Otogi zoshi's outlines and illustrations available | Kyoto University Rare Materials Digital Archive

2018-02-21

The outlines and illustrations of Otogi zoshi, a group of fairy tales composed during the period from the Muromachi Era to the beginning of the Edo Period, are now available in the digital archive.
Please enjoy the stories with the images of the beautifully colored illustrations digitized from our rare materials.

Enjoying Otogi Zoshi with the Help of Synopsis and Illustrations

Otogi Zoshi are tales for adults and children enjoy alike. In the Muromachi Period and the Edo Period, people would have great fun thumbing through the pages by themselves or have someone read to them - there were many ways to enjoy the stories. The greatest pleasure of all though, must surely have been the beautiful painted color illustrations.
Many of these flamboyantly illustrated Otogi Zoshi tales are in the possession of the Kyoto University Library. So that you can taste the same enjoyment as people of the olden days, we have added the beautiful illustrations to the each synopsis of the tale and made it like a picture book. The synopsis is for people who have trouble with Japanese classics, who cannot work out what has been written but who want to know the story, so ease of understanding was our biggest goal. The expression is not rigorously modern, but in order to convey the atmosphere of the story we were a little creative. We will be happy if you enjoy it as a picture book.