But the thought of a 10-year apprenticeship in the mountains was too much. His father suggested he train as a potter, so he dutifully cycled around Japan visiting master craftsmen in remote potteries.

He dreamed of becoming an artist, and dropped out of school early. This convinced Kitamura that if you have a dream, you should follow it. One story was about the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who had dreamed as a child of excavating the remains of Troy and devoted his life to realising that ambition.

'I'm not a good performer in front of an audience, and it's a good way to tell a story simply.'Īnother early inspiration was a primary school teacher who, in place of more conventional lessons, talked to his class for hours on end about interesting things he'd heard about or read. At his studio in north London, Kitamura shows me his purpose-built version of Kamishibai, with his own stories and pictures: 'I use it for school visits,' he says. Some would go on from day to day, keeping children in suspense and ensuring their return.' In the TV age, says Kitamura, Kamishibai vanished from the streets, surviving in schools and nurseries in a more literary form. The box on the bike housed the entertainment - stories told with a series of hand-painted sliding pictures. Buying cheap sweets served as an admission fee - if you hadn't any money, you got shooed away, but you could watch the show anyway, from behind a telegraph pole. 'The Kamishibai man would arrive on a bike with a box on the back, and wooden clappers to attract attention. And he was one of the last generation of Japanese children to experience Kamishibai, a street entertainment popular until the early 1960s. At school I drew caricatures of the teachers.' Comics were a huge influence - both Japanese and western. Born in Tokyo in 1956, he drew constantly from an early age: 'Like all Japanese children I drew all over the pavement - and on the road when there weren't so many cars. Kitamura had no training as an illustrator, or indeed any formal art training. The story comes gently down to earth, leaving the reader visually enriched with the knowledge of an inner world. With a quiet sense of private enchantment, and glorious visual wit, it's a collaboration in which artist and author together create something greater than the sum of its parts. Magical, surreal spreads show the child opening windows on to the world of his imagination. Inspired by the ladder on a toy fire engine, a small boy climbs out of everyday life and into the realms of fantasy. In the Attic (1984), also by Oram, again gets right inside a child's mind, but in a gentler way. Opening the windows on to the world of his imagination from In The Attic.

Angry arthur by hiawyn oram