Eight Years Before Superman, These Were the First Superheroes

Superman is widely recognized as the first superhero. While as a cultural phenomenon that’s true, there’s actually an entire genre of superpowered costumed heroes that predates him, and it’s not in comics, or even American. It’s Kamishibai, a form of Japanese street performance.

And since World Kamishibai Day was this week (on December 7), it’s the perfect opportunity to tell the art form’s fascinating, little-known story.

Kamishibai, meaning “paper theater”—kami for paper and shibai for theatre or play—was immensely popular in Japan during the Great Depression and World War II. Traveling storytellers, mostly men, narrated illustrated tales for gathered audiences of children, acting out the characters and sound effects, much like story time events today. 

Performers would usually ride into town on a bicycle with a small stage mounted on the back, set up on a busy street corner, announce their arrival with wooden clappers (hyōshigi) and sell candy as the admission fee. The stories were illustrated on large cards placed inside the stage, which was backless, allowing the performer to read the text on the back of each card as they swapped them.

Golden Bat and Other Heroes

Like American comics, Kamishibai stories were serialized, always exciting, and typically ended on a cliffhanger, ensuring kids would come back for more thrills and treats. And like comics, they spanned different genres, but the most popular was of noble superhumans in bright costumes.

Superman debuted in June 1938’s Action Comics #1, giving birth to superheroes. But in 1931, seven years before that and three years before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster invented him, Japanese children were introduced to Ōgon Batto, or Golden Bat.

Like Superman (and most superheroes back then), Golden Bat was created by two youths, 25-year-old writer Ichiro Suzuki and 16-year-old artist Takeo Nagamatsu. Inspired by Yōkai folklore, they based him on mythological characters of the past, reimagined as science fiction.

Golden Bat doesn’t actually have anything to do with bats. He was named after a cheap brand of cigarettes, of all things, and his original design was equally bonkers: a golden skull for a face, often with crossed eyes, crooked and missing teeth, and sometimes long blond hair. He wore a 17th-century outfit with a red cape and stand-up collar or giant ruff and carried a rapier or swordstick.

He was a time traveler from Atlantis, which was enough of an explanation to make him invulnerable and able to fly, and lived in a hidden fortress in the Japanese Alps of Honshu. He fought giant robots and supervillains like archenemy Dr. Nazō, a mad scientist from outer space bent on world domination.

Golden Bat was the most popular Kamishibai by far, going on to appear in manga in 1948, three live-action movies between 1950–1972, and an anime series in 1967. 

Golden Bat was the most popular Kamishibai by far, going on to appear in manga in 1948, three live-action movies between 1950–1972, and an anime series in 1967.

Another Kamishibai superhero followed sometime in the early 1930s: Gamma no Ōji, or the Prince of Gamma. An orphaned prince from another planet, he wore a costume consisting of a tight blue bodysuit with a chest insignia, yellow cape and a headdress shaped like a bird.

He could fly, was invulnerable, and had super-strength. He even had a secret identity, disguised as a poor Tokyo guttersnipe. His rogues’ gallery included a blue, baldheaded evil scientist and an alien with visible brains.

The Origin Story of Kamishibai

The history of Kamishibai isn’t all that different from American comic books either. It came into existence around 1929–1930, when Japan was modernizing but also suffering from the worldwide Depression, offering entertainment to young audiences that was cheaper than movies and more accessible than radio. And just as the comics artform was primarily developed from newspaper strips while the format, distribution and genre content mostly came from the pulps, Kamishibai has several roots.

A possible forebear is emakimono, or emaki, horizontal picture scrolls dating back to at least the 11th century, which combined painting and calligraphy to tell stories of religion, epic battles, romance, folklore and the supernatural—essentially ancient comics.

But there were two direct precursors to Kamishibai. One is tachi-e, or standing pictures, which were drawings with carboard backs on wooden handles, basically paper puppets, inside little stages. The other is katsudō benshi (motion picture narrators), who were performers who stood next to the screen for silent films and dramatically narrated them. Kamishibai storytellers emulated their performance style, and with the introduction of talkies many benshi went into Kamishibai.

In their heyday, predating and then overlapping with the Golden Age of comics, as many as 5,000,000 people watched Kamishibai daily across Japan, performed by 30,000 entertainers supplied with stories by 40 production houses employing 50,000 writers and artists in Tokyo and Kansai alone. By 1942, the total number of published editions surpassed 800,000.

Despite the stories’ immense popularity, many parents and educators disapproved of them, claiming they were sensationalistic and violent (some were), the same criticisms leveled against American comics as early as 1940.

Many parents and educators disapproved of them, claiming they were sensationalistic and violent, the same criticisms leveled against American comics as early as 1940.

They were also used extensively for wartime propaganda, much like American comics. The difference was that in democratic America it was by choice, either grassroots or commissioned by the government, whereas in imperial Japan it was by order of the government and under its strict control. These sanctioned Kokusaku Kamishibai were also disseminated in occupied China, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Contrary to popular belief, the Allied occupation of Japan after WWII and the Westernization that followed, as well as the advent of television in the early 1950s, were not the death knell of Kamishibai. In fact, television was first known in Japan as denki Kamishibai—electric Kamishibai—indicating how ingrained they were in the culture. Their popularity actually rose after the war, with the number of street performers nearly doubling to over 50,000. It eventually waned in the 1960s, when there was a large enough middle class to make television a household item and to keep children off the street.

Kamishibai’s Legacy

But Kamishibai didn’t go extinct; they’re a direct evolutionary ancestor of manga, both stylistically and thematically. Indeed, many manga and anime artists got their start drawing Kamishibai, like the famous Mizuki (creator of GeGeGe no Kitarō, actually an adaptation of a popular Kamishibai). And through that, Kamishibai DNA can be found in other things like videogames.

Kamishibai are also experiencing something of a modern renaissance. More for nostalgia and cultural heritage than straightforward entertainment, performances can be spotted in parks and museums throughout Japan, often recreating the whole experience with a bike-mounted stage and candy to sell.

There are even Kamishibai festivals and workshops around the world, from Australia to Israel to France to Mexico. In the U.S., Kamishibai events are held in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month across the country, mostly in schools, libraries and conferences. As noted earlier, World Kamishibai Day is celebrated every December 7 by the International Kamishibai Association.

Despite the remarkable similarities between the tropes in Golden Bat and Prince of Gamma and those of American superheroes, any direct influence is extremely unlikely. Siegel and Shuster would not have heard of them in 1934 Cleveland, and in several opportunities where they openly discussed their many influences for Superman, they never mentioned these characters.

It is possible that the parallels are purely coincidental. They might also originate in part from shared influences: Bible stories were fairly well known in Japan, spread mostly through Christian missionaries, who even turned them into Kamishibai (kamishibai dendō dan). Superman and Prince of Gamma’s similar origin stories as castaway child orphans who lead a double life among people not their own, for example, might equally have come from the story of Moses.

Another possibility is that they originate in shared universal fantasies, culminating in similar concepts across cultures. It’s what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious and Joseph Campbell called the monomyth, among others.

Whatever the case, the Man of Steel will forever be considered the first “real” superhero. But the truth can be found across the Pacific, with the admission price of some candy.

Roy Schwartz is a pop culture historian and critic. His work has appeared in CNN.com, New York Daily News, The Forward and Philosophy Now, among others. His latest book is the Diagram Prize-winning Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History of the World’s Greatest Hero. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and at royschwartz.com.