed, still are. The Imperial family still runs an annual poetry-writing contest open to all, and many Japanese are amateur poets. In the Heian period especially, waka were a most important form of communication between lovers, and a person's skill in poetry was a major criterion in determining his or her standing in society, even influencing political positions. Throughout its history, the waka has had an importance in Japanese society unparalleled in the West.

What is a waka, then? It is a short poem, with specific structural requirements, written to express feelings. It differs from poetry in our own tradition both in form and in influence. There is yet another general difference: Over the centuries, waka were written more to capture emotions than to explain or define them. Ono no Komachi, in the poem above, did not mention why her days seemed meaningless; Takuboku did not tell us what those memories were that made him feel so awful. In contrast, much Western poetry has been concerned with the reasons for a particular feeling, as well as the emotion itself; it has told stories, created allegories, and even discussed theology. But the "Japanese poem" has traditionally treated the "what" rather than the "why" of experience, and opens a wealth of subtle emotions to us. It is an especially rich source for increasing our understanding of the Japanese experience, in reading poetry and, as in the exercises that follow, trying to write some ourselves.

Notes
(1) Poem translated in Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1955), 81.
(2) Amy Vladeck Heinrich, Fragments of Rainbows: The Life and Poetry of Saitô Mokichi, 1882-1953 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
(3) Carl Sesar, trans., Poems to Eat, by Ishikawa Takuboku (Tokyo, Palo Alto, CA: Kodansha International, 1966).

Essay written by Dr. Amy Vladeck Heinrich, director, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University.

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What Is a Waka? | Asia for Educators | Columbia University

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About a thousand years ago, a poet named Ki no Tsurayuki wrote: "The poetry of Japan has its roots in the human heart and flourishes in the countless leaves of words.

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A great article for students to read (journalism studies):

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A great article for students to read (journalism studies):

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For more than a thousand years, the country's cherry blossom season has been a source of fascination and wonderment. How did such an infatuation begin?

So essential a symbol is the cherry blossom that nearly every Japanese visual artist is compelled to address it in their work. The following images are very different takes on the sakura by a selection of Japanese contemporary photographers. Above: Shomei Tomatsu's "Kohiganzakura - Takato-machi, Nagano" (1980). Credit... © Interface-Shomei Tomatsu, courtesy of Misa Shin Gallery

THE SCENE IS a park in the late afternoon. It is springtime: The trees are a profound, almost bluish emerald; the first reeds are beginning to sprout in the river. The sky is a soft, worn, denimy blue, although above a smudge of cloud is a stripe of near black - it will rain soon. Yet there is no sense of doom, no portent; the rain, you sense, will be welcome when it arrives.

Down by the river, people have gathered. The adults wear kimonos in shades that match the landscape - rich greens, warm blues - and the children wear clothes the color of carp. A little girl turns her face up to her mother; a little boy bends over to peer at something he spots in the grass - his mother reaches out her arms to him in the universal helpless gesture of a parent trying to call back her child from the brink of mischief-making even as she understands her attempts will be futile. In the hills above them are two pavilions connected by a wooden bridge and accessed by a steep staircase that wends through the forest; in the windows, some of whose shoji shades have been pushed back to allow the air in, you can see that the ceiling has been strung with globes of red paper lanterns.

But all of these details, all of this life, is incidental to the element that dominates this tableau: a grove of cherry trees, most of them in full flower. Behind the cluster of 16 that stands closest to the river, there is another layer, this one so profuse in its bloom that it has become a cloud of pink, the petals so thickly clumped that they obscure even the surrounding greenery - the pines and paulownias and persimmon trees, now bare of fruit - in a fog. Beneath the trees, on wide, low benches made of young bamboo, sit people, singly or in couples. Two women turn to each other in conversation, but the remainder do not; they are not there to do anything - they are only there to sit beneath the cherry trees.

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This is not a scene I have witnessed for myself, but apart from a few details - the kimonos; the pavilion; the clean, blank sky clear of skyscrapers and telephone lines and passing airplanes - it could be. It is a scene from a woodblock print, "Flower Pavilion, Dangozaka, Sendagi," by the Japanese ukiyo-e master Hiroshige, the 16th image in his serialized portfolio, "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo," which was published between 1856 and 1859. Hiroshige's masterwork (which actually consisted of 119 prints, most of which he completed himself before dying in 1858) has endured for the same reason it was so popular in his lifetime: It is a chronicle of the changing seasons and daily life in what was then (and now) one of the largest cities in the world. One feels, from the distance of time, the strange sorrow and ex post facto dread that contemplating art made on the cusp of great change can elicit: Commodore Perry's black-hulled ships had forced Japan open to the West in 1853; by 1868, the shogunate would be overthrown, and Edo, once a medieval fishing village, would become the imperial seat and renamed Tokyo.

Yet of all the turmoil the country would endure and inflict over the next 150-odd years, what has remained consistent is its love for cherry blossoms, or sakura, as they are commonly called. Anyone who has even a passing interest in Japan knows this, has seen the photographs of black-suited salarymen having picnic lunches in an incongruously pink landscape, like something out of a child's fantasy bedroom. When cherry blossom season nears - typically the first and second week of April, though that is changing - news programs and papers start airing and printing cherry blossom reports, sakura zensen, alongside the weather forecasts, noting where and when in the country the trees are or will be in peak bloom. Equivalent environmental reports are made about snow in Colorado or waves in Hawaii or maple leaves in Vermont, but when the West covers the Japanese interest in cherry blossoms, it is often with a faint, patronizing smirk, as if there's something essentially silly and feminine about being so fascinated by the color pink.

The cherry blossom is not just an icon of Japan: It is the icon of Japan, one that enhances and ultimately eclipses every other. The maiko, or apprentice geisha, in her kimono, its nape dipped in the back just low enough to allow a glimpse of her vulnerable, delicate upper vertebrae: The silk, as befits a young woman, is, in springtime, a spun-sugar pink, its pattern a Milky Way scatter of cherry blossoms. The cup of matcha, frothy and vegetal, is best when accompanied by a namagashi, or sweet, shaped like a cherry flower, its color making the sharp new green of the tea grassier in contrast. Even Mount Fuji, which ought to be enough on its own, is often shown foregrounded by cherry trees in bloom, the photograph or etching or painting reduced to three bands of color: the blue of the sky, the white of the mountain's peak, the barest shell-pink of the flowers.

Of course, other countries and other cultures have, or had, a treasured flower. There is the Netherlands with its tulips, and India and Southeast Asia with their lotus. But the Japanese have never industrialized the cherry blossom, and it has only rarely been imbued with religious symbolism - it simply is. Japan without the cherry blossom is like a person without a head: The image is wrong, inconceivable. Nowhere else in the world is a flower so intrinsic to the country that adores it.

LAST SPRING, I went to Japan to see the cherry blossoms. It was the first of April, but I had gambled - with each year, the flowers were opening earlier and earlier, and I was hoping I might see them just as they were beginning to bud. On the streets and in the shops, plastic shoots of sakura branches had already appeared, tied in firecracker explosions to street lamps, arranged in fans over displays of soft drinks at the convenience stores.

I went first to Sendagi, the area immortalized in Hiroshige's print. It was a damp, woolly day, and the skies, as in the woodblock, were a sullen and indecisive gray - Would it rain? Would it not? - the kind of energy-leaching weather that leaves one lazy and irritable. Today, this neighborhood, along with its two neighbors, Yanaka and Nezu, are popular tourist destinations; Tokyo is largely a new city, rebuilt after the Allied firebombings of World War II, but these three districts were somehow spared destruction, and in them, their low-slung houses, their centuries-old shops selling rice crackers and udon, one can find the echoes of the capital's early 20th-century life. The Dangozaka hill of Hiroshige's print was still there, now an anonymous paved road, lined by squat brick apartment buildings, and so, too, was the park, or at least a park, with a red-lacquered bridge arching over a small pond. There were cherry trees here, but they were still bare, their furled leaves green as caterpillars. I sat on a rock and looked instead at the plum blossoms as I ate my rice ball.

It was disappointing not to see the cherry trees in bloom, yet it was a relief as well. Japan is primarily a Buddhist country, but what defines it more than its religion is its rigorous and distinct sense of aesthetics, one that has been founded on a celebration of seasonality. If the life of Christ has inspired some of Western art's greatest endeavors, then it is the weather - the morning glories in summer, the maple leaves in autumn, the snows of winter and the flowering trees of springtime - that has informed Japan's, from its paintings to its poetry to its cuisine. To be in Japan, to be Japanese, is to be engaged in a constant, continual recognition of the changing seasons, an acknowledgment that begins at birth. In the West, we may live with the idea of the self; in Japan, one lives with the idea of the elements that surround the self - the sky and the sea and the forest and the earth, their colors and scents and flavors. Climate change, its creeping assault on the seasons' individuality, the way it has blurred fall into winter and allowed summer to hoggishly extend its stay, like a comedian who won't leave the stage, is here not merely an environmental threat - it is a threat to 2,000 years of aesthetics. Here, as everywhere, the crisis is existential, because it leads, inevitably, to contemplating the elimination of man; but it is also more immediately terrifying, because it means an erasure of something culturally inimitable.

One year I would arrive on the first of April or even at the end of March, and the skies would already be aflutter with pink. And then what? The cherry blossoms' appearance, after all, was not only a symptom of spring; it was spring. Without them, would we really know that we had actually moved from one realm - and into another?

BUT WHY THE cherry blossom? And how? Hanami, or flower-viewing, has been a fact of Japanese court life since the eighth century (another particularity of Japanese culture: how many practices, from bowing to flower-viewing, remain more or less intact from their origins in the imperial court more than a thousand years ago), but the original subject of those gatherings - parties of women in silk and poets with their brushes, the descendants of whom are those salarymen carrying their bento boxes, trudging from their offices to the nearest park - were not cherry trees but plum trees, whose flowers are sturdier, their pink hotter and more aggressive.

We don't know for certain, but one theory I have is that the Japanese court switched their allegiance from the plum to the cherry blossom as a way of culturally asserting themselves. After all, the Chinese court was famously enamored of the plum blossom; the Japanese had already borrowed their religion and written alphabet from the Chinese - must they imitate them here as well? Whatever the reason, the cherry blossom arguably makes its first recorded appearance in the Kojiki (circa 712), Japan's oldest extant text, often translated as "The Record of Ancient Things"; over the centuries, it became the enduring symbol of spring itself. In the early 14th century, the Buddhist priest Kenko wrote a series of short meditations - gathered in the subsequent decades into a collection now known as " Essays in Idleness," or "The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko" - in which he mentioned the cherry blossom:

The changing of the seasons is deeply moving in its every manifestation. People seem to agree that autumn is the best season to appreciate the beauty of things. That may well be true, but the sights of spring are even more exhilarating. The cries of the birds gradually take on a peculiarly springlike quality, and in the gentle sunlight the bushes begin to sprout along the fences. Then, as spring deepens, mists spread over the landscape and the cherry blossoms seem ready to open, only for steady rains and winds to cause them to scatter precipitously. The heart is subject to incessant pangs of emotion as the young leaves are growing out.

The theme of many of Kenko's passages is impermanence, a central tenet of Buddhism. Wealth, material goods, position, knowledge - all are passing, and all are meaningless. "The truly enlightened man has no learning, no virtue, no accomplishments, no fame," Kenko writes in another essay, concluding, "All is unreality. Nothing is worth discussing, worth desiring."

That idea - that everything in life is temporary; that all desire, whether altruistic or selfish in nature, is meaningless - helps explain the culture's adoration of the sakura. If the cherry blossom can still be relied upon to bloom at a specific time, it can also be relied upon to die soon after: For 51 weeks, one waits, and within seven days at most, one is consigned to waiting once more. The pleasure of seeing a cherry tree in bloom is the sorrow of knowing that it will soon be over. To be in the presence of one is to be humbled before nature, and moreover, to be welcoming of that humiliation. A sakura is the human life condensed into the period of a week: a birth, a wild, brief glory, a death. It is to us what we are to the sweep of time - a millisecond of beauty, a memory before we are even through.

By the early 1900s, however, the cherry blossom had been co-opted by an increasingly ambitious and avaricious government, one that by the 1930s was embracing its own version of Manifest Destiny as a justification to colonize the Asian continent. As the Japanese journalist Naoko Abe notes in her recent book " The Sakura Obsession," the cherry blossom had become a metaphor for the supposed unique qualities, the endurance and singularity, of the Japanese people. (It was also during this time - not intentionally, but perhaps not coincidentally - that the country's many cultivated varieties of cherry trees were being neglected or eliminated in favor of the inexpensive, hardy and fast-growing somei-yoshino, the fluffy, blush-tinged variety that Japan would export to various countries, in part as a peace offering, after World War II. Abe's book is largely a biography of the Englishman who encouraged the rebirth in Japan of the splendid, snowy taihaku breed, all but extinct by the 1920s.) "Rather than focusing on [the] cherry blossom as a symbol of life, the songs, plays and school textbooks [of the 1930s] now focused more on death," she writes. "Classic poems were deliberately misinterpreted, and it became the norm to believe that the Yamato damashii, or 'true Japanese spirit,' involved a willingness to die for the emperor - Japan's living god - much as the cherry petals died after a short but glorious life."

That propagandizing of the cherry blossom had lingering effects. Even now, there is something haunted about the sakura; it is associated with death in a way that people cannot articulate to their satisfaction. My friend Mihoko, who lives in Tokyo, sent me a short story from 1928, " Beneath the Cherry Trees," by the Modernist writer Motojiro Kajii:

There are bodies buried beneath the cherry trees. Oh, yes, you can take my word for it. How otherwise do you think the blossom could bloom so splendidly? For two or three days it's been disturbing me, that incredible beauty. But now at last I've got it. There are bodies buried beneath the cherry trees. You mark my word! ...

Just try imagining that each of these cherry trees, with its riotous mass of blossom, has a corpse buried beneath it. ...

What can be responsible for such petals, for such pistils and stamens? I seem to see the crystalline fluid, drawn up by the tendrils, advancing dreamlike in quiet columns through the veins of the trees.

The idea of the cherry blossom as a Japanese citizen, willing to sacrifice his life for the country, was an appropriative convenience. But despite the irony and ghoulishness of Kajii's story, there is beauty in this narrative as well - it is the people who beget the tree, and the tree that pleases the people: a culture and a plant, their survival inextricable from one another. "They are one, by now, with the trees," Kajii's fable ends, "and however I shake my head they show no sign of separating again."

Four years after he published his story, Kajii was dead of tuberculosis. He was 31. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say not that he was dead, but that he had become a cherry tree. Not reborn, quite, but remade. Every tree in Japan is therefore not just a symbol of the dead, but a manifestation of them. A cherry tree is a reminder of the relentlessness of life, of the earth's unceasing, implacable desire to keep making more of itself. To live on an island is to be vividly aware of your vulnerability, to be always at nature's mercy. A wave, an earthquake, a typhoon - anything can be destroyed, no matter how cherished or how hard-fought. But a cherry tree promises that despite the destruction, there will always be more, more, more. Or, even better: Again, again, again.

FOR THE NEXT few days I walked the city, visiting all the neighborhoods, the little parks and alleys, that I always do on my annual visit, which I have taken for the past 22 years. One day I rode the train out to the suburbs to see the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, a 17-acre campus with 30 well-preserved or renovated Japanese houses dating from the 1600s through the 1950s.

The museum is one of my favorites in Japan, and after I had spent the morning there, I bought a soft-serve ice cream (sakura flavored) and walked through the large surrounding park. Here and there were a few plum trees, their flowers dazzlingly fuchsia. (It's hard not to feel a little sorry for the plum trees, which in any other place would draw their own crowds, their own worshipers, but here can be overlooked simply for not being sakura, or treated as an opening act to be impatiently endured.) Cherry trees had been planted in long, stately rows, and there was a wooden sign listing the different varieties and their expected bloom date: The first group of them would flower in 10 days, but by then I would already be back in New York.

About 20 minutes into my walk, I encountered a cherry tree in bloom, its branches a penumbra of white. It was a spindly, boastful thing, and yet a dozen people sat beneath it, chatting and murmuring, briskly unpacking elaborate lunches. Up close, I saw that each flower had a deep-pink throat, and it was this, as well as the tiny dots of pink that topped each stamen, that gave the blossom its color. The petals were so thin that they spun, rather than floated, to the ground, where they plastered themselves to the asphalt walkways like damp tissue. The beauty of a sakura is that it is only beautiful when it's still attached to the tree - try to pick a blossom and it tears: It is more liquid than solid, and not meant to be held or indeed kept for longer than a few minutes. Try to press one and it spoils, smearing the pages of your book with brown.

The next day, I went to the mountains of Kyoto, which are always a few degrees cooler than Tokyo - I didn't expect to see any sakura there, and indeed, I didn't. I went to the temples I visit every year; I drank cup after cup of sakura tea, which has a curious salinity, as if it's not tea at all, but a broth made from seawater. I saw plum trees and camellia bushes and, everywhere, glossy black-barked cherry trees, their branches blistered with unopened buds, people circling hopefully beneath them as if they might at any moment burst into bloom.

Then I returned to Tokyo; the following day, I would go home. Back in the city, it was humid again. At the train station, I hailed a taxi and stared out the window as the car wound its way through the light midday traffic, working its way to the west of the city, where I would spend my final night.

We were in Shinjuku now. The car turned down one unremarkable thoroughfare, and then another. And then it turned again, and suddenly we were on a street ablaze with cherry trees in luxuriant, excessive bloom. There they were, a dozen on each side of the street, all of them shaggy with flowers, the air around them swarming with floating petals, as if the petals were affixing themselves to the branches. Beneath and around them were everyday people doing everyday things, the tasks that need to be completed if a great city is to function: A delivery truck was being unloaded, and the sidewalk was being swept, and a repairman was shimmying up a telephone pole, and a woman was dragging a wooden crate of what might have been daikon to the door of a soba-ya. It was comical and also unbelievable, as if above them the skies were busy with flying pigs, and no one had noticed. This was a plain, unremarkable street, but in that moment, it was the most beautiful in Japan. It made me wonder whether it wasn't good fortune after all that the sakura season was so brief, for, these people aside, how could anyone get anything done in the face of such splendor? Wasn't it miraculous that life didn't simply cease in those two weeks in April that the trees were in bloom? How could you concentrate on anything else? How could a human compete?

Just as I was thinking this, the delivery man finished loading his truck. He slammed shut the back door. And then, before he climbed into the driver's seat, he stopped and looked up at the cherry trees. He closed his eyes. And then he slapped the back door again, to make sure it was closed, and got into his truck.

The light changed. My cab moved on. But I turned in my seat, craning my neck, watching the trees disappear from view, watching the final petals drift through the air. When I turned back around, they were gone, and Shinjuku, its gray bridges and walkways, loomed before us, as if nothing had happened at all.

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For more than a thousand years, the country's cherry blossom season has been a source of fascination and wonderment. How did such an infatuation begin? THE SCENE IS a park in the late afternoon. It is springtime: The trees are a profound, almost bluish emerald; the first reeds are beginning to sprout in the river.

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A girl practicing karate-do, a martial art that hones both physical and spiritual strength (JKF)

Children practicing kendo, Japanese fencing using bamboo swords (Tokyo Metropolitan Government)

Many different sports are played in Japan. Traditional martial arts like judo and kendo are popular, as are sports imported from overseas, such as baseball and soccer (football). Many Japanese go to the sea for surfing and scuba diving in the summer, while skiing and snowboarding are popular winter pursuits.

Major Sports

Baseball is one of the most popular spectator sports in Japan. There are 12 professional baseball teams, six in the Central League and six in the Pacific League. The teams in each league play about 140 games each during the season, at the end of which the two league winners meet in the Japan Series.

Amateur baseball is also popular, and many schoolchildren play the game through local Little Leagues or school baseball clubs. The National High-School Baseball Championship, which is held twice a year, is fought out among schools that have survived tough qualifying rounds to represent their prefectures.

Since Japan's own professional soccer league, J. League, was founded in 1993, soccer has won more and more fans in Japan. The 2002 FIFA World Cup was cohosted by Japan and the Republic of Korea, and this has greatly increased the popularity of soccer. In the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Japan made it to the Round of 16. Many Japanese players have joined overseas teams and play in the top European leagues. Japan also has women's soccer leagues, in which most of the players are amateurs. In 2011, the Japanese women's national team won the FIFA Women's World Cup held in Germany and in the 2012 London Olympics, the team won the silver medal. This has helped raise the profile of women's soccer in Japan and increased the player population.

Children practicing judo, which has been an Olympic sport since the 1964 Tokyo Games (Kodokan)

Martial Arts

Traditional martial arts, such as judo, kendo, karate-do, and aikido, thrive in modern Japan thanks to the devotion of those who practice them.
In judo, which literally means "the gentle way," the key to overcoming an opponent lies in taking advantage of their strength. Now popular all over the world, judo has firmly established itself as an official Olympic event since its first inclusion in the Games in 1964. Following in the footsteps of judo, kendo (Japanese fencing) has also succeeded in attracting a loyal overseas following in recent years. Kendo competitors wear armor-like protective gear and use bamboo swords to attack and defend. Karate is said to have been born from the intermingling of martial arts " te" from the Ryukyu Kingdom (now Okinawa) and kempo martial arts from China. Karate competitors do not wear any kind of protection and fight using only their hands and feet.

Sumo

Sumo, Japan's national sport, has a history spanning more than 1,500 years. As it used to be held as a way of giving thanks for harvests, sumo still involves many rituals. Rikishi (sumo wrestlers), whose hair is styled like that of ancient warriors, wear only a special silk belt and fight using only their bare hands. Most weigh between 100 and 200 kilograms. They fight in the 4.5-meter wide dohyo (ring) until one either leaves the ring or touches the ground with any part of his body other than the soles of his feet. While the rules are simple, the techniques are not, and there are more than 80 ways to win. Professional sumo tournaments take place six times a year and last 15 days each. Sumo has attracted attention outside Japan through exhibition tours to various countries and the success of wrestlers from overseas.

Olympic Games

Amateur sport also thrives in Japan, which always sends strong teams to the Olympic Games. A team of 338 Japanese athletes competed in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and 113 took part in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The Olympics have been held in Japan three times: Tokyo hosted the Summer Games in 1964 - the first Olympics ever to be held in Asia - while the Winter Games were hosted by Sapporo in 1972 and by Nagano in 1998. And it has been decided that Japan will host the games for the 4th time, with the 2021 Summer Olympics to be held in Tokyo.

Popular Children's Sports

Japanese children play a variety of sports through clubs at school or near where they live. Soccer (football) and baseball are two of the most popular sports among boys, while many girls enjoy playing tennis or dancing. Swimming is popular with both boys and girls.

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Many different sports are played in Japan. Traditional martial arts like judo and kendo are popular, as are sports imported from overseas, such as baseball and soccer (football). Many Japanese go to the sea for surfing and scuba diving in the summer, while skiing and snowboarding are popular winter pursuits.

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A board game for ages 10+. Walmart sells it for $33. https://nonstoptabletop.com/blog/2017/8/18/seikatsu-board-game-review

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A board game for ages 10+. Walmart sells it for $33. https://nonstoptabletop.com/blog/2017/8/18/seikatsu-board-game-review

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Japan is an island country consisting of four major and numerous smaller islands. The islands lie in an arc across the Pacific coast of northeastern Asia, forming a part of the volcanic "Rim of Fire." From north to south this chain of islands measures more than 1,500 miles, but it is only about 130 miles across; its total landmass is just under 150 thousand square miles. If placed alongside the Pacific coast of North America, the Japanese islands would extend from northern Washington State to the southern tip of Baja California in Mexico, and as a result Japan has a wide variation in climate.

Japan's closest neighbors are Russia, Korea and China. In early history the Korean Peninsula acted as a bridge between Japan and the vast expanse of China, where a great civilization emerged-later on, Japan made connections with China directly by sea. As an island people, the Japanese have been aware of their physical isolation since ancient times, and this isolation has had many positive aspects. For much of Japan's history, the seas protected it from invasion. The Japanese also controlled international contact by expanding, narrowing, and sometimes terminating diplomatic relations with other nations.

Despite such concern with managing contact with the outside world, many Japanese have admired, been curious about, and studied aspects of foreign cultures whenever they have reached their home shores. During closed periods, they digested foreign influences and, based on their tastes and necessities, transformed those influences into distinctly Japanese forms and styles.

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Introduction to Japan (article) | Japan | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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Nichinan, city, southern Miyazaki ken (prefecture), southeastern Kyushu, Japan. It lies just inland from the Pacific Ocean. A type of Japanese cedar called obi has been cultivated in the area since the early 19th century and forms the basis of the city's shipbuilding, timber, paper, and pulp

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Info about the important film that could be a unit of study.

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Info about the important film that could be a unit of study.

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Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro "Sen" Ogino, a ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, inadvertently enters the world of (spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore). After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world. The film was animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film, and Mitsubishi and distributed by Toho.

Miyazaki wrote the screenplay after he decided the film would be based on the ten-year-old daughter of his friend Seiji Okuda, the film's associate producer, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of US$19 million, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. Pixar animator John Lasseter, a fan and friend of Miyazaki, convinced Walt Disney Pictures to buy the film's North American distribution rights, and served as executive producer of its English-dubbed version. Lasseter then hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer, while screenwriters Cindy and Donald Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.

Released in Japan on 20 July 2001, the film received universal acclaim, grossing $395.8 million at the worldwide box office. Accordingly, it became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a total of ¥31.68 billion ($305 million). It held the record for 19 years until it was surpassed by Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train in 2020.

A co-recipient of the Golden Bear with Bloody Sunday at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival and the first hand-drawn, Japanese anime and non-English-language animated film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, Spirited Away is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time and has been included in various "best-of" lists.

Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents are traveling to their new home. Chihiro's father decides to take a shortcut and stops in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park, which her mother insists on exploring despite Chihiro's protests. Upon finding a seemingly empty restaurant still stocked with food, Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro reaches an enormous bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers her parents have turned into pigs, and she is unable to cross the now-flooded river.

Haku finds Chihiro and instructs her to ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji, a yōkai commanding the susuwatari. Kamaji refuses and asks a worker named Lin to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. Yubaba tries frightening Chihiro away, but Chihiro persists and is eventually given a working contract. As Chihiro signs the contract with her name (), Yubaba takes away the second kanji of her name, renaming her Sen. She soon realizes she can no longer remember her real name, and Haku explains that Yubaba controls people by taking their names; if she completely forgets hers like he once did, she will never be able to leave the spirit world.

Sen is frequently mocked by the other workers, except for Kamaji and Lin. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. The spirit of a polluted river arrives as Sen's first customer. After she cleans him, he gives her a magic emetic dumpling as a token of gratitude. Meanwhile, No-Face imitates the gold left behind by the river spirit and tempts a worker with it before swallowing him. He demands food from the bathhouse and begins giving away extensive amounts of gold to its workers.

Sen sees paper shikigami attacking a dragon and recognizes the dragon as Haku metamorphosed. When he crashes into Yubaba's penthouse with grievous injuries, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Yubaba's twin sister Zeniba, who turns Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse and creates a false copy of him. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her that carries a deadly curse. Haku strikes the shikigami, causing Zeniba to vanish. He falls into the boiler room with Sen, where she feeds him part of the emetic dumpling, causing him to vomit up the seal and a slug, which Sen crushes with her foot.

Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. She confronts an engorged No-Face and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, steadily regurgitating everything that he has eaten. Sen, No-Face, and Boh travel to see Zeniba with train tickets given to her by Kamaji. Meanwhile, Yubaba orders Sen's parents to be slaughtered, but Haku reveals Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only if Sen can pass a final test.

Sen meets with Zeniba, who makes her a magic hairband and reveals that Yubaba used the slug to take control of Haku. Using his dragon form, Haku offers to fly them home. No-Face decides to stay behind with Zeniba and become her spinner, while Sen, Boh, and Haku leave for the bathhouse. Mid-flight, Sen recalls falling into the Kohaku River years ago and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as the spirit of the Kohaku River. When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba forces Sen to identify her parents among a group of pigs to leave. After she answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract disappears, and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the riverbed to her restored parents, unable to remember anything after eating at the restaurant. Shortly before leaving for her new home, Chihiro looks back at the tunnel, her hairband from Zeniba still intact.

"I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize [...]. [I]t's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances [...]. I want my young friends to live like that, and I think they, too, have such a wish."

During summers, Hayao Miyazaki spent his vacation at a mountain cabin with his family and five girls who were friends of the family. The idea for Spirited Away came about when he wanted to make a film for these friends. Miyazaki had previously directed films for small children and teenagers such as My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, but he had not created a film for ten-year-old girls. For inspiration, he read the shōjo manga magazines (like and ) that the girls had left at the cabin, but felt they only offered subjects on "crushes" and romance. Miyazaki felt this was not what these young friends "held dear in their hearts", and resolved to make the film about a young heroine whom they could look up to.

Hayao Miyazaki used shōjo manga magazines for inspiration to direct Spirited Away.

Miyazaki had wanted to produce a new film for years, but his two previous proposals-one based on the Japanese book Kiri no Mukō no Fushigi na Machi by Sachiko Kashiwaba, and another about a teenage heroine-were rejected. His third proposal, which ended up becoming Spirited Away, was more successful. The three stories revolved around a bathhouse that was inspired by one in Miyazaki's hometown. He thought the bathhouse was a mysterious place, and there was a small door next to one of the bathtubs in the bath house. Miyazaki was always curious about what was behind it, and he made up several stories about it, one of which inspired the bathhouse setting of Spirited Away.

A Japanese dragon ascends toward the heavens with Mount Fuji in the background in this print from Ogata Gekkō. Spirited Away is heavily influenced by Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore.[7]

Production of Spirited Away commenced in February 2000 on a budget of ¥1.9 billion (US$15 million). Walt Disney Pictures financed ten percent of the film's production cost for the right of first refusal for American distribution. As with Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki and the Studio Ghibli staff experimented with computer animation. With the use of more computers and programs such as Softimage 3D, the staff learned the software, but used the technology carefully so that it enhanced the story, instead of "stealing the show". Each character was mostly hand-drawn, with Miyazaki working alongside his animators to see they were getting it just right. The biggest difficulty in making the film was to reduce its length. When production began, Miyazaki realized it would be more than three hours long if he made it according to his plot. He had to delete many scenes from the story, and tried to reduce the "eye candy" in the film because he wanted it to be simple. Miyazaki did not want to make the hero a "pretty girl". At the beginning, he was frustrated at how she looked "dull" and thought, "She isn't cute. Isn't there something we can do?" As the film neared the end, however, he was relieved to feel "she will be a charming woman."

Dōgo Onsen

The Takahashi Korekiyo residence in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum was one of Miyazaki's inspirations in creating the spirit world's buildings.

During production, Miyazaki often sought inspiration by visiting the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, Tokyo. He based some of the buildings in the spirit world on the Pseudo-Western style buildings from the Meiji period that were available there. The museum made Miyazaki feel nostalgic, "especially when I stand here alone in the evening, near closing time, and the sun is setting - tears well up in my eyes." Another major inspiration was the Notoya Ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn located in Yamagata Prefecture, famous for its exquisite architecture and ornamental features. While some guidebooks and articles claim that the old gold town of Jiufen in Taiwan served as an inspirational model for the film, Miyazaki has denied this. The Dōgo Onsen is also often said to be a key inspiration for the Spirited Away onsen/bathhouse.

Toshio Suzuki, the producer of the film, also cites European inspirations and influences in the production of Spirited Away. He specifically invokes the structure of the film as European-inspired due to Miyazaki's own influences by European films such as The Snow Queen and The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep.

The film score of Spirited Away was composed and conducted by Miyazaki's regular collaborator Joe Hisaishi, and performed by the New Japan Philharmonic. The soundtrack received awards at the 56th Mainichi Film Competition Award for Best Music, the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2001 Best Music Award in the Theater Movie category, and the 17th Japan Gold Disk Award for Animation Album of the Year. Later, Hisaishi added lyrics to "One Summer's Day" and named the new version of the song "The Name of Life" which was performed by Ayaka Hirahara.

The closing song, "Always With Me" was written and performed by Youmi Kimura, a composer and lyre-player from Osaka. The lyrics were written by Kimura's friend Wakako Kaku. The song was intended to be used for Rin the Chimney Painter, a different Miyazaki film which was never released. In the special features of the Japanese DVD, Hayao Miyazaki explains how the song in fact inspired him to create Spirited Away. The song itself would be recognized as Gold at the 43rd Japan Record Awards.

Besides the original soundtrack, there is also an (千と千尋の神隠し　イメージアルバム , image album, titled Spirited Away Image Album Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi Imēji Arubamu), that contains 10 tracks.

John Lasseter, Pixar animator and a fan and friend of Miyazaki, would often sit with his staff and watch Miyazaki's work when encountering story problems. After seeing Spirited Away Lasseter was ecstatic. Upon hearing his reaction to the film, Disney CEO Michael Eisner asked Lasseter if he would be interested in introducing Spirited Away to an American audience. Lasseter obliged by agreeing to serve as the executive producer for the English adaptation. Following this, several others began to join the project: Beauty and the Beast co-director Kirk Wise and co-producer Donald W. Ernst joined Lasseter as director and producer of Spirited Away, respectively. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt penned the English-language dialogue, which they wrote in order to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.

The cast of the film consists of Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, Suzanne Pleshette (in her final film role before her death in January 2008), Michael Chiklis, Lauren Holly, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers and John Ratzenberger (a Pixar regular). Advertising was limited, with Spirited Away being mentioned in a small scrolling section of the film section of ; Disney had sidelined their official website for Spirited Away and given the film a comparatively small promotional budget. Marc Hairston argues that this was a justified response to Studio Ghibli's retention of the merchandising rights to the film and characters, which limited Disney's ability to properly market the film.

The major themes of Spirited Away, heavily influenced by Japanese Shinto- Buddhist folklore, centre on the protagonist, Chihiro, and her liminal journey through the realm of spirits. The central location of the film is a Japanese bathhouse where a great variety of Japanese folklore creatures, including kami, come to bathe. Miyazaki cites the solstice rituals when villagers call forth their local kami and invite them into their baths. Chihiro also encounters kami of animals and plants. Miyazaki says of this:

In my grandparents' time, it was believed that kami existed everywhere - in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything.

Chihiro's archetypal entrance into another world changes her status as one somewhere between child and adult. Chihiro also stands outside societal boundaries in the supernatural setting. The use of the word kamikakushi (literally 'hidden by gods') within the Japanese title, and its associated folklore, reinforces this liminal passage: "Kamikakushi is a verdict of 'social death' in this world, and coming back to this world from Kamikakushi meant 'social resurrection.'"

Additional themes are expressed through No-Face, who reflects the characters who surround him, learning by example and taking the traits of whomever he consumes. This nature results in No-Face's monstrous rampage through the bathhouse. After Chihiro saves No-Face with the emetic dumpling, he becomes timid once more. At the end of the film, Zeniba decides to take care of No-Face so he can develop without the negative influence of the bathhouse.

The film has been compared to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as the stories are set in fantasy worlds, involve disturbances in logic and stability, and there are motifs such as food having metamorphic qualities; though other developments and themes are not shared. Among other stories compared to Spirited Away, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is seen to be more closely linked thematically.

Yubaba has many similarities to the Coachman from the 1940 film , in the sense that she mutates humans into pigs in a similar way that the boys of Pleasure Island were mutated into donkeys. Upon gaining employment at the bathhouse, Yubaba's seizure of Chihiro's true name symbolically kills the child, who must then assume adulthood. She then undergoes a rite of passage according to the monomyth format; to recover continuity with her past, Chihiro must create a new identity.

Spirited Away contains critical commentary on modern Japanese society concerning generational conflicts and environmental issues. Chihiro has been seen as a representation of the , whose roles and ideology had changed dramatically since post-war Japan. Just as Chihiro seeks her past identity, Japan, in its anxiety over the economic downturn occurring during the release of the film in 2001, sought to reconnect to past values. In an interview, Miyazaki has commented on this nostalgic element for an old Japan.

Japanese philosophy plays a huge role in Spirited Away, specifically through concepts like and principles like and On. The concept of Kami, for instance, involves various spirits that each represent different elements and aspects of nature. The principle of Mottainai, which is deeply ingrained in Japanese culture, embodies a sense of regret towards waste, valuing the complete utilization of an object or resource. While the principle of On, a key tenet of Japanese ethics that signifies a sense of moral indebtedness, plays a significant role in Chihiro's character development.

Similar to the Japanese concept of On, the film can be partly understood as an exploration of the effect of greediness and Western consumerism on traditional Japanese culture. For instance, Yubaba is stylistically unique within the bathhouse, wearing a Western dress and living among European décor and furnishings, in contrast with the minimalist Japanese style of her employees' quarters, representing the Western capitalist influence over Japan in its Meiji period and beyond. Along with its function within the ostensible coming of age theme, Yubaba's act of taking Chihiro's name and replacing it with Sen (an alternate reading of chi, the first character in Chihiro's name, lit.  ' one thousand ') can be thought of as symbolic of capitalism's single-minded concern with value.

The film's setting encapsulates Miyazaki's commentary on modern Japanese values and the erosion of cultural heritage. The bathhouse, situated within an abandoned theme park, symbolizes Japan's distorted cultural identity. This once-traditional locale is marred by neon signs and Westernization, exemplifying cultural degradation. Early scenes highlight economic concerns and consumerism. The film's visuals underscore the commercialization of Japanese culture. The failed theme park serves as a metaphor for the unsuccessful fusion of ideologies. The Meiji design of the park is the setting for Chihiro's parents' metamorphosis - the family arrives in an imported Audi car and the father wears a European-styled polo shirt, reassuring Chihiro that he has "credit cards and cash", before morphing into literal consumerist pigs because of their bad habits. Miyazaki has stated:

Chihiro's parents turning into pigs symbolizes how some humans become greedy. At the very moment Chihiro says there is something odd about this town, her parents turn into pigs. There were people that "turned into pigs" during Japan's bubble economy ( consumer society) of the 1980s, and these people still haven't realized they've become pigs. Once someone becomes a pig, they don't return to being human but instead gradually start to have the "body and soul of a pig". These people are the ones saying, "We are in a recession and don't have enough to eat." This doesn't just apply to the fantasy world. Perhaps this isn't a coincidence and the food is actually (an analogy for) "a trap to catch lost humans".

The bathhouse of the spirits cannot be seen as a place free of ambiguity and darkness. Many of the employees are rude to Chihiro because she is human, and corruption is ever-present; it is a place of excess and greed, as depicted in the initial appearance of No-Face. In stark contrast to the simplicity of Chihiro's journey and transformation is the constantly chaotic carnival in the background.

Commentators have often referred to environmental themes in the films of Miyazaki. In Spirited Away, two major instances of allusions to environmental issues have been noted. Pam Coats, for example, a Vice President of Walt Disney Feature Animation, describes Chihiro dealing with the "stink spirit", who, it turns out, is actually a river spirit but is so corrupted with filth that one can't tell what it is at first glance. It only becomes clean again when Chihiro pulls out a huge amount of trash, including car tires, garbage, and a bicycle. This alludes to human pollution of the environment, and how people can carelessly toss away things without thinking of the consequences and of where the trash will go.

The second allusion is seen in Haku himself. Haku does not remember his name and lost his past, which is why he is stuck at the bathhouse. Eventually, Chihiro remembers that he used to be the spirit of the Kohaku River, which was destroyed and replaced with apartments. Because of humans' need for development, they destroyed a part of nature, causing Haku to lose his home and identity. This can be compared to deforestation and desertification; humans tear down nature, cause imbalance in the ecosystem, and demolish animals' homes to satisfy their want for more space (housing, malls, stores, etc.) but do not think about how it can affect other living things.

Spirited Away was released theatrically in Japan on 20 July 2001 by distributor Toho. It grossed a record ¥1.6 billion ($13.1 million) in its first three days, beating the previous record set by Princess Mononoke. It was number one at the Japanese box office for its first eleven weeks and spent 16 weeks there in total. After 22 weeks of release and after grossing $224 million in Japan, it started its international release, opening in Hong Kong on 13 December 2001. It was the first film that had grossed more than $200 million at the worldwide box office excluding the United States. It went on to gross ¥30.4 billion to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, according to the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. It also set the all-time attendance record in Japan, surpassing the 16.8 million tickets sold by . Its gross at the Japanese box office has since increased to ¥31.68 billion, as of 2020.

In February 2002, Wild Bunch, an international sales company that had recently spun off from its former parent StudioCanal, picked up the international sale rights for the film outside of Asia and France. The company would then on-sell it to independent distributors across the world. On 13 April 2002, The Walt Disney Company acquired the Taiwanese, Singapore, Hong Kong, French and North American sale rights to the film, alongside Japanese Home Media rights.

Disney's English dub of the film, supervised by Lasseter, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2002 and was later released in the United States on 20 September 2002. The film grossed $450,000 in its opening weekend from 26 theatres. Spirited Away had very little marketing, less than Disney's other B-films, with a maximum of 151 theatres showing the film in 2002. After the 2003 Oscars, it expanded to 714 theatres. It ultimately grossed around $10 million by September 2003. Outside of Japan and the United States, the movie was moderately successful in both South Korea and France where it grossed $11 million and $6 million, respectively. In Argentina, it is in the top 10 anime films with the most tickets sold.

In the United Kingdom, then-independent based film distributor Optimum Releasing acquired the rights to the movie from Wild Bunch in January 2003. The company then released it theatrically on 12 September 2003. The movie grossed $244,437 on its opening weekend from 51 theatres, and by the end of its theatrical run in October, the movie has grossed $1,383,023 in the country.

About 18 years after its original release in Japan, Spirited Away had a theatrical release in China on 21 June 2019. It follows the theatrical China release of My Neighbour Totoro in December 2018. The delayed theatrical release in China was due to long-standing political tensions between China and Japan, but many Chinese became familiar with Miyazaki's films due to rampant video piracy. It topped the Chinese box office with a $28.8-million opening weekend, beating in China. In its second weekend, Spirited Away grossed a cumulative $54.8 million in China, and was second only behind Spider-Man: Far From Home that weekend. As of 16 July 2019, the film has grossed $70 million in China, bringing its worldwide total box office to over $346 million as of 8 July 2019.

Spirited Away's worldwide box office total stands at US$395,802,070.

Spirited Away was first released on VHS and DVD formats in Japan by Buena Vista Home Entertainment on 19 July 2002. The Japanese DVD releases include storyboards for the film and the special edition includes a Ghibli DVD player. Spirited Away sold 5.5million home video units in Japan by 2007, and holds the record for most home video copies sold of all-time in the country as of 2014. The movie was released on Blu-ray by Walt Disney Studios Japan on 14 July 2014, and DVD was also reissued on the same day with a new HD master, alongside several other Studio Ghibli movies.

In North America, the film was released on DVD and VHS formats by Walt Disney Home Entertainment on 15 April 2003. The attention brought by the Oscar win resulted in the film becoming a strong seller. The bonus features include Japanese trailers, a making-of documentary which originally aired on Nippon Television, interviews with the North American voice actors, a select storyboard-to-scene comparison and The Art of Spirited Away, a documentary narrated by actor Jason Marsden. The movie was released on Blu-ray by and North America by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on 16 June 2015. GKIDS and Shout! Factory re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on 17 October 2017 following the expiration of Disney's previous deal with Studio Ghibli in the country in North America. On 12 November 2019, GKIDS and Shout! Factory issued a North-America-exclusive Spirited Away collector's edition, which includes the film on Blu-ray, and the film's soundtrack on CD, as well as a 40-page book with statements by Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki, and essays by film critic Kenneth Turan and film historian Leonard Maltin. Along with the rest of the Studio Ghibli films, Spirited Away was released on digital markets in the United States for the first time, on 17 December 2019.

In the United Kingdom, the film was released on DVD and VHS as a rental release through independent distributor High Fliers Films PLC following the film's limited theatrical release. It was later officially released on DVD in the UK on 29 March 2004, with the distribution being done by Optimum Releasing themselves. In 2006, the DVD was reissued as a single-disc release (without the second one) with packaging matching other releases in Optimum's "The Studio Ghibli Collection" range. The then-renamed StudioCanal UK released the movie on Blu-ray on 24 November 2014, A British 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, similar to other Studio Ghibli anniversary editions released in the UK, was released on 25 October 2021.

In the United States, the 2015 Blu-ray release grossed $9,925,660 from 557,613 physical units sold as of 21 February 2021. In the United Kingdom, the film's Studio Ghibli anniversary release appeared several times on the annual lists of best-selling foreign language film on home video, ranking number six in 2015, number five in 2016, and number one in 2019.

The film was aired on Nippon TV (NTV) in Japan, on 24 January 2003. It became NTV's most-watched film of all time with a 46.9% audience rating, surpassing the 35.1% record previously set by Princess Mononoke in 1999.

In the United Kingdom, the film was watched by 670,000 viewers on BBC2 in 2010. This made it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on BBC, and the year's second highest foreign film on UK television (below the Indian Bollywood film Om Shanti Om). Spirited Away was later watched by 300,000 UK viewers on BBC2 in 2011, making it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on BBC2. Combined, the film drew a 970,000 UK television viewership on BBC2 between 2010 and 2011.

Spirited Away received widespread acclaim. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 96% approval rating based on 221 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, " Spirited Away is a dazzling, enchanting, and gorgeously drawn fairy tale that will leave viewers a little more curious and fascinated by the world around them." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 96 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a full four stars, praising the work and Miyazaki's direction. Ebert also said that Spirited Away was one of "the year's best films", as well as adding it to his " Great Movies" list. Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times positively reviewed the film and praised the animation. Mitchell drew a favorable comparison to Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and wrote that Miyazaki's "movies are as much about moodiness as mood" and that "the prospect of animated figures' not being what they seem - either spiritually or physically - heightens the tension." Derek Elley of said that Spirited Away "can be enjoyed by sprigs and adults alike" and praised the animation and music. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times praised Miyazaki's direction and the voice acting, as well as saying that the film is the "product of a fierce and fearless imagination whose creations are unlike anything a person has seen before." Orlando Sentinel's critic Jay Boyar also praised Miyazaki's direction and said the film is "the perfect choice for a child who has moved into a new home."

In 2004, Cinefantastique listed the film as one of the "10 Essential Animations". In 2005, Spirited Away was ranked by IGN as the 12th-best animated film of all time. The film is also ranked number 9 of the highest-rated movies of all time on Metacritic, being the highest rated traditionally animated film on the site. The film ranked number 10 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In 2010, Rotten Tomatoes ranked it as the 13th-best animated film on the site, and in 2012, as the 17th. In 2019, the site considered the film to be #1 among 140 essential animated movies to watch. The film was ranked at number 46 on magazine's list of "The 100 Best Movies of All Time". The film is listed within the top ten on the British Film Institute's list of "Top 50 films for children up to the age of 14". In 2016, it was voted the fourth-best film of the 21st century by the BBC, as picked by 177 film critics from around the world, making it the highest-ranking animated film on the list. In 2017, The New York Times ranked it as the second best film of the 21st Century so far. In 2021, the Writers Guild of America ranked Spirited Away's screenplay the 67th greatest of the 21st century so far. In 2022, the film was ranked number 75 on Sight & Sound's greatest films list, being one of two animated films to make the list (alongside Miyazaki's own My Neighbor Totoro).

In his book Otaku, Hiroki Azuma observed: "Between 2001 and 2007, the otaku forms and markets quite rapidly won social recognition in Japan," and cites Miyazaki's win at the Academy Awards for Spirited Away among his examples.

Spirited Away is frequently regarded as one of the best films of the 21st century as well as one of the greatest animated films ever made. Comic Book Resources wrote that the film "set the bar extremely high for all anime movies that followed it - including Studio Ghibli's" and further explained that "It's a movie many people re-watch due to its comfort and nostalgia, and since Netflix brought the Ghibli movies to North America last year, it's become even more accessible". Swapnil Dhruv Bose from Far Out Magazine declared the film to be "the greatest animated film of all time" and explained that it "resonated with audiences all over the world despite the existence of cultural barriers is because of its brilliantly devised universality" and has the ability to "generate fascinating multiplicities which morph according to the age of the viewer". In another article detailing Hayao Miyazaki's wide impact to the film industry, he wrote "The influence of Spirited Away can be easily observed in Disney productions like and , thanks to John Lasseter's (the Chief Creative Officer of Pixar) efforts to introduce it to Western audiences". also declared Spirited Away to be the all-time best animated film and wrote that the film "showed how breathtaking, heartfelt, and serious animation can be" that " Pixar, Disney, and other mainstream animators have still failed to genuinely realize 15 years later".

Film director Steven Spielberg said that Spirited Away might be "better than any Disney films" he has ever seen. Rayna Denison, professor of film, television, and media studies, told that "This is a film made by a master animator at the height of his powers and it is one where the quality of the animation really does set it apart from everything else around it. Nobody else was making films that looked like this or that were as inventive as this was at this time". The film has been cited as influence for various Disney and Pixar animated films. Production designer Harley Jessup said that he initially looked at Spirited Away and was inspired by the spiritual feelings elements to utilize them in . Co-writers Ken and Ryan Firpo cited the film as one of the influences that helps them explore "ideas of morality and humanity" in . Turning Red's director Domee Shi named Spirited Away as one of her favorite animated films and one of the influences for her film.

According to , Spirited Away "arrived at a time when animation was widely perceived as a genre solely for children, and when cultural differences often became barriers to the global distribution of animated works" but it "shattered preconceived notions about the art form and also proved that, as a film created in Japanese with elements of Japanese folklore central to its core, it could resonate deeply with audiences around the world". Denison emphasized that John Lasseter and Disney "boosted Spirited Away's visibility in America by heavily campaigning for the film to be considered for the Academy Awards", and cited it as one of the reasons why it won Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Writer Jonathan Clements, whose published works revolve around East Asian culture, anime, and Japanese television dramas, emphasized that the film's Oscar win was "a wake-up call for a lot of people in the film business who had been disregarding Japanese animation for years". Susan Napier, professor of Japanese studies at Tufts University, called Spirited Away's wins at major Western award shows "a very big shot in the arm to the Japanese animation industry". She further explained that cartoons in the West have often been seen as "childish, vulgar, things that you didn't take seriously" but after the film took home the Academy Award, people were starting to see animation as "a real art form".

A stage adaptation of Spirited Away was announced in February 2021 with a world premiere planned in Tokyo on 28 February 2022. It is written and directed by John Caird, with Toho as the production company, with Studio Ghibli's blessing. The role of Chihiro is played by both Kanna Hashimoto and Mone Kamishiraishi. In August 2023, it was announced that the production would have its European premiere at the London Coliseum from April 2024, with most of the cast reprising their roles.

On a limited time release from 11 November to 18 December in 2022, the Imperial Theater performance of the play was available for rental in Japan in several streaming services such as Abema, Amazon Prime Video Japan, Docomo Anime Store, FOD, Hulu Japan and U-Next.

There were 2 versions of the play available for rental:

Broderick, Mick (2003). "Intersections Review, Spirited Away by Miyazaki's Fantasy". Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context (9).

Callis, Cari. 2010. "Nothing that Happens is ever Forgotten." In Anime and Philosophy, edited by J. Steiff and T. D. Tamplin. New York: Open Court. ISBN 9780812697131.

Cooper, Damon (1 November 2010), "Finding the spirit within: a critical analysis of film techniques in spirited Away.(Critical essay)", Babel, vol. 45, no. 1, Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations, pp. 30(6), ISSN 0005-3503

Coyle, Rebecca (2010). Drawn to Sound: Animation Film Music and Sonicity. Equinox Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84553-352-6. Drawn to Sound focuses on feature-length, widely distributed films released in the period since World War II, from producers in the USA, UK, Japan and France-from Animal Farm (1954) to Happy Feet (2006), Yellow Submarine (1968) to Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), Spirited Away (2001) and Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003).

Fielding, Julien R. (2008). Discovering World Religions at 24 Frames Per Second. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-5996-8. Several films with a 'cult-like' following are also discussed, such as Fight Club, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Jacob's Ladder.

Fox, Kit. "Spirited Away". Animerica. Archived from the original on 7 April 2004.

Galbraith IV, Stuart (2008). The Toho Studios Story: A History and Complete Filmography. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6004-9. Since its inception in 1933, Toho Co., Ltd., Japan's most famous movie production company and distributor, has produced and/or distributed some of the most notable films ever to come out of Asia, including Seven Samurai, Godzilla, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Kwaidan, Woman in the Dunes, Ran, Shall We Dance?, Ringu, and Spirited Away.

Hooks, Ed (2005). "Spirited Away". Acting in Animation: A Look at 12 Films. Heinemann Drama. ISBN 978-0-325-00705-2.

Knox, Julian (22 June 2011), "Hoffmann, Goethe, and Miyazaki's Spirited Away.(E.T.A. Hoffmann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Hayao Miyazaki)(Critical essay)", Wordsworth Circle, 42 (3), Wordsworth Circle: 198(3), doi:10.1086/TWC24043148, ISSN 0043-8006, S2CID 169044013

Matthews, Kate (2006), "Logic and Narrative in 'Spirited Away'", Screen Education (43): 135-140, ISSN 1449-857X

Napier, Susan J. (2005). Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7051-0.

Yang, Andrew. 2010. "The Two Japans of 'Spirited Away'." International Journal of Comic Art 12(1):435-52.

Yoshioka, Shiro (2008). "Heart of Japaneseness: History and Nostalgia in Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away". In MacWilliams, Mark W (ed.). Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 268-285. doi:10.4324/9781315703152-19 (inactive 31 January 2024). ISBN 978-0-7656-1601-2. Archived from the original on 7 February 2022.

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Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro "Sen" Ogino, a ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, inadvertently enters the world of (spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore).

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Book Bentos - An exciting multi-media way to report on a book that is a tribute to Japanese aesthetics. Adaptable to many grade levels. Please share your results!!

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Book Bentos - An exciting multi-media way to report on a book that is a tribute to Japanese aesthetics. Adaptable to many grade levels. Please share your results!!

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My friend Jennifer LaGarde (@jenniferlagarde) recently introduced me, and our Young Adults Reading and Literacy students at Rutgers, to the idea of Book Bentos.

Highly visual, creative and interactive the book bento strategy invites book lovers to create, hyperlink and share book titles in an artfully arranged interactive collage.

I asked Jennifer to fill me in on the history of this book sharing strategy. She shared that the idea is inspired by Japanese bento boxes. While they feature books rather than food, like the original and delicious artful arrangements, these interactive squares also emphasize symmetry and beauty.

Jen first discovered book bentos on Crown Publishing's ReadItForward. The huge community features blog posts, excerpts, giveaways, author interviews and excerpts, bookshelf lists, a book apothecary, podcasts and more.

Around three years ago, Read It Forward's Abbe Wright introduced the @bookbento Instagram account in a post called The Instagram Account You Need to Follow.

Wright describes the Book Bento account as a browse-able bookstore of recommended reads and arresting book jackets paired alongside a still life of delightful objects. A veritable feast for the eyes!

Jen also led me to the HyperDoc slide deck created by Lisa Highfill and Rachel Kloos that demonstrates how the use of Thinglink in Book Bento creation. Filled instructions, a video tutorial, and lots of student samples, their suggested student project invites readers to construct visual collages that link to author interviews, book trailers, meaningful image, media, reviews, and more.

I asked Jennifer to describe her experience introducing the project to our pre-service grad students:
My awesome Rutgers students created a as part of a summative assessment to demonstrate their ability to connect titles from this semester's reading list with a plethora of multimedia resources to inspire and hook readers! For my course, students were asked to create a #bookbento featuring a book of their choice from this semester's reading and artifacts that were important to the book in some way. They knocked it out of the park.
Jen wanted students to demonstrate how to use their growning knowledge of YA literature and skills as curators to sell a book to two different audiences-students and teachers.

Students were asked to create a Thinglink Book Bento with an English Language Arts teacher in mind, link to reviews teachers would find credible, share author interviews, connect the title to three standards-aligned lesson ideas and suggest how the teacher might use the title in class with the support of the librarian.
It's the first time. I always want our students to engage in projects that can be applied to their practice. Several of my students are are English teachers coming into the library world and they were excited about using this idea with their own students. In their reflections, the LIS students noted that they were already introducing the strategy to other teachers in their buildings. And they appeared to have deep connections with their books of choice. Because these products are born on social media, they should be shared on social media. Next time around, I will share our projects using the hashtag and encourage students to become part of the broader community of educators who share their reading lives, as a way to better understand social reading.
The second part of the project asked students how they would use the same image they constructed with a specific K12 student audience. Which resources might you curate to hook the younger reader? Jen wanted this task to be a major focus of the project.
All year long their focus was on booktalks. Books the least important part of it. Readers are the most important. How do we harness all of our tools and talents to create readers in our libraries? This summative assignment is connected to a book, but it's really about connecting to public librarians, recognizing teachers as an audience, connecting to standards. That's where librarians get into trouble. If I were hiring, I'd want to hire a librarian who loves children more than books. Books are meaningless without readers. What you don't see in the image posted above is that they then uploaded these gorgeous examples to ThingLink where they attached their expertly curated resources to interest two different audiences: teachers and students. The results were epic and I'm so proud of and delighted by their finished products.
She reflected.

Jen pointed to the most important learning.

If you are new to Book Bento, these tips will help:

1. Gather all the physical stuff that might help you tell your story-the book cover, relevant news or magazine clippings, artifacts/objects, images.

2. Assemble the items artfully on an intentionally selected background in the share of a square, keeping in mind design elements like spacing, connections, color, etc.

3. Take a photograph. (You can make the image even more beautiful by bringing it into your favorite image editing program-Canva, Picmonkey-for enhancement.)

4. Bring your photo into an application that allows you to make it interactive. Thinglink, Buncee, Piktochart, Kapwing , Glogster, or perhaps Word, Powerpoint, Google Docs or Google Slides.

5. Add media, text-reviews, author interviews, trailers, lessons, discussion guides, historic background, etc.-anything you find or create on the web to enhance, explain, engage or market.

6. If you are working with a class, create a gallery of these works to share with students, parents, colleagues on Instagram, Pinterest, Pearltrees, Destiny Collections, Wakelet, Google or Microsoft applications or your LMS or LibGuides.

7. If you'd like your work to be discoverable, tag everything with #bookbento or #digibookbento

And you will definitely want to check out the growing collections of inspiring, tasty and tempting examples for inspiration:
#digibookbento
@bookbento (Instagram)

#bookbento (Twitter)

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Building beautiful book bentos - NeverEndingSearch

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My friend Jennifer LaGarde (@jenniferlagarde) recently introduced me, and our Young Adults Reading and Literacy students at Rutgers, to the idea of Book Bentos. Highly visual, creative and interactive the book bento strategy invites book lovers to create, hyperlink and share book titles in an artfully arranged interactive collage.

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Request any of these books. There is something here for every need. Message me if you would like more guidance finding or using books in class.

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Request any of these books. There is something here for every need. Message me if you would like more guidance finding or using books in class.

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Teaching ideas, art and craft, flashcards, games, lesson plans, songs, videos, useful websites, worksheets on the Japanese teaching topic MANGA，ANIME, comics, drawing, まんが、アニメ etc.

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MS and HS librarians will find a few titles here for fantasy readers.

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MS and HS librarians will find a few titles here for fantasy readers.

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Dragons, ninjas, samurai, gods - there's always been something fascinating about fiction set in East Asia. With a lot of fantastic, engaging elements and action, East Asia fantasy and fiction is fun to read! Here's a list of East Asian fantasy books that are great for teens! Filled with adventure and a lot of amazing lessons, these books will definitely give you a great time! Check out the list!

Heir to Mt. Fuji's spirit kingdom, Sora yearns to finally take on the sacred kami duties. But just as she confronts her parents to make a plea, a ghostly army invades the mountain. Barely escaping with her life, Sora follows her mother's last instructions to a heart-wrenching discovery: she is a human changeling, raised as a decoy while her parents' true daughter remained safe but unaware in modern-day Tokyo. Her powers were only borrowed, never her own. Now, with the world's natural cycles falling into chaos and the ghosts plotting an even more deadly assault, it falls on her to train the unprepared kami princess.

As Sora struggles with her emerging human weaknesses and the draw of an unanticipated ally with secrets of his own, she vows to keep fighting for her loved ones and the world they once protected. But for one mortal girl to make a difference in this desperate war between the spirits, she may have to give up the only home she's ever known.

What do the readers say?

"I thoroughly enjoyed A MORTAL SONG and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys sweeping adventure, complicated characters grappling with how to define their lives, lush and entrancing magic, and a dash of romance." - Deva Fagan, Amazon user (5 stars)

Once she was Eon, a girl disguised as a boy, risking her life for the chance to become a Dragoneye apprentice. Now she is Eona, the Mirror Dragoneye, her country's savior - but she has an even more dangerous secret. She cannot control her power. Each time she tries, it twists into a killing force. And more destruction is on her trail - High Lord Sethon's army. She and her companions must find Kygo, the young Pearl Emperor, who needs Eona's power if he is to wrest back his throne. But to help him, she must drive a dark bargain with an old enemy, which could obliterate them all. Eona, with its pulse-pounding drama, unforgettable fight scenes, sizzling tension - and many surprises - brings to a close an epic story.

What do the readers say?

"This was one of the most amazing sequels I've ever read! The first book was absolutely so great that I had to buy the second, Eona. I enjoyed it more than the first. The writing was stylish, the story line simply wonderful and the characters, especially Eona, perfectly formed. Both of these books were a joy to read. Thank you, Ms. Goodman, for taking me into a fabulous new world with your story!" - baray, Amazon user (5 stars)

The Shima Imperium verges on the brink of environmental collapse; an island nation once rich in tradition and myth, now decimated by clockwork industrialization and the machine-worshipers of the Lotus Guild. When hunters of Shima's imperial court are charged by their Shogun to capture a legendary griffin, they fear their lives are over. Any fool knows the beasts have been extinct for more than a century, and the price of failing the Shogun is death. Accompanying her father on the Shogun's hunt, the girl Yukiko finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in Shima's last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled griffin for company. Even though she can hear his thoughts, even though she saved his life, all she knows for certain is he'd rather see her dead than help her. But together, the pair will form an indomitable friendship, and rise to challenge the might of an empire.

What do the readers say?

Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn't shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people's survival hangs in the balance.

To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls' destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever.

What do the readers say?

"This is a delightful book, and I absolutely recommend it. It has a very sweet set of romances, a complex magical world, and wonderful characters! This was the first book I had read by Melinda Lo, and I am eager to read more of her work!" - Moira Katson, Amazon user (4 stars)

Tiger by Jeff Stone

Twelve-year-old Fu and his temple brothers Malao, Seh, Hok, and Long don't know who their parents were. Raised from infancy by their grandmaster, they think of their temple as their home and their fellow warrior monks-their "temple brothers"-as their family. Then one terrible night, the temple is destroyed. Fu and his brothers are the only survivors. Charged by their grandmaster to uncover the secrets of their past, the five flee into the countryside and go their separate ways. Book #1 follows Fu as he struggles to find out more and prove himself in the process.

What do the readers say?

"This is a great book and I recommend you read it. It keeps you in the book with fast-paced action and some humorous parts. After you finish it, you should read the other books in The Five Ancestors series, starting with Monkey, the second book." - A Kid's Review, Amazon user (5 stars)

Could Taro, a fisherman's son, be destined for greatness? In the course of a day, Taro's entire life changes: His father is murdered before his eyes, and Taro is taken by a mysterious ninja on a perilous journey toward safety. Someone wants Taro dead, but who-and why? With his best friend, Hiro, and their ninja guide, Shusaku, Taro gets caught in the crossfire of a bitter conflict between rival lords for control of imperial Japan. As Taro trains to become a ninja himself, he's less and less sure that he wants to be one. But when his real identity is revealed, it becomes impossible for Taro to turn his back on his fate.

What do the readers say?

It's the dawn of an age of peace in medieval Japan, and a power hungry warlord is plotting to plunge the nation into a deadly civil war using a secret weapon from the West. Enter Moonshadow, the newest and youngest agent for the Grey Light Order, a covert brotherhood of shinobi (ninja spy warriors) who work for the shogun. For his first mission, Moonshadow is sent on a perilous journey to capture the plans for the secret weapon. Can Moonshadow defeat the evil warlord, rogue samurai, professional killers, and another ninja spy to save his country from violent chaos? Or will his first mission also be his last?

What do the readers say?

"It's a great book to recommend to young people who are fans of Japanese manga and anime. Highly recommended for school and public libraries, as well as for summer reading." - M. Tanenbaum, Amazon user (5 stars)

In the village of Huanan, in medieval China, the deity that rules is the Great Huli Jing. Though twelve-year-old Li Jing's name is a different character entirely from the Huli Jing, the sound is close enough to provide constant teasing-but maybe is also a source of greater destiny and power. Jing's life isn't easy. Her father is a poor tea farmer, and her family has come to the conclusion that in order for everyone to survive, Jing must be sacrificed for the common good. She is sold as a bride to the Koh family, where she will be the wife and nursemaid to their three-year-old son, Ju'nan. It's not fair, and Jing feels this bitterly, especially when she is treated poorly by the Koh's, and sold yet again into a worse situation that leads Jing to believe her only option is to run away, and find home again. With the help of a spider who weaves Jing a means to escape, and a nightingale who helps her find her way, Jing embarks on a quest back to Huanan-and to herself.

What do the readers say?

The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assassin and a member of the Tribe, an ancient network of families with extraordinary, preternatural skills. When Takeo's village is pillaged, he is rescued and adopted by the mysterious Lord Otori Shigeru. Under the tutelage of Shigeru, he learns that he too possesses the skills of the Tribe. And, with this knowledge, he embarks on a journey that will lead him across the famed nightingale floor-and to his own unimaginable destiny...

What do the readers say?

"I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I love books that are based upon Japanese culture . This book is in many ways similar to Shogun. The story is well written and very entertaining." - CHASE, Amazon user (5 stars)

A dragon named Shimmer, a monkey wizard, a reformed witch, and two humans go on a quest to mend the magic cauldron needed to repair the dragon's home.

What do the readers say?

Only the lost art of evoking magic through music can prevent Cathay from descending into chaos. Blessed with an unrivaled voice, Kaiya dreams of a time when a song liberated enslaved humans from their orc masters. Maybe then, the imperial court would see the awkward, gangly princess as more than a singing fool. When members of the emperor's elite spy clan uncover a brewing rebellion, the court hopes to appease the ringleader by offering Kaiya as a bride. Obediently wedding the depraved rebel leader means giving up her music. Confronting him with the growing power of her voice could kill her.

What do the readers say?

"The writing not only lends well to the genre and story but also to the characters. The author has a talent for keeping true to his tale. There are enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested in the next scene. The ending was well done and I can't wait to continue the series to follow Kaiya's future adventures." - Floryie, Amazon user (4.5 stars)

Kira's the only female in the king's army, and she's also the prince's bodyguard. A demon slayer and an outcast, she's hated by nearly everyone in her home city of Hansong. And she's their only hope. . . .

Murdered kings and discovered traitors point to a demon invasion, sending Kira on the run with the young prince. He may be the savior predicted in the Dragon King's prophecy, but the legendary lost ruby treasure just might be the true key to victory. With only the guidance of the cryptic prophecy, Kira must battle demon soldiers, an evil shaman, and the Demon Lord himself to find what was once lost, while raising a prince into a king.

What do the readers say?

The Way of the Warrior by Chris Bradford

Jack Fletcher is shipwrecked off the coast of Japan, his beloved father and the crew lie slaughtered by ninja pirates.
What do the readers say?
Ai Ling can see into other people's minds and reach into their spirits. But she doesn't know why this power has awakened inside her. She only knows that it is growing. It leads her on an epic journey-one that brings her to the edge of the deepest evil.

Chen Yong has a quest of his own, but then his path crosses Ai Ling's. And there's a connection so strong that neither can ignore it.

Now they must face terrifying demons determined to kill them, and battle through treacherous lands. It is their destiny. But can destiny keep them together?
What do the readers say?
Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan - or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems

Magical but historical, Risuko follows her along the first dangerous steps to discovering who she truly is.

What do the readers say?

In the time of the Han Dynasty in ancient China, the last remaining dragon is in danger of being killed by the cruel Emperor. A nameless orphan with no past and an uncertain future becomes his unlikely ally. The young orphan soon discovers that it is her destiny to protect the aging dragon and his mysterious purple stone. Chased by an evil dragon hunter and a powerful sorcerer, their adventure is not easy. Each must learn to help and understand the other if they are to survive. To succeed in her task, the young orphan must reach deep within herself to find courage she never knew existed. No longer can she be the timid, shy orphan she once was. She is now the one, true Dragon Keeper.

What do the readers say?

Kimi dreams of being a great samurai warrior, but she and her sister, Hana, are young ladies of feudal Japan, daughters of the Jito of the province. Her future seems clear: Girls do not become samurai.

Then, betrayal shatters the sisters' world. Their power-hungry uncle murders their father, and their mother and little brother mysteriously disappear. Determined to seek revenge and restore their honor, they disguise themselves as boys to train at a school for samurai. Kimi and Hana are thrown headlong into a life of warrior codes, sharp swords, and shadowy figures-as they work with fierce determination to avenge the brutal wrongs done to their family.

In a flash, life has swept them into a terrible adventure, more heart-pounding than Kimi and Hana ever could have imagined . . . and once it has been set in motion, nothing will ever be the same.

What do the readers say?

"Author Maya Snow created what seems to me to be an authentic and accurate setting in feudal Japan. Japanese terms are used liberally in the text and I enjoyed learning about samurai rituals and life in Japan hundreds of years ago. Kimi and Hana are strong and smart, and in this suspenseful story they are befriended by a number of richly-drawn secondary characters, particularly Master Goku. This book is the first in a series, and ends with the promise of more adventures to follow." - Maggie Knapp, Amazon user (5 stars)

After normal high-schooler Yoko is whisked away to another world by Keiki, a holy man who claims she is the heir to the kingdom of Kei, she is left only with a magical sword, a gem, and questions about her destiny as she fights for her throne.

What do the readers say?

Ink by Amanda Sun

On the heels of a family tragedy, Katie Greene must move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn't know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks and she can't seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

When Katie meets aloof but gorgeous Tomohiro, the star of the school's kendo team, she is intrigued by him...and a little scared. His tough attitude seems meant to keep her at a distance, and when they're near each other, strange things happen. Pens explode. Ink drips from nowhere. And unless Katie is seeing things, drawings come to life.

Somehow Tomo is connected to the kami, powerful ancient beings who once ruled Japan-and as feelings develop between Katie and Tomo, things begin to spiral out of control. The wrong people are starting to ask questions, and if they discover the truth, no one will be safe.

What do the readers say?

Balsa was a wanderer and warrior for hire. Then she rescued a boy flung into a raging river - and at that moment, her destiny changed. Now Balsa must protect the boy - the Prince Chagum - on his quest to deliver the great egg of the water spirit to its source in the sea. As they travel across the land of Yogo and discover the truth about the spirit, they find themselves hunted by two deadly enemies: the egg-eating monster Rarunga . . . and the prince's own father.

What do the readers say?

The daughter of a prominent samurai, Mariko has long known her place-she may be an accomplished alchemist, whose cunning rivals that of her brother Kenshin, but because she is not a boy, her future has always been out of her hands. At just seventeen years old, Mariko is promised to Minamoto Raiden, the son of the emperor's favorite consort-a political marriage that will elevate her family's standing. But en route to the imperial city of Inako, Mariko narrowly escapes a bloody ambush by a dangerous gang of bandits known as the Black Clan, who she learns has been hired to kill her before she reaches the palace. Dressed as a peasant boy, Mariko sets out to infiltrate the Black Clan and track down those responsible for the target on her back. Once she's within their ranks, though, Mariko finds for the first time she's appreciated for her intellect and abilities. She even finds herself falling in love-a love that will force her to question everything she's ever known about her family, her purpose, and her deepest desires.
What do the readers say?

"Beautiful writing! All the characters are multifaceted and well-developed; no one is pure evil and everyone has their motivations. The heroine Mariko was smart and inspiring to read. The romance between Mariko and Okami was gradual and burning; it was well-developed and the moment that they had were very passionate and exciting. It was also nice to see Okami challenge her perception of what she's allowed to do as a girl. As a nobleman's daughter, she was very limited in what she was allowed to do, so it's nice to see her perceptions change as she grew stronger." - Dragonfly, Amazon user (5 stars)

What are YOUR favorite East Asian fantasy books? Let us know in the comments!

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The Best East Asian Fantasy Books for Teens

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Dragons, ninjas, samurai, gods - there's always been something fascinating about fiction set in East Asia. With a lot of fantastic, engaging elements and action, East Asia fantasy and fiction is fun to read! Here's a list of East Asian fantasy books that are great for teens!

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Good info about anime for upper level teachers.

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Good info about anime for upper level teachers.

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Teaching Anime: Exploring a Transnational and Transmedia Movement

Ed. Note: Professor Antonia Levi has also posted a provocative article, Anime and Manga: It's not all Make-Believe, presenting ideas about how to use anime, as well as some of the pitfalls of using this medium, in the classroom. She provides more extensive information about individual anime and guidance for their use in the classroom in her Anime: An Annotated Filmography for Use in the Classroom.

Look here for resources from Japan Society's past exhibition KRAZY! The Delirious World of Anime + Manga + Video Games.

Anime refers to animated television shows, feature films, and direct-to-DVD "original video animation" (OVA) series. Some people insist that the word "anime" should be pronounced "AH-nee-may," to mimic the Japanese pronunciation, and this is just one of the ways that anime has become part of a debate about what is authentically Japanese. Perhaps the most interesting thing about teaching anime is that it provides a way of exploring in ourselves and our own cultures what it is that draws our attention and that we deem significant. Anime acts a litmus test for cultural and media awareness on a number of levels.

The most common way to teach anime is to use it as a window on Japanese society. Several films can serve this purpose quite effectively. Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, portrays a fantastical world in a Japanese bath house, with spirits and mystical creatures drawn from Japanese folklore. The film revolves around a strong girl, thus emphasizing both connections of anime to Japan's traditions and the importance of young women as a force in today's popular culture. The film Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata, eloquently depicts the firebombing of Japan in the closing months of the Pacific War through the eyes of two young children. The suffering and perseverance in the face of war is thoughtfully represented, and the film offers poignant lessons for any generation. Alternatively, we can see a portrait of contemporary high school life in Japan, combined with a sci-fi time traveling theme, in the recent, award-winning film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, directed by Mamoru Hosoda. These films, and many others, are all available as DVDs with English subtitles. It is easy to use these films to ask questions of students. Is imagery used in ways that seem unfamiliar or exotic? Do the motivations of the characters make sense, and if not, what that might tell us about cultural assumptions? How are these films different from some of the American fare from Pixar, Disney, and Dreamworks? With questions like these, we can draw students into the complexities of thinking about other cultures by trying to consider them in light of our own.

There are, however, a other ways to approach anime that can provide alternative understandings about the ways media works. For one thing, anime can be viewed not only as a Japanese media phenomenon, but also as something connected to international developments in media as well as connections across media forms. Anime is both a transnational and a transmedia phenomenon. A simple example of this is the Pokemon media empire. The TV series airs in over sixty countries worldwide, and of course it is connected to a huge range of licensed merchandise, including game cards, clothing, and much more. Pokemon began as a video game for the Nintendo Game Boy and then came the TV series and films. Like other examples of popular culture, Pokemon moves across media platforms and encourages a diverse range of engagements on the part of fans. Indeed, sixty percent of all anime produced in Japan is based on already popular comic books. This began with the godfather of Japanese comics, Osamu Tezuka, and continues to this day with manga artists like Naoki Urasawa. How do students think about what crosses from anime into other parts of their lives? Anime raises questions of how media representations are viewed, and also how they are lived and experienced.

What is it exactly that moves across media platforms? This is a complicated question that can be explored in a number of directions. Much of the analysis of anime tends to begin with the "story." By reading the themes or message of a story, especially considering how it is resolved, we can perceive a certain cultural logic. This is a useful analytical technique, but I would suggest a different approach that may open up a potentially more open-ended range of questions and possibilities for discussion. What if we think about anime in terms of its characters? The stories are often different in different media platforms, in the comics versus the anime and games, but what remains the same are the characters. What can we learn about media in terms of characters that move across platforms? What makes a great character? What other media forms rely on this? TV sitcoms, yes, but feature films, less often. What are some similarities and differences in characters compared to celebrities, politicians, sports figures, everyday people.

"We can explore anime through the features of the characters, the dramatic premises that link them, and the characteristics of the world-settings in which their dramas unfold."

This in turn encourages us to think about how anime is designed. Since 2004, I have been interviewing anime directors, producers, writers, animators, and publicists, in an effort to learn more about how anime is made. In the summer of 2006, I conducted three months of fieldwork, focusing especially on script meetings for two TV series (one for children, another for adults). In both cases, I was struck by how the logic of anime centered not on the story, but rather on the characters. What makes anime an intriguing tool for thinking about movement across media is this emphasis on characters, and on the dramatic premises that link them. This core foundation allows both creators and fans to build worlds around them. We can explore anime through the features of the characters, the dramatic premises that link them, and the characteristics of the world-settings in which their dramas unfold. It seems to me that this provides an alternative to focusing on the story, and allowing instead a different kind of discussion. If we think of the world as filled with characters and dramatic premises, then perhaps we can see the story of the world-our current, unfolding history-is something that is being remade all the time.

This logic of the characters, premise, and world-settings also helps us see the creativity of some fan activities around anime. "Cosplay," short for "costume play," is the practice of dressing up as a character, ideally in a homemade costume. Anime conventions around the US, which draw tens of thousands of anime fans, include many people dressed as their favorite characters. In Japan, there are thousands of fan artists who make "dôjinshi," that is, fan-made comic books featuring their favorite characters in new situations. An annual summertime convention in Tokyo where groups of fans sell these amateur works draws over 400,000 people over three days, constituting the largest annual convention in all of Japan. I would also draw attention to the practice of anime music videos (AMV), which are mash-ups (remixed and re-edited samplings) of favorite anime. At the Anime Boston convention in 2006, the "best in show" award-winning AMV was created by an Italian video artist, who sampled the anime "Princess Tutu," and placed it with a song called "Hold Me Now" by a Swedish pop group. It can be seen on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHZqxecCukg.
( Click here for a podcast by Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, discussing interative technology. Click here for a podcast by bestselling author Daniel Pink about dôjinshi and manga in Japan.)

Some people argue that these fan uses of anime characters and images is stealing. Other people argue that the creativity that goes into creating these works should be valued (or at least not prohibited), especially if they are made as art that speaks to a larger community and is not part of a large business. I tend to agree with the latter position, but it raises interesting questions for discussion about what are our responsibilities towards those who create these cultural goods. The AMV clip linked above was not awarded any money. She was simply recognized for her high quality work.

Teaching anime (Japanese animated films and TV shows) poses a range of challenges for adult teachers who often (myself included) have less familiarity with anime than their students. Unlike the more common situation where the teacher is the expert who conveys information to a less knowledgeable group of students, those of us who attempt to teach anime to young people may well find that now we are the dummies. Certainly, this complicates the challenge of teaching and takes away some of the comfort zone that comes with gaining expertise in a subject, but it also opens new possibilities for classroom engagement. Moreover, given the importance of popular culture in our students lives, and the ways it does offer real advantages for teaching, we teachers should commit ourselves to finding ways to incorporating new media examples into the classroom in order to help nurture a deeper sensitivity to variety of expressions coming from Japan. I also think that anime can teach us more broadly about media outside of Japan, and about the ways culture is constantly cross the boundaries of nation, being conveyed through a range of transmedia channels.

Ian Condry is associate professor of Japanese cultural studies in the Foreign Languages and Literatures Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author of Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization, Prof. Condry has publications available at http://iancondry.com. He also runs the MIT-Harvard Cool Japan research project which organizes seminars, international conferences, and arts performances to explore the cultural connections, dangerous distortions, and critical potential of popular culture. More info: http://mitcooljapan.com

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About Japan: A Teacher's Resource | Teaching Anime: Exploring a Transnational and Transmedia Movement | Japan Society

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Ed. Note: Professor Antonia Levi has also posted a provocative article, Anime and Manga: It's not all Make-Believe, presenting ideas about how to use anime, as well as some of the pitfalls of using this medium, in the classroom.

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Japan Maps | Printable Maps of Japan for Download

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Detailed maps of Japan in good resolution. You can print or download these maps for free. The most complete travel guide - Japan on OrangeSmile.com

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, which means "short song," has been an important literary form in Japanese culture for nearly a thousand years. The original Japanese form of tanka had only one of poetry containing 31 speech sounds-what we would call . However, most tanka poems that are written in English today are broken into five poetic lines with a certain number of syllables in each line.

The basic structure of a tanka poem is 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 7. In other words, there are 5 syllables in line 1, 7 syllables in line 2, 5 syllables in line 3, and 7 syllables in lines 4 and 5. If you have ever written a , you will notice that tanka is kind of like a longer version of haiku that gives you a little more room to tell a story. Here is one example of a tanka poem:

Crash at two A.M.
I opened my bedroom door
A white cat ran by
Startled by the clanging fall
Of the treat jar's metal lid

Looking at this example, you might have noticed that there is no end punctuation or rhyming used in tanka.

If you read this example carefully, you might also see that there is something special about the third line, "A white cat ran by." This line is called the "pivot," which means a turning point. The pivot divides the tanka into two different sections, which are joined in the middle in order to tell the whole story. The first section uses the pivot as the ending line:

Crash at two A.M.
I opened my bedroom door
A white cat ran by

Notice that this is a complete image that tells us part of a story. If we only read these three lines, we would still understand that the loud noise was somehow caused by a cat. Now look at the last three lines of the tanka, with the pivot as the first line of a new section:

A white cat ran by
Startled by the clanging fall
Of the treat jar's metal lid

This is also a complete image, which gives us an idea of why the white cat is running away.

Now look at the tanka and see how the line "A white cat ran by" is used to connect the two sections to create the full story, which begins with a loud noise in the middle of the night and ends just a moment later with the explanation for the noise:

Crash at two A.M.
I opened my bedroom door
A white cat ran by
Startled by the clanging fall
Of the treat jar's metal lid

You might also notice that this tanka contains detailed language that helps us imagine what it felt like to be there in the story. For example, instead of saying "I woke up in the middle of the night," the poem starts with the words "Crash at two A.M." The poem also uses the word "clanging" to describe the noise, and "a white cat" gives us a more distinct visual image than just the words "a cat." Using words that paint a picture in the readers imagination is called "."

Now that you know about the parts of a tanka poem, you can try your hand at writing your own tanka. First, think of a funny or interesting situation that happened to you (or someone you know). Write down a few sentences that describe the situation: who was there, what action was taken, and what resulted from that action. Make a list of powerful words that will help the reader imagine the story, with details about what you saw, heard, and felt in the situation. What you have written so far will be your notes that will help you write the poem. Now, use this pattern to start forming your tanka:

5 syllables in line 1
7 syllables in line 2
5 syllables in line 3
7 syllables in line 4
7 syllables in line 5

You may want to speak the lines aloud, or even count on your fingers, in order to get just the right number of syllables in each line.

Most people see it as a fun challenge to fit an interesting story into this pattern of syllables. But what if you find it frustrating? You don't have to give up on tanka just because counting syllables isn't your thing. In fact, some poets who write tanka in English don't even use the 5 - 7 - 5 - 7 - 7 format. Instead, they simply alternate the lengths of the lines: short / long / short / long / long. If you decide to write your tanka this way, be sure to use strong visual words and concrete details to bring your story to life, and try to include a pivot line. Most importantly, have fun!

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which means "short song," has been an important literary form in Japanese culture for nearly a thousand years. The original Japanese form of tanka had only one of poetry containing 31 speech sounds-what we would call . However, most tanka poems that are written in English today are broken into five poetic lines with a certain number of syllables in each line.

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Some great background info for grades 5 and up.

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Some great background info for grades 5 and up.

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Schools - Explore Japan - Kids Web Japan - Web Japan

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This page gives basic information on the Japanese education system. The basic school system in Japan is composed of elementary school (lasting six years), middle school (three years), high school (three years), and university (four years).

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Early grades. I like all of these ideas, esp. the sewing idea for makerspace.

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Early grades. I like all of these ideas, esp. the sewing idea for makerspace.

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I used to be unsure how to teach geography. I think it's because I was spending too much time teaching from a textbook and bouncing from one country to the next. I thought I had to cover a lot of countries and cram in tons of facts. Facts are great of course, but this is also first-grade geography we're talking about. My daughter and I were both rather bored with this subject and she wasn't retaining much, so I spent some time working out a better way to teach geography.

I've now started a new approach to geography in which I pick one country to focus on and we dive into it for a month or two. I don't use a textbook but pull from different sources as we explore the country. My goal is that through a variety of different activities from reading and watching videos, to crafts, eating, and parties, my kids can get an immersive experience of another country. The hands-on activities and the length of time we spend on one country helps my kids retain the material.

With this new approach, we're having much more fun and increased our learning. While my oldest child is the only one being homeschooled right now, I include the younger ones whenever possible. There have been many opportunities for them to join in, which I love because not only are they having fun and learning with us, but I also don't have to come up with alternate activities to keep them occupied while I homeschooling my oldest.

The first country we explored with this new approach is Japan, chosen because I love Japan. I hope after trying out some of the ideas listed below, that your kids will love Japan too!

Here are my 9 Ideas for Teaching about Japan

1. Explore the globe.

Maps are great, but I'm really happy we purchased a globe which makes finding countries an experience for tactile learners. I was surprised that my 4-year-old, who sometimes participates in class with us, was able to remember the location of California! We found Japan on the globe and compared it to our location. We discussed different ways to travel there and what countries are close by. We talked about the unique aspects of being an island. Google earth is also a great resource if you don't have a globe.

2. Do some crafts.

I like to do hands-on learning with the kids because their retention is so much better than when we're only working from books. For Geography, it's easy to find crafts that tie into what we are learning.

The first craft we did as we studied Japan was to sew kinchaku bags which are traditional, drawstring bags used in Japan to hold any small items from money to chopsticks. My sewing tutorial provides a great, beginner craft for kids new to sewing with a sewing machine. My 6-year-old did great with this craft, and with help, my 4-year-old was also able to participate. Click here for my sewing tutorial.

My daughter was having so much fun, that we continued exploring the subject by practicing some traditional hand-stitching called Sashiko. Sashiko stitches were originally used in repairing or reinforcing worn out clothes, though now they are used more for decoration. Teaching how to do a sashiko stitch, which is a running stitch, is a great place to start your child with hand embroidery. Depending on the maturity of your child, age 5 or 6 is a good time to start teaching hand sewing. Click here for my Sashiko bookmark craft.

3. Explore language.

We practiced saying some Japanese words:

konnichiwa: hello
sayonara: goodbye
ichi: one
ni: two
san: three
yon: four
go: five

I taught my kids that people in Japan not only speak a different language but write using different characters called kanji. We looked at kanji characters and practiced writing them. My kids made kakejiku (hanging scrolls) and decorated them with shodo (Japanese calligraphy). Click here for my tutorial. This craft worked well for my 6-year-old and 4-year-old.

4. Utilize the library.

I have only recently started to take advantage of the great free resource - the library. Since I have very small kiddies, we don't often go in but instead, I put books on hold and pick them up. Reading is a great way for me to spend time with all the kids, since my 2-year-old will listen at least for a few minutes. We read through a huge stack of books about Japan and here are our favorites:
My Japan by Etsuko Watanabe Yoko's Paper Cranes by Rosemary Wells I Live in Tokyo by Mari Takabayashi Kikuchi's Sushi by Myung Sook Jeong and Sul Hee Kook
5. Enjoy music and videos.

Music and videos are great ways to bring other countries to life and my kids love whenever I incorporate the computer into school. While reading some of our library books on Japan, I had Japanese music playing in the background. There's many options to choose from on YouTube, but I liked this koto music. We also watched videos showing Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, and important landmarks as well as this cute kid who gives you a tour of her apartment in Japan. I liked showing my kids how other children live and we discussed what things were the same and what things were different.

6. Explore the art of Japan.

We learned about the 19th-century artist, Hokusai, and looked at images of his prints. Then, we tried copying one of his prints of Mt. Fuji. The exercise of trying to reproduce art improves observation skills by challenging kids to look carefully and notice all the small details that they would otherwise overlook.

7. Learn through eating!

Sometimes kids are hesitant to eat new foods, but learning about them first can help open them up to trying them. After reading many books about Japan featuring sushi, especially the story "Kukichi's Sushi", my 6-year-old became very interested in trying it. She didn't care for the seaweed, but enjoyed the rest of the sushi roll and wants to try it again. We also tried matcha tea and mochi.

8. Write about it.

Writing is a great way to retain information. I gave my daughter notebook for geography where she can write about the countries we're learning about. Here are some writing prompts:

If you visited Japan, what would you want to see or do?
What animals are found in Japan?
What are your favorite Japanese foods?
What are some differences between Japan and the US?

9. Celebrate.

A fun way to finish up a geography unit is with a party. For Japan, we enjoyed a traditional hanami celebration which is a cherry blossom viewing picnic. We invited a couple friends over and enjoyed nature, some Japanese food, and crafts. Click here for some ideas on throwing your own hanami.

This geography unit on Japan has gone so well, I'm excited to start our next unit on Costa Rica. Spending so much time studying one country allowed us to go in depth in the material, interact with geography through a variety of mediums, and to cement in our minds what we learned through repetition and fun experiences. I hope you will give it a try with your kids.

How have you taught geography to your kids?

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9 Ideas for Teaching about Japan - Me and the Chicks

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I used to be unsure how to teach geography. I was spending too much time teaching from a textbook and bouncing from one country to the next. I thought I had to cover a lot of countries and cram in tons of facts.

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"The Queen of Polka Dots" is a fabulous artist study for kids. This is a trampoline of a jumping off  point.

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"The Queen of Polka Dots" is a fabulous artist study for kids. This is a trampoline of a jumping off  point.

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I came across the incredible art of Yayoi Kusama a few years ago and I knew that some day I was going to revisit her artwork, with my children. I instantly fell in love with the joyful spirit of Kusama's art and I had a pretty good feeling my girls would love her artwork too. We are incredibly excited to take in the Infinity Mirrors exhibit that has opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto. We will have an opportunity to see Yayoi Kusama's art in person this month.
For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links
I suppose what I love most about Kusama's art is how equally simple and complex her pieces are. We started our exploration by watching a brief biography video that we found on London's Tate Modern Museum's website. Kusama exhibited her art at the Tate Modern back in 2012. The video gave us a great overview of Yayoi Kusama's life story, her progression as an artist and how she is living her life now.

I want to lift my heart toward the future.
I have chosen art as the means of accomplishing this.
It is a task that will last a whole lifetime.
- Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama has been called the "Queen of Polka Dots." Her art is absolutely filled with polka dots. In fact, most of the time she is covered in polka dots. Patterns, polka dots, bold colours and interactive installation pieces - this is the art of Yayoi Kusama. A fabulous artist to explore with kids.

So, after watching the video and after looking at Yayoi Kusama's artwork, my girls and I were pretty sure we knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to make our own Kusama inspired polka dot art.

Yayoi Kusama Art Project for Kids

First, my daughter and I sketched out our designs on our canvases. I chose a "river" of polka dots, while my daughter drew a graphic flower with a pencil. Then she filled the petals with circles - large and small. I filled my "river" with circles of varying sizes.

Once the drawings were done, it was time to trace the circles with a permanent marker. The reason we traced the circles with marker was to help make the lines of the circles crisp...it is easier than painting a crisp line...which can be frustrating.

After the tracing it was time to paint the circles. My daughter chose orange and I chose red. The paint brought our drawings to life.

My daughter was happy with only painting the polka dots. I decided to add a strip of red to edge my river of circles. I then added a couple of other rivers of circles to my painting.

I think our finished pieces look pretty awesome. It was amazing how easily our designs came together. While painting we felt how addictive painting dots could be. Yayoi Kusama is a remarkable artist who has made an incredible impression on my kids. I think we are going to be creating many polka dot painting in the future.

Want to introduce your children to Yayoi Kusama? Check out the colourful book "Hi, Konnichiwa: Yayoi Kusama Art Book" by Yayoi Kusama.

Multicultural Kid Blogs is excited to announce our second annual Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month Blog Series and Giveaway! See our main page for a full schedule.

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I came across the incredible art of Yayoi Kusama a few years ago and I knew that some day I was going to revisit her artwork, with my children. I instantly fell in love with the joyful spirit of Kusama's art and I had a pretty good feeling my girls would love her artwork too.

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Another fun way to make Japanese Paper Fans! You can use our premade fans to color or paint abeautiful picture....or use our printable fan
template and let children design their own! This is a fantastic group activity as each project turns out wonderfully unique.
Materials:
Suggested Resources for a Unit Study:

Art Project Tutorial:

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Another fun way to make Japanese Paper Fans! You can use our premade fans to color or paint abeautiful picture....or use our printable fan template and let children design their own! This is a fantastic group activity as each project turns out wonderfully unique.

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Located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Asia, the island nation of Japan is made up of nearly 7,000 islands! The Japanese call their nation, Nippon, which means sun origin. Their flag is a red circle, representing the sun, on a field of white.

People have inhabited the islands of Japan for thousands of years. Japan's first emperor, Jimmu Tenno, came to power in 660 B.C. The country is still the only modern one to refer to the head of its royal family as emperor.

The country was ruled by military leaders called shoguns from 1603-1867. According to National Geographic Kids, in 1635, the ruling shogun, unhappy that Europeans were bringing guns and Christianity to the nation,

"... closed Japan to foreigners and forbade Japanese to travel abroad. This isolation lasted more than 200 years. In 1868, the shoguns were overthrown and emperors returned."

Today, the country is governed by a Prime Minister who is appointed by the Emperor. Because the emperor is now only an honored figurehead rather than a true leader, this appointment is merely a formality. The Prime Minister is actually elected by the National Diet, Japan's legislative body.

Japan is a leader in both the technology and auto industries, producing well-known brands such as Toyota, Sony, Nintendo, Honda, and Canon.

Japan is known for sports such as martial arts and Sumo wrestling, and foods such as sushi.

Its location along the Pacific Ring of Fire makes Japan susceptible to earthquakes and volcanic activity. The country experiences over 1000 earthquakes each year and has nearly two hundred volcanoes.

One of its most famous volcanoes is the beautiful Mt. Fuji. Although it hasn't erupted since 1707, Mt. Fuji is still considered an active volcano. It is the highest point in Japan and one of the country's three sacred mountains.

Help your students learn more about the "Land of the Rising Sun" with the following free printables and activity pages.

Japan Flag Coloring Page

The national flag of Japan is known as the Hinomaru, literally meaning 'sun disc.' It is made up of a red circle, symbolizing the sun, against a white background. It was officially adopted as the national flag of Japan in 1999.

Children's Day Coloring Page

May 5th is Children's Day in Japan and Korea. In Japan, Children's Day has been a national holiday since 1948 celebrating the personalities and happiness of children. It's celebrated by flying carp windsocks outside, displaying Samurai dolls, and eating chimaki.

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Learn about Japan with a Free Printables Set!

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Located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Asia, the island nation of Japan is made up of nearly 7,000 islands! The Japanese call their nation, Nippon, which means sun origin. Their flag is a red circle, representing the sun, on a field of white.

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I'm going to try this and will report back.

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I'm going to try this and will report back.

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A fun writing activity. Could be used as a back to school activity in fall.

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A fun writing activity. Could be used as a back to school activity in fall.

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Tanabata 七夕 is a Japanese holiday that is celebrated on July 7th every year. (Although in some places in Japan it is celebrated in August). This holiday came about because of a romantic story that was created based on the stars Vega and Altair who are closest to each other on the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar.

There are many versions of this story, but the main gist of the story is:

A long long time ago there lived a beautiful princess named Orihime (Vega). She could weave very beautiful cloth and worked very hard, so hard that she couldn't meet anyone to fall in love with. Her father felt sorry for her, so he introduced her to Hikoboshi (Altair, he is also known as Kengyu), a cow herdsman who lived on the other side of the Amanogawa River (known as the Milky Way).

It was love at first sight for Orihime and Kengyuu, and they spent so much time together that they neglected their responsibilities. Orihime's father, Tenkou, the god of the sky, became so angry that he separated them by taking Orihime back across the Amanogawa River. This made the two lovers very sad, and so Tenkou decided that he would allow them to meet once a year on the 7th day of the 7th month. However if it is raining on that day, the river (milky way) is too flooded to cross, so they must wait another year to meet.

According to Tsuku blog "A strange turning point in the history of Tanabata was surely the adoption of the western calendar by the Meiji Government after 1868. The seventh month is August according to the lunar calendar, but is July in the new calendar. These days the 7th day of the 7th month is NOT the time when Vega and Altair meet. This occurs in August. And more to this, the beginning of July is still the rainy season and stars can rarely be seen at all! Sounds ridiculous, but it is true. The festival is celebrated a month too early. The great Sendai Festival, however sticks with the correct timing, as do the festivals in Yamaguchi City and Oita. For major NEW CALENDAR events (I mean in July) head for the Shonan Hiratsuka Tanabata Festival in Kanagawa."

To celebrate Tanabata, people write their wishes on paper (tanzaku) and hang them from bamboo branches along with other decorations-it really can be beautiful! When I was a child, we celebrated Tanabata on July 7th, but since there are many cities that celebrate in August, it's not too late to make your own wish tree. Here's how you can celebrate Tanabata:

Supplies:

Bamboo branch (if not available, use any tree branch, or perhaps they have artificial bamboo branches at the craft store).

Origami paper (or other colorful scrapbook paper)

Scissors

Hole punch

String (we used curly ribbon)

Glue

Directions:

First go to this great Origami website that will teach you how to make beautiful decorations for your Tanabata tree. (It's in English) The difficulty level is rated by the stars below, so the easier decorations have one star and the hardest one has four stars.

My son is making a simple ring chain. He was excited about making this because he already knew how to make them from his Kindergarten class.

Here he is hanging his finished decoration.

Here is a lantern that I made.

Next, cut your origami into rectangular strips. These are called tanzaku and people use them to write their wishes. Kind of like the wishes you make when you throw a coin into a fountain.
One of my son's wishes was....."I wish my life would last forever"and one of my daughter's wishes was..... "I wish for a new camera".

After you are done writing your wishes (one wish per tanzaku), punch a hole at the top, cut a long piece of string and pull it through the hole of the tanzaku. Tie a knot at one end, and then hang it on the tree.

When there is a summer festival in Japan, girls & women dress up in a yukata, which is a light cotton kimono, that is ideal for the hot, humid weather Japan has during the summer. I don't have a yukata for my daughter, so I dressed her up in a beautiful kimono that belonged to her grandmother (my mother) when she was a child.

What kind of wishes will you write on your Tanzaku?

We hope that you enjoyed our Tanabata celebration. Please check out the other links below for more fun ways to discover Japan.

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Around the World in 12 Dishes: Japan: Tanabata

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Tanabata 七夕 is a Japanese holiday that is celebrated on July 7th every year. (Although in some places in Japan it is celebrated in August). This holiday came about because of a romantic story that was created based on the stars Vega and Altair who are closest to each other on the 7th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar.

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A nice long list of pk-4 books. Check to see if they are appropriate to your needs.

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A nice long list of pk-4 books. Check to see if they are appropriate to your needs.

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Our homeschool study of countries and cultures has us reading lots of books from the library. This time it was books about Japan for kids. We loved reading these Japan books for kids to learn about Japanese culture from the nonfiction books and hear some great stories from the fiction books. Our trip to the library for books really rounds out our country studies. Each day we have a set time where the kids read (or the youngest looks at) books. Then, I pick some of the stories to read aloud-even my 9 year old still likes for me to read aloud with him. These times of curling up on the couch together with a stack of books are some of my favorite times with my kids. By reading about each of the countries we are studying, my oldest is able to do a mini report sharing interesting facts about each country. He gains most of his knowledge during our book basket time. My youngest (5 years old) loves to sit with us while we read and is learning right along with us.

Even if you don't homeschool your kids, this list is great for extending the learning at home for your child when they are studying these countries in school or just for some after school fun. You never know...they might just learn something! It's also a great list for teachers as they plan Japan unit studies.

Japan Books for Kids

Click on the picture of the books to learn more about each book. *These are affiliate links.*

Some of our favorites not to miss include Tea with Milk, Tree of Cranes, and Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say. They are all connected and tell a bigger story when read together in that order.

&

More Book Lists for Kids

Geography Books for Kids
France Books for Kids
Canada Books for Kids
Mexico Books for Kids
Rainforest Books for Kids
Thanksgiving Books for Kids
Nativity Books for Kids
The Ultimate List of Winter Books for Kids
14 Picture Books about Building with Blocks, Engineering, and Architecture

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Our homeschool study of countries and cultures has us reading lots of books from the library. This time it was books about Japan for kids. We loved reading these Japan books for kids to learn about Japanese culture from the nonfiction books and hear some great stories from the fiction books.

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Did you know that April is National Poetry Month?! We are joining Preschool Powol Packets (and some other great bloggers) in a poetry celebration and contest this month. I can't with to show you how we learned about haiku poems!!

We decided to learn a little about poetry by studying Haiku poems. Do you remember learning about Haiku poems as a kid? They are great to do with kids because of their simplicity. They are short and you don't have to think of rhyming words. We did a little twist on it by doing illustrated haiku poems!

What are Haiku Poems?

A haiku poem is a traditional Japanese three-line poem that doesn't rhyme. The pattern is to write the first and last lines with five syllables each, and the middle line with seven syllables like this:

Line 1: 5 syllables
Line 2: 7 syllables
Line 3: 5 syllables

They are usually about seasons or nature, but you can write your own haiku about anything you like! The last line of a haiku usually makes an observation about the subject of the poem.

How to Write Haiku Poems With Kids:

Start your poem by choosing a topic. Let your kids choose something they love for the topic of their poem. Or maybe you can suggest they write about things you are learning in your science or nature study. We have been learning about pollination in our house so I gave them an example of bees.

I have yellow stripes.
I fly to all the flowers.
I'm making honey.

Let them choose their own topics and express their ideas in a haiku. Make sure they count syllables so it is following the pattern. Try to make an observation in the last line.

If you notice in the poem I wrote above, I never said it was a bee, but you can tell by the way I described it. This is a fun way to write Haiku poems. Make them in a riddle format so others have to guess what you are writing about. This isn't necessary, but it can be a fun activity!

Next, have your kids illustrate the poems! My son used my poem to illustrate. My younger daughter did her own thing as usual. 😉 She had trouble with the whole syllable concept, but she loved writing a few lines about something she loves in nature and drawing about it!

Even the little ones can join in on this fun project.

We have discovered some great books about Haiku Poems for kids, too!

Haiku Poetry Books for Kids:

The Year Comes Round: Haiku Through the Seasons by Sid Farrar

Won Ton: a Cat Tale Told in Haiku by Lee Wardlaw

Dogku by Andrew Clements

Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka

Basho and the River Stones by Tim J. Myers

One Leaf Rides the Wind by Celeste Mannis

Hi, Koo! A Year of Seasons by Jon J. Muth

I Haiku You by Betsy E. Snyder

The Cuckoo's Haiku and other Birding Poems by Michael J. Rossen

If Not for the Cat by Jack Preltuzky

See what the rest of the hosts are sharing about poetry this month!

Preschool Powol Packets ~ Homeschool Encouragement ~ Brave Writer's Life in Brief ~ Word Traveling ~ The Measured Mom ~ Wildflower Ramblings ~ Line Upon Line Learning ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Living to Learn ~ Vicky Arnold Blog ~ School Time Snippets ~ Creekside Learning ~ Planet Smarty Pants~ Are We There Yet ~ Look at What You Are Seeing ~ Look! We're Learning! ~ Our Homeschool Studio

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Did you know that April is National Poetry Month?! We are joining Preschool Powol Packets (and some other great bloggers) in a poetry celebration and contest this month. I can't with to show you how we learned about haiku poems!!

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Adaptable to most levels. A great writing prompt.

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Adaptable to most levels. A great writing prompt.

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Konichiwa! Today, we visit Japan to explore one of my favorite artworks, the portrait sculpture of priest Shunjōbō Chōgen. I love this thing.

I first discovered this artwork about 7 months ago. I was flipping through Gardner's Art through the Ages , a MASSIVE art history textbook, looking for ideas for my very first art post on my brand new blog! I even tweeted about it from my brand new twitter account for my brand new blog. I think this may have been my first tweet.

I was flipping through my #aparthistory text book and found this work I had never seen before. Stunning! pic.twitter.com/AqY1gDa3ge

- Cindy Ingram (@ArtCurator4Kids) March 31, 2014

This artwork is just breathtaking. The faithful realism, painted details, and the inlaid rock crystals in the eyes give this artwork such a powerful punch. Am I the only one in awe of this sculpture? I'm dieing to see this in person. The textbook says it is only 2'8.4″ high. I wonder if it is as powerful knowing it is that small? Or maybe it packs more of a punch? You never know until you see it. That's why it is so important to visit museums and see art in person!

If you want to know a little bit about this guy, it is Shunjōbō Chōgen. He was instrumental in helping rebuild Tōdai-ji, a Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan after it was destroyed in war. He lived from 1121-1206 and spent 25 years on the rebuilding efforts.

Art Discussion Questions

1. What type of person is this? How can you tell? What choices did the artist make to show this?

2. What emotion or mood is projected in this artwork? How does the material and the way it was sculptured enhance that mood?

Art Learning Activity or Project

I'm going to go simple with this one. This artwork is so simple and beautiful that it would be a great activity to spend some time looking at him and sketching. See if your students can capture the emotion and realism that the sculpture conveys.

More Resources and Citations

If you choose to do the drawing exercise, here is a great site with videos on how to draw faces and facial proportions.

Works Cited: Kleiner, Fred, and Christin Mamiya. Gardner's Art Through the Ages. 12th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005. Print.

Okay, that's it for today. Let me know what you thought of this one in the comments. Tomorrow, we are traveling to India to see an amazing building totally covered in brilliant sculpture!
Click here to find more art from around the world, and come back tomorrow for another installment! Remember you can get the whole month of Art Around the World posts as a PDF eBook at the end of the month by subscribing to my e-mail newsletter. Enter your e-mail to get that when it comes out! If you like this post, you may also like:

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Art Around the World in 30 Days - Day #4 - Japan

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Konichiwa! Today, we visit Japan to explore one of my favorite artworks, the portrait sculpture of priest Shunjōbō Chōgen. I love this thing. I first discovered this artwork about 7 months ago. I was flipping through Gardner's Art through the Ages, a MASSIVE art history textbook, looking for ideas for my very first art post...

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Adaptable to most levels. Includes slide show and disc. questions.

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Adaptable to most levels. Includes slide show and disc. questions.

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Welcome to my Art Spotlight series. In this series, I delve a little deeper into individual works of art to help give you ideas for how to use them in your classroom. For each artwork, I include discussion questions, a short description of its significance and context, and learning activities.
Today, I have selected a series of artworks created by the great Japanese ukiyo-e artist, Katsushika Hokusai. You probably know of the famous Great Wave (above), but you may not know it is the 21st in a series of 36 other prints featuring Mount Fuji. Today, I will highlight a few of my favorites as well as help you come up with ways to include all of these in your homeschool and classroom lesson plans.

As always, use these tips for how to look at art with kids. Always let them look and think about it before you give them any information! Also, use my free art appreciation worksheets with these works to help your students form a deeper connection with the art.

Recommended Age: Everyone!

First things first, let's look at the art. This slideshow has 6 of the prints. Download the PowerPoint or the PDF to see the rest of the 36.

Hokusai Discussion Questions

What is going on in this artwork? What do you see that makes you say that?

What emotions do you feel when looking at this artwork? What emotions do you think the artist was feeling?

Describe the lines and colors in this artwork. How do the colors and lines contribute to the emotion?

Describe the ways Hokusai included Mount Fuji in the artworks.

What can you tell about the Japanese way of life in the Edo Period by looking at these artworks? What types of things are the people doing?

What do these artworks have in common? How could you tell that these were created by Hokusai during this time period?

Conventions of Ukiyo-e Prints

Hokusai was a prolific printmaker of the Edo period in Japan. He worked in the late 1700s and early 1800s and created hundreds of gorgeous prints. The ukiyo-e prints overall all seem to have a set of similar characteristics. The common characteristics of an art period or style are called the conventions.

The conventions of these ukiyo-e prints are:

peaceful or idyllic scenes that create harmony between humans and nature

asymmetrical composition - the left and rights sides are balanced but different

limited color palette of about 4 colors plus black - because of the printmaking process, each color must be printed separately in layers

unclear space or perspective - clouds or fog sometimes confuse the composition. You can't tell the difference between sky and water, or lines end in the middle of nowhere.

diagonal or curves lines that guide your eye through the composition - these lines help tie it all together and add a sense of energy to the work

outlined shapes filled with solid, flat color - all objects in the artwork are outlined in black usually, and there is not a lot of texture in the areas of color, because of the way they are printed

Hokusai Learning Activities

1. Haiku Poetry. This painting is perfect for a poetry-writing exercise, especially haiku because of the Japan connection. You can download a free haiku writing worksheet by signing up for my e-mail list here. The worksheet walks the students through a warm-up of writing adjectives, verbs, phrases, and metaphors before they end up with their haiku. Have students pick their favorite Hokusai work to write about.

2. Woodblock Printing. These paintings are woodblock print, so a natural fit would be a printing activity so your students can better understand how these were made. There are lots of way to do this at home, and I just did a post about this earlier in the week to prepare for this post. Click over to that post to learn about all the ways you can do woodblock prints at home with your kids.

3. Compare/Contrast. Pick 3-4 of Hokusai's prints (or all of them if you are feeling ambitious) and have the students make a list of all of the things these prints have in common. Through this activity, your students will come up with the conventions of ukiyo-e printing as described above.

Hokusai and Printmaking Resources*
* These are affiliate links. A small percentage of your purchase through this link goes to the Art Class Curator. Thank you for your support.

CLick here for the free download

If you like this post, you may also like:

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Art Spotlight: Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

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Welcome to my Art Spotlight series. In this series, I delve a little deeper into individual works of art to help give you ideas for how to use them in your classroom. For each artwork, I include discussion questions, a short description of its significance and context, and learning activities.

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A traditional Japanese haiku poem is written in three lines:

5 syllables on the first line

7 syllables on the second line

5 syllables on the third line

Haiku is inspired by nature, combining two different images or ideas together.

My son's 5th grade poetry unit included haiku inspired by Japanese block prints created by Katsushika Hokusai, considered one of Japan's iconic artists.

I have block prints by Hokusai below that I photographed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Which prints do you like? Do they inspire you or your kids to write a haiku? Please share your poems! Here are my son's:

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.

It is Hokusai's most famous work, and one of the best recognized works of Japanese art in the world. It depicts an enormous wave threatening boats off the coast of the prefecture of Kanagawa. from Wikipedia

Convolvulus and Tree-Frog by Hokusai.

Each print features a flower and an insect (amphibians were classified as insects).

Chrysanthemum and Bee by Hokusai.

Grosbeak And Mirabilis by Hokusai.

Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Sundai, Edo by Hokusai.

p.s. I have more related posts here:
Connecting Art and Science with Hokusai's The Great Wave 2nd Grade Color Poems Using What Is Black? by Mary O'Neill Poetry Book Lists for Kids Fun and Easy Ways to Expose Kids to Poetry
More fun reading and writing ideas here:

More ideas to expose kids to Asian culture here:

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Poetry for Kids: Haiku using Japanese Art

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A traditional Japanese haiku poem is written in three lines: 5 syllables on the first line 7 syllables on the second line 5 syllables on the third line Haiku is inspired by nature, combining two different images or ideas together.

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A few months ago, I got an awesome Facebook message from a reader, Kim, who used one of my resources in such an excellent and creative way. I would like to share what she did with my post and printable 36 Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai.

Kim runs a small Montessori homeschool preschool for ages 3-5. They had been studying Japan and the artist Hokusai when she came across my 36 Views of Mount Fuji post, and I love how she integrated it into their studies. I did the activity she came up with with my 3 and 5 year old last week, and it went really well!

Although both Kim and I did this with young kids, the below lesson would work probably all the way up to upper elementary.
For your convenience, this post has Amazon affiliate links which help support the work I do for you on Art Class Curator.
Japanese Woodblock Prints Lesson

1. Print the pictures from the post, and laminate if possible (optional, I got a laminator for Christmas so I laminate everything). Here is a new printable with 4 images per page so it is easier to print!

2. Lay out the cards in rows and play the "Find Mt. Fuji Game." Have students find Mount Fuji in all of the pictures. My girls thought this was great fun! We also looked at the real picture of Mount Fuji taken by my sister who is currently living in Japan (also in the original post). (I found all 36 to be a bit much. You could probably print only half of these and be fine.)

3. Lay out the cards again and have the children tell you the similarities and differences using the discussion questions from the post as a guide. Kim did this as an individual work with each child, but I did it with both of my girls at the same time having them take turns (so my 5yo wouldn't shut out the 3yo!). Have the children notice the colors, form, peacefulness, etc. We also picked out 3-4 favorites each to take with us to the table for the rest of the activity.

4. Give each child a styrofoam meat tray, styrofoam plate with the rim cut off, or a foam printing sheet, and have each child scratch a picture into the surface. The only requirement is that they have to include Mt. Fuji in their picture!

5. Make prints! Kim used ink pads in muted shades of orange, green, and blue. I used printing ink and brayers (rollers) with black printing ink. I wanted to use blue mimic the main color in the Hokusai prints, but I only had black on hand. Use tips from the "Foam Printing" section of my block printing post for help with this activity.

My daughter is currently obsessed with those collector toy videos on YouTube, so she wanted to make a video demonstrating the process. Of course, she didn't use any of the words we talked about like printmaking and ink, but it's adorable. 🙂

This was such a fun activity for my kids and I. Thanks for the idea Kim! 🙂
Do you have a lesson based on one of my resources that you'd like to share with Art Class Curator readers? Please share in the comments or send me a message, and you might be featured on the blog!
This post is a part of the Around the World in 30 Days for Toddlers and Preschoolers series organized by Cutting Tiny Bites. Check out other posts for the series by clicking on the image below.
If you like this post, you may also like:

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Japanese Woodblock Prints Lesson for Kids

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A few months ago, I got an awesome Facebook message from a reader, Kim, who used one of my resources in such an excellent and creative way. I would like to share what she did with my post and printable 36 Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai.