The Animated Classics of Japanese Literature (住友生命 青春アニメ全集) is an anime television series which aired on Nippon Television in Japan for 34 episodes from 25 April to 26 December 1986 in the 7–7:30 pm time slot. The series was unusual in that each episode (with only a couple of exceptions) was a stand-alone story based on popular and well known modern Japanese stories. The series was sponsored by Sumitomo Life Insurance.
The branch offices and agents of Sumitomo Life Insurance heavily promoted the series with posters in their offices as well as commercials directly after each episode.
Synopsis
The title of the series was derived from the Nippon Animation series World Masterpiece Theater, creating a Japan Masterpiece Theater series. While each story would be told in 1–3 episodes, they shared a common theme of "modern Japanese classics", and were designed to emulate the success of the Princess Sarah series.
Each episode (or set of episodes) retells using animation a popular modern Japanese story from the past 100 years or so.
List of episodes
Titles marked with ◎ were released by Shinchō Bunko