2005 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Comparative Research on the History of the Reception and the Appreciation of The Story of Little Black Sambo in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Japan
| Project/Area Number |
15520238
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Literatures/Literary theories in other countries and areas
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| Research Institution | Hachinohe National College of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
TODAYAMA Midori Hachinohe National College of Technology, Department of Liberal Arts and Engineering Science, Associate Professor, 総合科学科, 助教授 (40342448)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2003 – 2005
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| Keywords | Cultural Studies / Children's Literature in English / Education of Language Arts (in Japan) / Picture Books / Iconology / Representation of "the Race" / Colonialism / Censorship |
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| Research Abstract |
In this project, I tried to figure out the image of the "ideal child" in the history of Japanese Children's Literature. In this genre, some writers expect their texts to have values not only for young children but also for adults. The ideology on the "ideal child", however, defined the child reader as the best one. In order to consider the problem more broadly and deeply, attention was paid to the relationship between child and race. I mainly investigated what the representation of "black" in Little Black Sambo has meant and how the book has been introduced or received in Japan, where people are rather unconscious about the matter of the racial depiction.
The research made it clear that even in English speaking countries, where people might be keen on racial problems, the recognition of the racial representation is not sufficient. Tracing the history of immigrants in Britain and the conflict involved in their reception showed that sometimes even the West Indians and the Indians were described as "black". Recently in the USA, several new versions of Little Black Sambo came to be published after the long period of the "absence" in school and public libraries. Yet, the new versions have their own issues.
I have visited the libraries in London, Edinburgh and New York. The precious visual resources stocked in those places have helped the project very much. It is necessary to introduce some of them, which are scarcely known in Japan, to the Japanese readers. One of my results was composed "The Story of Little Black Sambo as a Hidden Teaching Material : On its Reception and Evaluation in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Japan". It was submitted, as a doctoral thesis, to Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University and accepted in 2005.
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Research Products
(2 results)
