A Historical Survey of Animation Subjects in School Textbooks of Drawing and Manual Arts in Elementary Education in Japan.

Abstract

The major aim of this study is to compile knowledge about animation education in primary education, and in this paper I surveyed how animation subjects were treated in school textbooks for drawing and manual arts in elementary education in Japan. In total I surveyed 677 textbooks published from 1955 to 2015 and identified 25 animation subjects, which I divided into four periods of time for comparison. This diachronic research reveals the origin and the changes of the animation subject in the field. In addition, I found two aspects of educational meaning for animation subjects in the context of drawing and manual arts, namely “education for visual communications” and “experiential education.”