AKAI TORI

   Akai Tori (Red Bird) was a children’s magazine established by Suzuki Miekichi (1882–1936) in 1918. It ran continuously for 198 issues (aside from a hiatus between 1929 and 1931). Seeking to foster the purity of children, Suzuki established the magazine in reaction to the government’s hard-line approach to childhood. The magazine attracted the support of and contributions by a number of literary luminaries, such as Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Arishima Takeo, Izumi Kyoka, Kitahara Hakushu, Tokuda Shusei, and other acclaimed writers, poets, and artists. Its long-lived success started the so-called Akai Tori movement in children’s literature as well as a nursery rhyme boom in the 1920s. In 1984, the Japan Nursery Rhyme Association declared July 1 (the date of publication of the first issue of Akai Tori) Nursery Rhyme Day.