Japanese Crêpe-Paper Books Lead Beinecke Fall Exhibition Line-Up

Yale Library has revealed its lineup of fall exhibitions at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library exploring books as a nexus for cultural exchange, historic memory, and artistic innovation and inquiry.

Running September 2 through May 3, 2026, Textured Stories: The Chirimen Books of Modern Japan focuses on the history of illustrated Japanese crêpe-paper books. Known as chirimen-bon, these feature handmade pages with stories drawn chiefly from Japanese fairy tales and folklore. Produced between the 1880s and the 1950s, they played a crucial role in the dissemination of knowledge and cultural expression during a time of significant modernization and transformation in Japan. Among Western audiences, these books provided insight into a society and culture that had hitherto been largely unknown.

The exhibition, with 70 books on view, traces the history, production, and distribution of chirimen-bon and explores their cultural impact and enduring legacy.

Opening concurrently, Unfolding Events: Exploring Past and Present in Artists’ Books showcases works created by, mostly American, contemporary artists that use the form of the book as a formal starting point to innovate and create. Running through March 1, 2026, it draws from Yale Library Special Collections with more than 30 artists’ books by contemporary artists.

Highlights include:

• Cane by Jean Toomer, a modernist exploration of African American experiences in the early 20th century with woodcut illustrations by Martin Puryear, designed and printed by Andrew Hoyem at Arion Press
• The Lost Journals of Sacajewa by Debra Magpie Earling which gives an imagined voice to the famed guide through original poetry
• Upholstered Cage by Tamar Stone which marries conflicting historical accounts of corsets to examine the underlying tensions between fashion and pain
•  Eduardo Hernández Santos’s El Muro, capturing nightly gatherings of Havana’s gay and transgender community along the Malecón seawall
• Maureen Cummins’s Newark 1967, revisiting racial violence through family photos and eyewitness accounts
• Joumana Medlej’s intricate pages in Anthropocene, reflecting the devastating loss of species amid environmental crisis