Hello, everyone. In lieu of our usual ad read, just a quick announcement. As you noticed, there was no new episode last week, and there won't be another one next week either.

I am going on part two of a long-awaited and delayed vacation, so I won't be around to record.

This should be our last interruption in the regular episode schedule until at least American Thanksgiving.

But, again, there will not be a new episode.

Next week on the 13th, we will be back with your regularly scheduled programming on the 20th.

Thanks for your understanding, and now let's get this show on the road.

Music for your understanding, and now let's get this show on the road. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 401, worth a thousand words.

Like a lot of young Americans of my generation, I grew up with TV.

Not in a TV-raised-me sort of way, mind you, but I still remember fondly the shows of my youth,

Pinky and the Brain, the X-Men animated series,

and of course the classic pinnacle of human artistic endeavor,

that is the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

But this week is a story all about how my life would have been flip-turned upside down,

had I been born in an era before TV or even before radio dramas, because of course,

one of the constants of the human experience is that young kids are always wanting for entertainment,

and that was a lot harder to manage in the age before modern mass media technology.

But humans are an ingenious sort, and we've always found ways to manage.

So this week, I'd like to take a moment just sitting right there to tell you all about

a genre of media that was in the early days of the 20th century, responsible for keeping

Japan's young people entertained, one which was basically killed off by radio and TV, but was,

in its day, big business.

The genre in question is called Kami Shibai. You sometimes hear these called paper plays,

...