Picture Book Teaches Children About Ocean DebrisTraditional folk hero ‘Momotaro’ conquers trash flowing into Seto Inland Sea

The Setouchi Oceans X project, which is being jointly carried out by four prefectures bordering the Seto Inland Sea and The Nippon Foundation, has published a picture book that can be read to young children using the story of Momotaro adapted to teach children about ocean debris. Okayama Prefecture, one of the prefectures involved in the project, is popularly considered to be the birthplace of Momotaro.

In this version of the story, the old woman does not notice the peach as it flows by because of all the debris floating in the river. As a result, Momotaro lands on the ogres’ island and grows up there, but when he and an ogre go fishing, all they can catch is trash. He then sets out to clean up the trash, and is joined by the pheasant, monkey, and dog.

As they collect trash, they realize that most of the debris that washes up on the shore originated in cities on land, where it is blown by the wind into rivers and flows into the ocean. The story ends with Momotaro and his companions, the old man and old woman, and ogres all joining together to collect trash on land to make the Seto Inland Sea free of debris.

Karuta playing cards

The Setouchi Oceans X project is also carrying out a related activity using karuta, a game played with Japanese playing cards that is popular among young children and is used in schools as a teaching aid. In this version of the game, there are two decks of cards – one deck with a written sentence or phrase on each card and another with a picture on each card that corresponds to one of the cards in the first deck. The deck of picture cards is spread out face up on the floor, and a person acting as “caller” picks a card from the first deck and reads it, while the players try to be first to grab or swipe away the corresponding picture card from the second deck. This is repeated until no cards remain, and the player who has collected the most cards is the winner.

In the photo above, beginning with the top-left pair, the left-hand card contains the written sentence “Let’s all clean up the Seto Inland Sea together.” In Japanese word order, the first word is “Seto,” corresponding to the sound “se” in the Japanese kana syllabary (written in the blue circle at the top-right of both cards). When the caller reads the text, the players try to be the first to grab or swipe away the corresponding picture card with “se” written in the top-right corner, which shows a picture of Momotaro and his companions picking up trash together. Similarly, the top-right pair says “A splendid future where everyone picks up trash by themselves” in the text, while the picture card shows a single ogre picking up trash. The bottom-left pair says, “It’s a good feeling when you carefully separate trash” and has a picture of Momotaro putting cans and bottles in separate collection containers. The bottom-right pair says, “Debris floats gently on the ocean but does not decompose” and shows a picture of debris floating on the ocean.

Setouchi Oceans X project

The Setouchi Oceans X project was launched in December 2020 by four prefectures bordering the Seto Inland Sea (Okayama, Hiroshima, Kagawa, and Ehime) and The Nippon Foundation as a comprehensive project to address ocean debris. Using the Seto Inland Sea, which is semi-enclosed and therefore receives relatively little inflow of outside ocean debris, as its field of operations, the project has four main components: (1) Surveys and research; (2) Coordination between companies and local communities; (3) Raising awareness, education, and activities; and (4) Policymaking.