Abstract: Satoshi Kitamura:Aesthetic Dimensions Jane Doonan (bio) Satoshi Kitamura, a Japanese artist now living in London, won the 1982 Mother Goose Award, given annually to the most exciting newcomer to British children's book illustration. His subsequent picture books have fulfilled this promise. They show a striking originality of vision, a criterion Maurice Sendak considers paramount for the judgment of picture books. Sendak suggests that we should look for "someone who says something, even something very commonplace, in a totally original and fresh way. We shouldn't look for pyrotechnics but a person who thinks freshly" (quoted in Lanes 125). Kitamura's work is notable as well for the artist's material skills and for his distinctive relationship to the pictorial tradition of Japan. Consideration of all three aspects—vision, material skills, and tradition—is a way of traveling toward a sympathetic understanding of Kitamura's accomplishment. Kitamura's first three picture books—the prize-winning Angry Arthur, Ned and the Joybaloo, and In the Attic—were produced in collaboration with Hiawyn Oram, who wrote the texts. Each is an extended metaphor for one of three very different states of being. Angry Arthur exemplifies the destructive rage of a thwarted small boy who does not want to go to bed, Ned and the Joybaloo gives form to the human frailty of wishing to control and perpetuate happiness, and In the Attic celebrates the imagination as a source of nameless and profound satisfactions. Each story sends its central character traveling out to the farthest reaches of the physical universe, deep into the psyche, and away to the wildest stretches of childhood's imaginings. The barriers between inner and outer lives are removed. These collaborative works were followed by educational picture books for which Kitamura was wholly responsible: What's Inside"? The Alphabet Book and When Sheep Cannot Sleep: The Counting Book. The former, virtually textless, involves the beholder in a guessing [End Page 107] game and in opportunities for do-it-yourself story making; the latter has a memorable hero, Woolly the Sheep, with all the appeal of a Snoopy, whose adventures are well worth watching whether or not one counts as the pages turn. Both books go far beyond increasing literacy and numeracy; each has an inventive approach to a traditional form. Other picture books have followed which are charged with honest humor. The values Kitamura promotes are aspects of an independent and creative nature: curiosity, resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and the need for self-expression. One suspects that if he had his way, artists' materials and the means of making and listening to music would be every child's right. Arthur has a gramophone and piano; Ned, when not occupied with the Joybaloo, practices his recorder and relaxes to the sounds of Erik Satie and Charlie Parker. The child who explores the attic owns an accordian and a trumpet, and mathematician Woolly tunes in to the radio. H for Hippo playing his G for guitar has enough musical instruments in his sound-proofed studio to service a symphony orchestra, a jazz band, jungle drummers, gypsy fiddlers, pipers Aegean and Scottish, harpers Jewish and Welsh. Sharpened pens, paints, sketchblocks and easels also are at hand. The omnipresence of musical and artistic instruments reveals Kitamura's focus upon the inner life, as well as providing intertextual reference to the artist's own creativity, and indicates a source for the self-reliance and independence of his characters. With the exception of the alphabet book, each story features a single character accompanied, if at all, only by an animal, though friendly relatives are never far away. These independent youngsters are able to resolve most of the difficulties they encounter from strengths within themselves. Kitamura's task is to find graphic equivalences for both their outer and their inner worlds that are sufficiently seamless and convincing to provide his reader with opportunities for identification. He brings out the abstract qualities of both worlds. Through particular emphases in depictive style he captures on the page the effects of physical objects as we experience them; the imaginary inner life, "past everyday night and everynight dreams" (a quotation from Ned which applies to most of the picture books...
Publication Year: 1991
Publication Date: 1991-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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