Today’s post comes to you from Deborah Iwabuchi:

When it comes to weather, Japanese children’s books contain lots of it. Today, I present three books on rain that have been translated into English. 

While each book is structured around a day full of precipitation—pre-rain, rain, and post-rain—the actual stories are completely different.

Every Color of Light by Hiroshi Osada, illustrated by Ryoji Arai / Translated from the Japanese by David Boyd (Enchanted Lion Books, 2020)

In Every Color of Light, Ryoji Arai’s illustrations show in bold color and contrast the onset of a storm, thunder and lightning, disappearance of the surroundings into darkness, water dripping from leaves as the rain lets up, and reappearance of daylight before finally ending with a starlit night. The text by poet Hiroshi Osada describes the events, but follows a rhythmic and hypnotic string of onomatopeia—a feature of the Japanese language—geared here to lull a restless child to sleep. Translator David Boyd has done an admirable job of achieving this same effect. One good example is this use of sparse, soothing prose to describe the fierce storm over four pages of illustrations.

Unlike the original, the publisher of the translation has used the entirety of the illustrations, all the way to their multicolored rough edges, and set the text below the pictures rather than on them. A child being read to might not even notice the presence of the text as they take in the action of the illustrations—and find themselves getting a little drowsy.   

Another Ryoji Arai weather related book has more recently been published: The Snow Theater, also translated by David Boyd (Enchanted Lion Books, 2025). 

DOWNPOUR: Splish! Splash! Ker-splash! Written by Yuko Ohnari, illustrations by Koshiro Hata / Translated from the Japanese by Emily Balistrieri (Red Comet Press, 2025) 

In DOWNPOUR: Splish! Splash! Ker-splash!, husband-and-wife team Ohnari and Hata give weather a supporting role, with the lead played by the little boy whose day rain has made much more fun. He gets out his umbrella, abandons it to jump around in puddles, then lifts his face into the rain during a game of rough and tumble with the weather, his new playmate. 

Carefree joy is vividly expressed in the illustrations, and once again, onomatopoeia comes into play. Unlike Every Color of Light, this book uses the words to add to the action and make it all even more exciting. As the drops begin and the rain falls harder and harder, onomatopeia is used to describe the scene. English language sound words are not nearly as plentiful or descriptive as Japanese, but translator Emily Balestrieri steps up to the plate to use the few such words we have and make up a whole bunch more, all of which will make perfect sense to young readers. To add to the impact, the publisher has put sound words in bold yellow lettering, which contrasts well with the illustrations of rain scenes, and formatted to make the words part of the illustration. 

In a delightful touch, the endpapers feature the title in Japanese. 

A word of warning: any child who reads DOWNPOUR will surely insist on reenacting the story when the opportunity arises.

Chirri & Chirra, The Rainy Day by Kaya Doi / Translated from the Japanese by David Boyd (Enchanted Lion Books, 2021) 

Finally, Chirri & Chirra: The Rainy Day, for a dose of pure fantasy. As of this writing, there are nine books in the Chirri & Chirra series by Kaya Doi, all published in English by Enchanted Lion. The first three were translated by Yuki Kaneko and the subsequent six by David Boyd. 

As in all of these books, Chirri and Chirra take off on their bicycles, this time with no concern for the weather. Before long, they come across a café that is open only on rainy days. The walls are covered with framed pictures (or are they windows?), sweet tea is served with raindrop candy and there are all kinds of fun things for sale. The two little girls buy colorful raincoats and head back out on their bikes. As they go, they find themselves in an upside-down world, where the rain is under them and the sun above. Ahead of them is more shopping and many new friends, all animals eating gumdrops growing on a tree. The main characters are children who are perfectly happy to go along with anything that happens when they head out for the day. Unlike the previous two books, this translation is the same size and has the same formatting as the original. I suspect the story and illustrations, so full of imagination and magic, needs to be left as is for full effect. 

Deborah Iwabuchi made her first trip to Japan at age seventeen and took up permanent residence soon after college. Originally from California, she lives in the city of Maebashi in Japan with her husband and runs her own company, Minamimuki Translations.  She has co-authored bestselling books on writing and reading English for the Japanese market, translated novels of popular Japanese authors, such as The Devil’s Whisper by Miyuki Miyabe, Translucent Tree by Nobuko Takagi, and “The Law of Gravity” by Yuko Katakawa in Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. She loves to write blog postings for GLLI and the SCBWI Japan Translation Group, and translate anything having to do with Japanese children’s literature for creators, associations, and publishers, including books and book samples, articles, catalogs and display materials for exhibits and other events.