This special Mondays at Beinecke session will feature the co-curators of the new exhibition, “Textured Stories: The Chirimen Books of Modern Japan,” Haruko Nakamura and Yoshitaka Yamamoto.

Zoom webinar registration link: https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_N7wPya27TmiH69gPn8-M7w

The exhibition is on view at Beinecke Library through May 3, 2026. Despite their modest appearance, the elegantly illustrated Japanese crêpe-paper books known as chirimen-bon became an important medium for creating and sharing knowledge about Japanese culture in a time of great upheaval. Starting in the late nineteenth century, after more than two centuries of limited contact with the West, Japan began rushing to Westernize its social and political institutions while also striving to establish a unique national identity. These books came into existence alongside textbooks for Japanese learners of Western languages, and provided their Japanese and non-Japanese co-creators—publishers, artists, translators, and authors—with new ways of envisioning Japan’s culture and heritage. Among Western audiences, the chirimen books—with stories frequently drawn from Japanese fairy tales and folklore, printed on handmade paper that resembled luxury kimono silk fabric—were enthusiastically collected as beautiful objects, but they also granted access to a society and culture that had hitherto been largely unknown. This exhibition introduces the history of chirimen books—their production and distribution, the stories they tell, the novel forms of international collaboration that brought them into being, and their enduring legacy—while also showing how they drew upon long-standing traditions from Japan and East Asia more broadly.

Mondays at Beinecke online talks focus on materials from the collections and include an opening presentation at 4pm followed by conversation and Q & A beginning about 4:30pm until 5pm. Episodes are generally recorded and published on the library’s YouTube channel within a few weeks of the original live program.