Writers in focus

An Unfamiliar Landscape

Is it true that only a suicide stops a Japanese train from running on time?

Why did her father always ask questions about death? In his last letter he’d asked if she knew anyone who had visited Aokigahara, the so-called Suicide Forest. He said he’d read about it in National Geographic, that you could sense the spirits when you walked through the trees. And did her husband, Paul, know anyone in his office who had died of karoshi – death from overwork?

Sophia pushed the letter back inside her bag, at the same time re-counting the six blister strips of painkillers with her index finger. Reassured by the feel of them, the whisper and rustle of the foil, she snapped the clasp shut and picked up her coffee cup.            

The café was usually busy, but that afternoon it was almost empty. For the first time she was aware of the low, slanting light pouring in through the windows, the shoals of yellow leaves in the gutter, and she realised the season had changed without her noticing. Most people were taking advantage of the weather, enjoying the warmth of the October sunshine on their skin.

She drained her cup, stood up to leave, and as she crossed to the door the staff called out their thanks in unison: four ringing voices rising above the hiss of the Synesso machine and the background jazz.

‘Arigato gozaimasu!’

Sophia still found it impossible to tune out the everyday clamour of Tokyo: the cuckoo signals at pedestrian crossings; the J-pop and chirpy adverts blaring out from every shop; the cacophonous din of the pachinko parlours; the over-cheerful TV shows with their sherbet-pastel sets. At night, the lights added an extra layer of silent noise; a busy, bright chatter of flashing neon that crowded her head.

She’d been told that even in the villages it was rarely quiet. Her Japanese teacher, Fumiko, explained about the announcements and jingles which were broadcast through tannoys in the streets, how the sound carried on the wind to the rice paddies. When she asked why they didn’t complain, Fumiko shrugged and said there was nothing to be done. Shikata ga nai. It was not to be questioned, it was just part of life.

Sophia had tried to quieten the commotion inside her own head with a daily routine of coffee shops and art galleries, with the hush of museums and books, with endless walks through unfamiliar streets. But inner silence eluded her. She often remembered something her father said when she asked him why he spent so much time in the woods. He told her that solitude was the best companion, that in the wild outdoors it took on a different character, became in itself a connection to the world, an invisible cord between you and your true self.

‘I’m alone in the woods,’ he said, ‘but I’m never lonely.’

Sophia called out her thanks and goodbyes as she left the coffee shop, and by the time she reached Yoyogi Park she knew what she must do.


When Paul first announced he’d been offered a transfer to Tokyo, part of Sophia had held back, wanting to say no. Yet it was clear Paul thought it was the right time to go and that the move would be good for them.

He could no longer face seeing her grief, visible and raw, like an open wound, but she knew he’d simply stored away his own, buried it so deep that there were no longer any surface ripples. The loss of a baby wasn’t something to ‘get over’, it wasn’t a hurdle to leap and leave behind. It was a defining line; a line from which everything would be measured from now on: the time before Calum’s death and the time after Calum’s death. Grief had already become a part of the warp and weft of her, and at random moments it would rear up unexpectedly with a clatter of hooves. When it did, it was deafening. And unlike the everyday clamour of city life, the noise of grief couldn’t be silenced by earplugs or soundproofing.

They flew to Tokyo two weeks before Paul started work, moving straight into the tiny house in Yanesen which had been found for them by Himari, his new assistant. They could have lived in the company apartment block in Roppongi, but Sophia didn’t want to be in that part of the city, renowned for its nightlife, its brash expat community. She’d emailed Himari and told her she would rather live somewhere quieter, more traditional.

Himari had picked Yanesen, the area where she herself had grown up, with narrow streets and traditional shops, old wooden houses and a hillside location. A chance to breathe in the city. They were lucky; she found them a house rather than an apartment – albeit tiny. Two traditional tatami-floored rooms, one up, one down, with a small kitchen area partitioned off at the back.

When they viewed the upstairs, Himari opened the sliding screens in the bedroom to show them the enclosed veranda. It overlooked a pocket square garden of moss and raked gravel, shaded by three neatly manicured trees. The largest was a mountain cherry. The blossom had already fallen, and yet Sophia could picture it in full bloom, its pale pink petals newly unfurled. She imagined lying beneath it, looking up at the laden branches and the oblong of perfect blue sky above. The garden was edged by high fencing faced with bamboo screening, and houses similar to their own pressed in around every side. However, the outside space, Himari confirmed, was theirs alone.

‘I love it,’ Sophia said.

For the next two weeks they explored the area, bought new futons and bedding, vintage kokeshi dolls from a junk shop, slipware bowls and handmade wooden spoons from the hardware store. Himari suggested they have Western beds delivered, a dining table, but Sophia said no, she was happy with the house as it was: the low table and red floor cushions, the sliding cupboard doors decorated with mountain scenes.

The smallest things gave them joy each time they returned home: placing their shoes on the rack in the entranceway, seeing their indoor slippers side by side at the top of the step, inhaling the dusty scent of the tatami matting.

On their third weekend in Japan, they took a trip to Hakone, arranged by Himari and paid for by the company; a last chance to spend time together before Paul started work.

The bus from the station in Odawara was full of backpackers and sightseers, but as they wound through the main villages and resorts, the tourists steadily disembarked in ones and twos. The foreign tourists waved maps at the driver, checking and rechecking they were at the right stop, communicating in little more than sign language. As the bus climbed higher, Sophia suddenly noticed the tip of Mount Fuji through the trees. She grabbed Paul’s arm, her words tumbling out as she pointed, and the Japanese couple across the aisle beamed with pleasure at her excitement.

‘Fuji-san is very shy!’ the woman said. ‘You are lucky!’

The cloudless sky was cobalt, the snow-capped mountain a dazzle of white; a fleeting glimpse of something so beautiful that it snatched her breath away. At that moment, Sophia knew it was a sign of luck; she could feel it at her core. She sensed a calmness in these trees and mountains, knew she would never feel lonely in this landscape, that there was something essential waiting just beyond her reach. She had uncovered the edgelands of solitude. 

After a kaiseki dinner served in their room, they made love on the tatami floor, a blue kimono spread out beneath them. It wasn’t urgent or hurried like the brief couplings they’d sought to try to block out death – those violent, bruising encounters that felt like bone on bone. It was slow and considered, and it confirmed, without words, that things could be good again.


Sophia’s fledgling happiness was short-lived. Paul was required to work long hours, and Sophia was expected to attend dinners with his British and American colleagues.

She found them unbearable. The men were self-important and rude to waiters. Their wives were brittle creatures with helmet hair and heavy jewellery. They spent their days shopping and lunching, and in the evenings they moved their expensive food around on bland restaurant plates and clawed at their husbands’ arms with scarlet nails. She was lonely and awkward in their company, out of step, just as she’d been uncomfortable in the London world she’d been pushed into before: champagne-fuelled celebrations in the boardroom accompanied by mutual backslapping; painful lunches with her boss; nights out at the latest West End bar with endless free drinks and unlimited bitching; Christmas parties at Quaglino’s. Her mother tried to tell her she would never fit in, that her Yorkshire accent and inability to conform would hold her back.

‘They’re not your people,’ she said, and Sophia knew she was right.

She had nevertheless tried in London, for the sake of her career. Here in Tokyo there was no need. Sophia didn’t want to fit in – didn’t need to fit in – to this sneering world of dismissive expats. She found reasons not to go out with them, until Paul eventually stopped passing on her excuses, and finally she was forgotten.

At first, Sophia enjoyed being alone: the peace of her tiny garden, shopping in the local markets for food, exploring the area. But as the summer wore on, she felt suffocated. Even the garden became too hot, the surrounding houses trapping the humid air. The only place to stay cool was in the air-conditioned room downstairs, and she felt hemmed in by its gloom. In Yanesen, the shopkeepers and locals were getting to know her, but they didn’t speak any English, and their reciprocal bows and smiles, their improvised sign language, could only take her so far.

She asked Paul if Himari could find her a suitable Japanese teacher, and she began to travel across the city to Shibuya three mornings a week to meet with Fumiko.

Fumiko dressed in linen shirts that were the colour of oyster shells and faded sky. She wore a thin gold chain around her neck which caught the light, and her hair was cut in a perfect bob. Sophia envied her quiet containment, her patience with mispronunciations and forgotten vocabulary. There was something about Fumiko which made Sophia want to try her hardest, and slowly she moved forward, adding new words day by day, words she was sure would reconnect her to the world.

She began by asking Fumiko questions about herself, but her responses were brief and reserved, and when Sophia suggested they went for a coffee, she politely declined.

‘I am sorry, Sophia-san, it would be very difficult for me,’ she said.

In the evenings, if Paul came home early, she tried to practise her Japanese on him over dinner. He was always tired and barely listened to her, switching on the portable TV as soon as the dishes were cleared, searching for English language news channels. He told her very little when she questioned him about work, and if she called him at the office, Himari would apologise politely and tell her he was too busy to talk.

Sophia was ignored, avoided, silenced, shut down. She was still disconnected, on the wrong side of an invisible barrier she couldn’t push through. Yet the noise of the city and the chatter within her head were both as loud as ever.


Emboldened by her new language skills, she began to explore every area of the city, to take day trips to surrounding towns, to spend time planning journeys to temples and mountains, often returning only at dusk to the house in Yanesen. Her anonymity made her invisible; a ghost moving through the crowds. No one gave her a passing glance on the streets, and in coffee shops and bars, although the staff smiled and nodded excitedly when she ordered in Japanese, they looked puzzled if she tried to engage them in any further conversation.

But after a few weeks, she no longer felt out of place in Tokyo on her own. She knew she could never make the city hers, that she was sliding along its surface and there was no way inside, yet it ceased to be important. She explored the streets and parks and galleries, the temples and the teahouses, and every other day, after her class with Fumiko, she drank coffee in her favourite café in Shibuya. As the world strode by the café window, Sophia looked on with calm detachment, and when she was tired of watching, she wrote in her journal.

She wrote about their neighbour, Mrs Kobayashi, who would knock on Sophia’s door and offer her a jar of homemade bean jam or a bag of anpan buns, and about their gardener, Kaito, who appeared every Wednesday morning.

He wore a twill waistcoat covered with pockets, from which he pulled clippers and twine and gloves. Standing on the wooden stepladder, he trimmed the small trees with the topiary shears from the storage box, then took the rake and the shuro broom from their nails on the wall and combed the gravel, tended the pot plants, swept away dead leaves. The first time Sophia saw him she went out to talk to him, but Kaito seemed uncomfortable in her presence, and even though she spoke in Japanese, he scarcely replied. So now she opened the screens before he arrived, then watched him from her chair on the veranda, soothed by his calm, measured movements, by the gentle, rhythmic snips of the cutters and the drag of the rake through the gravel. She sensed his contentment, the beauty and peace of his solitude, and she wished she could feel it too.

She recounted her walks through the city, wrote about the man she glimpsed changing his shirt in a doorway. He revealed a torso that was a riot of fish, flowers, geisha and warriors: the ink badges of a yakuza gangster. He was as colourful as the street fashionistas, but just like many Harajuku teenagers, his attempt at diversity only served to reinforce his conformity.

And she described the row of shoes – a man’s, a woman’s, a small girl’s – which she saw lined up inside an open doorway. Sophia imagined the family, laughing and talking over dinner, and the daughter, sleepy-eyed, as her mother kissed her goodnight. More than ever, she ached for the life she’d lost, yearned for a new life she barely understood.

She wrote often of her longing for silence, and of how only suicide prevented a Japanese train from running on time.

She never wrote about Calum: her panic as she’d reached into his cot, her clumsy attempts to revive him, about the guilt and the grief and the never-ending heaviness that pulled at her heart.

She didn’t write about the way Paul silenced her as soon as she tried to talk about their son, about how he drank every night after work in the hostess bars and entertained clients in the geisha districts. She didn’t mention that she sat on her own in their garden, waiting for him to come home while she listened to the neighbours’ chatter and laughter floating down from the open windows.

She didn’t write about how sad all of this made her.


Sophia met Akiro one evening when she was walking through the backstreets in Shinjuku. He was taking a cigarette break, standing in the doorway of the Night Owl bar, when he saw her peering up the steep steps. She had been wondering which of the tiny bars to venture into, reading the clusters of neon signs that flashed above the doors. He bowed and ushered her upstairs with a sweep of his arm. She ducked her head beneath a low beam as she went in through the hammered metal door, then sat down on the nearest bar stool. She was the only customer.

Akiro told her his name, asked Sophia hers as he placed a clean beer mat and a hot towel on the bar. Then he poured her a pale ale and lined up two small dishes of rice crackers. She drank the beer too fast, watched a black and white Kurosawa film on the screen behind Akiro’s head, listened to the thrum and pulse of music playing through two large speakers as tall as the bar, a tangle of electronic noise and hypnotic whispers which coiled around inside her head. He nodded towards her empty glass and smiled, opened two more beers, then reached beneath the counter for a bottle of whisky. And around ten o’clock, when no one else had come in, he told her she was beautiful and quietly locked the door.

He stood behind her, reaching around to slide his hand inside her shirt, but as she turned towards him he pulled away, pointing to the back of the bar. She walked in front of him, then stopped, unsure where they were heading. Akiro pointed to the table in the corner and nodded. He asked her a question, and although she didn’t understand the words, she knew straight away what he wanted, knew what he needed, knew that he had intuited she needed it too – a basic human connection, flesh against flesh. No eye contact, no words, no false promises.

Sophia turned away from him, undressed quickly, aware of him behind her as he unfastened his jeans. She gripped the edge of the table without turning to look at him and arched her back towards him. His breath was warm on her neck as he pressed her forward onto the cool metal surface, and when it was over she realised she was crying.

As she walked to the station through the neon-bright streets, the laughter and chatter of drunken salarymen spilling out from every bar, she understood that all the city could offer her was a different sadness, a constant feeling of jet lag, of disconnection, of things being not quite as they seemed. She was blinded by Tokyo’s density. There were no panoramic views, only a set of close-ups at point blank range, the disorientation of an unfamiliar landscape, the knowledge that she was slowly dissolving.

When she arrived home, she tiptoed up the stairs, holding her breath, then stared at her face in the bathroom mirror as though examining a stranger. She slipped her shirt over her head and noticed how grey her skin appeared in the fluorescent light, how dark her eyes were. She opened the cupboard door and took out the first aid box, reassured herself by counting the boxes of paracetamol and co-codamol. When they first moved to Japan, Sophia had been sure Paul would prove himself to be stronger than her, that he’d be her saviour. But although she thought about the pills less and less frequently, they’d always been there: a reassurance, a promise of a way out, a talisman perhaps – their presence a lucky charm in itself, their very availability warding off the possibility that she would ever need them.

For the first time since they’d arrived in Tokyo, she took out three of the boxes, dropped six blister strips into her bag and pushed the empty packs back into the cupboard with the rest.

She went through to the bedroom and saw straight away that the room was empty. As was so often the case, she was alone.


And the following afternoon, as she left the café in Shibuya, she made up her mind to find her own peace, her own solitude. She looked up at the trees in Yoyogi Park, the light shining through the red and gold leaves, the long shadows dappling the grass. She knew what she wanted and what she needed to do.

Without telling Paul or leaving a note, Sophia packed a bag and took the train to Matsumoto, then a bus to a village at the foot of the mountains. She walked up the steep hill to the temple lodgings, and they agreed she could take a room for as long as she needed.

She woke early the next morning, collected a map of the walking trails from the temple office and set out before the sun had risen over the higher ridges. She started her ascent through dense forests of larch and beech, following a trail marked by fluttering red ribbons tied haphazardly to branches and rocks. Her footsteps were muffled by fresh leaf fall, and she breathed in the scent of damp, mossy earth. There was a sharp screech from above, a rustle of leaves and cracking twigs as a family of macaques swung overhead.

As she climbed higher, she heard distant birdsong and the tap-tap-tap of a pygmy woodpecker. Her heart missed a beat as she crossed a narrow log bridge, gasping at the unexpected drop and the rush and tumble of white water cascading down the rock face. Eventually, she cleared the tree line and heard a bear bell tinkle faintly in the distance as a lone climber descended from the highest ridge: a yellow splash against the grey of the rock. Dropped into the silence, every noise had a clear meaning, each sound demanded her attention. She was finally connected.

Later that evening, Yua, the cook, asked Sophia to walk down to the pond with her to feed the carp. She told her how beautiful it was when the fireflies came, and of the Japanese belief that the tiny lights were the souls of soldiers who had died in battle.

Sophia thought about the fireflies as she lay on her futon, pictured one of the lights glowing brighter than the rest, imagined it was the departing soul of her own child. As she drifted between waking and sleeping, she watched it disappear above the temple and knew something within her had shifted.

She slept well that night, yet she was awake again at dawn, because as she’d already discovered, the mountains were as full of sound as the city. Outside her room she could hear the dry scrabble of birds’ feet in the guttering, the papery whir and flutter of their tiny brown wings. When she walked in the fields she was enveloped in the buzz and rasp and thrum of insects, the rustle of dry grass. At dusk there were the temple bells, the soft lull of the monks’ chants, and the gentle clink of pots and pans from the kitchen below her window.

And within this new noise, Sophia finally found her silence.


Amanda Huggins’ short story, “An Unfamiliar Landscape,” was first published in the anthology Same, Same but Different (Publisher: Everything With Words, 2021) and appears in the collection, Each of Us a Petal, published May 31st by Victorina Press.

Each of Us a Petal

The stories in Each of Us a Petal are all set in Japan or heavily reference Japanese locations in flashbacks within the pieces. The collection is unique in that the stories are told from many different perspectives: Japanese nationals, short-term residents, tourists, and those looking back on their time in Japan and its continuing influence on their lives.

This collection of short fiction takes the reader on a journey through Japan, from the hustle of city bars to the silence of snow country. Whether they are Japanese nationals or foreign tourists, temporary residents or those recalling their time in Japan from a distance, the men and women in these stories are often adrift and searching for connections. Many of the characters are estranged from their normal lives, navigating the unfamiliar while trying to make sense of the human condition, or finding themselves restrained by the formalities of traditional culture as they struggle to forge new relationships outside those boundaries. Others are forced to question their perceptions when they find themselves drawn into an unsettling world of shapeshifting deities and the ghosts of the past.

I set my stories in many different locations, but it is the people, landscapes and culture of Japan which continue to influence and inspire the aesthetic and sensibility of my writing more than any other destination. That said, I claim to understand nothing more than what it feels like to be human, whoever and wherever we are, and I hope that you will forgive me for sometimes writing about a Japan which exists only in my imagination. As Oscar Wilde wrote in 1889, “The whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.”

Amanda Huggins

To see Amanda’s prize-winning entry for the Writers in Kyoto Competition, please click here.

Kyoto Through the Ages: Celebrating 1,230 Years of the Ancient Capital

A Lecture Event held on the Occasion of Kyoto’s Jidai Matsuri, October 22, 2024

An attentive audience of over 100 people gathered at the Keizai Center Building in central Kyoto for the first event in a series of events to be cohosted by CIEE (Council of International Exchange, www.ciee.org) and Kyoto Journal (kyotojournal.org), chaired by Conor Aherne of CIEE.

Five short talks were delivered by Kyoto-based scholars including Cody Poulton, a member of Writers in Kyoto. All five scholars are variously published both in academia and popular works, and each talk was interestingly illustrated by PowerPoint slides. Present were many members of WiK, friends and volunteer staff members of KJ and participants in CIEE’s study abroad program.

Since its inauguration 1,230 years ago, in AD 794, Kyoto has been central to Japan’s cultural heritage. Each speaker talked about their research specialization and, though they clearly could have talked much longer, gave interesting historical, cultural and social vignettes of this beloved city:

Religious Performance: Combinatory Liturgies in Medieval Kyoto
Lucia Dolce of Venice, London and the Netherlands, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, spoke about the medieval period when temples and shrines had not yet been divided, and about various rituals that brought good fortune by venerating gods or appeased vengeful spirits and guarded against misfortune. She cited ceremonies that are still performed today, particularly associated with Enryakuji, Yasaka Shrine and the Gion Festival.
See Lucia Dolce’s page on the School of Oriental and African Studies website.

Zeami & Okuni: Kyoto and the Founders of Noh & Kabuki
Cody Poulton, formerly of the University of Victoria (B.C.), and now at the Kyoto Consortium of Japanese Studies—and a valued member of Writers in Kyoto—showed his considerable expertise in the performing arts of Kyoto, describing vividly the beginnings of Noh, and the emergence of Kabuki on the Kamo riverbed, a summertime venue for many different types of performance. He particularly spoke about the Japanese aesthetic of yugen 幽玄 (mystery, grace, awe, wordlessness) which is so much a part of the performing arts, especially Noh.
See more about Cody Poulton on the Writers in Kyoto site and in this podcast with Amy Chavez at Books on Asia.

Leisure Travel to Kyoto in the Early Edo Period
Timon Screech, formerly of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, now at Nichibunken, Kyoto’s International Research Center for Japanese Studies, talked about the interest of Edo (Tokyo) people in the city of Kyoto, and the guidebooks, illustrations, etc., and even the building of facsimile buildings which fueled this interest during the Edo period, also touching on the riverside entertainment scene in Kyoto. At that time, foreigners (mostly Dutch merchants) were restricted to the port of Dejima in Kyushu, but once a year a delegation was allowed to stop by Kyoto on their way back from paying their respects to the Shogun in Edo, a custom which may have represented Kyoto inhabitants’ earliest experiences of Caucasian visitors.
Timon provided the lead article in KJ 107 (Fire & Kyoto).

Festivals and Pageants in the Making of Modern Kyoto
John Breen, also at Nichibunken, specializing in Japanese history, focused on the major contribution made to the modernization of Meiji-period Kyoto by courtier and statesman Iwakura Tomomi, including his role in the establishment of Heian Jingu, as a symbol of Kyoto’s imperial heritage, and the Jidai Matsuri, which commemorates the city’s many successive historical eras. Iwakura is best known for his role as plenipotentiary ambassador leading the Iwakura Mission, which spent nearly two years (1871-1873) in the U.S. and Europe and laid the foundation of many important Meiji period reforms.    

John edited Kyoto’s Renaissance, comprehensively reviewed here.
See also, his profile on John Dougill’s Green Shinto site.

Occupation and Post-War Tourism In Kyoto
Daniel Milne is Senior Lecturer at Kyoto University’s Institute for Liberals Arts and Sciences (ILAS, focusing on “the modern history of tourism in Japan and Kyoto, and the political and cultural role the discourses and spaces of tourism have played in war, occupation, and reconciliation.” His talk brought closure to the night’s wide-ranging topics, revealing how Kyoto has since the mid-nineteenth century developed and evolved its reputation as Japan’s primary cultural attraction for domestic and overseas visitors.

Daniel is a member of the Modern Kyoto Research team, which maintains an informative online resource at www.modernkyotoresearch.org. In 2019, Daniel co-edited “War, Tourism, and Modern Japan,” a special issue of Japan Review

David Satterwhite of Temple University briefly summed up the presentations; unfortunately time was too tight to allow the intended Q&A session. Nevertheless, the event was a valuable opportunity for attendees to learn more about various fields of interest in Kyoto’s rich, unique and world-renowned heritage.

The next event in this series will be held in December. Details will be announced in November.

Nathan Mader Launches Poetry Collection, “The Endless Animal”

Writers in Kyoto member Nathan Mader commemorated the release of his first book of poetry, “The Endless Animal,” with a celebration of the craft via a reading not only of his own poems, but an open reading of any poetry by attendees.

Nathan’s reading from his book included a poem written from the perspective of one of the first two monkeys to return from space, one about hiding in a Whirlpool dryer, and references to putting cherry blossoms, and various other things, in one’s mouth, because, “Isn’t the desire to put the world in your mouth the origin of poetry?”

Photo by Daniel Sofer

The event was held on a Friday evening, October 18, 2024, at the Kyoto International Community House (Kokoka) in the beautiful and spacious Japanese annex. 

After reading some poems, Nathan took a few questions and explained that his collection of about 40 poems was written over the last 10 years. The title, “The Endless Animal,” was taken from the body of one of his poems and was chosen in part because looking over his work he saw that animals were a consistent theme.

Asked if the work felt different now that it is published in a book, Nathan said that he felt a kind of grief that he could no longer tweak the poems at will. 

About 20 people attended the event, including some of Nathan’s relatives from Saskatchewan, Canada. A handful of WiK members were there, two of whom took a turn to present poetry. Julian Holmes read from “Waking to Snow,” by Robert McLean. Kirsty Kawano read an original piece. Another poetry lover and a more “poetry-curious” attendee also presented some works.

Nathan’s publisher, fine. press (fineperiodpress.com) funded the evening, which included refreshments. 

Tropes Twined With Truth: A Sandy Fantasy That Sticks

Cinnamon Beach book review

Suzanne Kamata has a knack for writing novels that stay with you.

In both her critically acclaimed novel, The Baseball Widow, and her newest publication: Cinnamon Beach, Kamata’s signature multi-POV storytelling style deepens the narrative as we experience it from all angles. This results in a deeply emotional ride through The Baseball Widow, making it a haunting read for some. This is softened however in Cinnamon Beach thanks to the warm tropes of a romantic beach read. 

Crossroads and coming home

Cinnamon Beach is a story about moving on from heartbreak as experienced through the three POVs: protagonist Olivia, her sister-in-law Parisa, and her daughter Sophie.

Olivia has brought her two teen twins to the States in order to spread the ashes of her late brother, Ted. Burned out by a toxic work environment and her (secret) divorce, Olivia begins the story feeling like she has failed at everything, and is deeply uncertain of her future.

Returning home can be hard. Olivia, opines in the opening chapters how disconnected she is from much of the family updates, even the really big ones. Her old life in Japan looms large in her thoughts, but, as with any good beach read, a past romance promises to distract her and deliciously complicate everything.

Parisa, bereaved of her best friend and husband Ted, is faced with all the dangling responsibilities of her life with him. Decisions about the restaurant Ted built and the failing health of his parents compete with possibilities of building her small fashion business into something more.

Different people want different things from Parisa, but the question is what she wants from herself, now that the life she imagined is gone.

In comparison with the adults, Olivia’s teenage daughter Sophie starts her story happy to be away from home, in Tokushima, Japan. Home is comforting. It’s where her teachers, community and favourite festivals are. But thanks to her mixed genes, she is doomed to forever stick out. In addition, her deafness means she is often left out of her brother’s adventures. Embracing her invisibility from the first chapters, Sophie’s story branches off from the rest of the narrative as she enjoys her independence and a romance of her own.

Spice

The most comforting aspect of a beach read book are the fantasy love interests that inhabit them. Vicarious readers require lovers who are thoughtful, kind, blessed with a high density of muscle tone around the abdominal areas, and, most importantly, an unwavering and obvious interest in the protagonist.

Olivia’s story leans into the trope hard. An old flame from her college days has moved into the neighbourhood, only now he is a world famous musician. While he seems to be 100% on team Olivia, she has reservations and doubts that first need to be settled. Luckily, country & western superstar Devon has never had a biography written about him, giving Olivia plenty of opportunities to wield her tape recorder while asking more intimate questions.

Meanwhile, Sophie enjoys a sweet summer fling with Dante, a surfer boy who learns how to sign for her, and takes her to see the turtles. He is the perfect first love: respectful, curious about both the girl and her culture, and quick to text back. Through Dante, Sophie begins to navigate her first steps into adulthood.

Though less spicy than many modern romantic readers may expect, Cinnamon Beach brings warm fuzzies as the characters negotiate the tensions of their own will they/won’t they relationships.

An authentic touch

What makes Cinnamon Beach such a thoughtful read is how it synthesises Kamata’s realistic and relatable style of writing with more fanciful tropes expected of this genre. The feelings and emotions of all the characters come from a very real place, as do some of the events in the story. A truly infuriating section details the pervasive academic power harassment suffered in many tertiary institutions, for example. Olivia’s biography shares similarities with her author – a caucasian woman working in Tokushima, Japan, mother to two children, a boy and a girl, with a Japanese husband. Kamata herself is always quick to point out that her stories are fiction, but these insights into the world she has inhabited for decades gives her works a unique dimension.

Final thoughts

While Cinnamon Beach certainly touches on the pain of loss and the complexity of redefining one’s identity after grief, the novel balances this heaviness with the warmth of second chances and self-discovery. Kamata invites readers to connect with each character’s journey while delighting in the genre’s escapist pleasures.

The nostalgic seaside setting of Cinnamon Beach serves not only as a place for reflection but also as a subtle metaphor for the tides of change in each woman’s life. A backdrop that is both healing and serene. A place we all wish we could visit when at our own crossroads.

Writers in focus

Pandemic Blues

by Cody Poulton

During the corona curfew in early March of the year before last, I went to photographer Kai Fusayoshi’s legendary bar, Hachimonjiya. Many readers here will know that Kai has been taking beautiful photos of ordinary people just going about their lives, along the river and in the streets of Kyoto, ever since he got his hands on a camera as a boy.

Somehow I’d never been to his bar before. Were my wife alive, she would have been appalled by the state of this place. She would have summarily dragged me out and hosed me down or marched in with Varsan bombs and fumigated the premises before giving it a thorough cleaning. Hachimonjiya has been for decades a haunt for Kyoto’s artists, writers, and intellectuals, but, unlike Marie Kondō, Kai is a maximalist and doesn’t throw anything out.  I went reasonably early, before 7 pm, because the “quasi-state of emergency” here called for last orders at 8 pm and 9 pm closing times everywhere.

Hachimonjiya is on the third floor of a non-descript building on Kiyamachi, a major thoroughfare of bars and clubs and restaurants. No sign on the door, which was festooned by sheaves of fading posters. I opened the door and saw a pile of junk in the middle of the room, stacks of old LPs and a cheap portable record player, the kind our generation would have got to play our first LPs when we were teenagers. To the left was a bar covered in bottles. A crackling record was playing Johnny Cash singing a cover of a Bob Dylan song:

No no no, it ain’t me, babe,
It ain’t me you’re looking for, babe.

Then amidst the pile of rubbish I saw something move—it was Kai, looking like Miss Havisham. No doubt under the mess was a mouldering wedding cake too. No one else was there.
    
This is the place where Kyoto’s best and brightest have hung out for decades. A wave of sadness washed over me. Here I thought I’d find a saloon full of smart people, and all I found was an old geezer on his own. I felt like this fucking pandemic has turned us all in Miss Havisham, waiting for our prince to come. But he doesn’t, does he? The scene was more Beckett than Dickens. All around, while war is being whipped up in Europe, I feel witness to the deaths of cultures and subcultures, the very stuff that keeps people alive and sane, here and everywhere else.
     
Kai said because of mambō he couldn’t serve liquor but if I wanted a Corona he could crack one open for me. He got up from his nest and went behind the bar. “Do you want a glass?” I looked at the glasses covered in dust and said just the bottle would be fine. We soon discovered we had a lot of mutual friends; this is no surprise because Kai seems to know just about everybody.

About a half hour or so later an old barfly entered with a bottle of 12 year-old Glenlivet which he proceeded to open. Kai got him a glass and some ice. I got to taking with the barfly and we discovered we had a mutual friend, playwright Sakate Yōji. Glenlivet had at one time tried to make it in Tokyo theatre during his university student days but was called back to Kyoto to take over the family business, which was a foundry for making Buddhist bells and other bronze images, using techniques passed down by Chinese artisans over 1,200 years ago. He launched into an interesting discussion on patina, how different alloys create vivid colours, like green, crimson, magenta, that are perfectly smooth under a magnifying glass where modern methods create pockmarked surfaces because of the off-gassing of various elements. It turned out we had another mutual friend, a musician and storyteller whom I’d known in Canada, a Japanese woman who periodically visited and performed there. I’d lost touch with her a dozen years or so ago. He called her and over the phone we very quickly picked up the threads of our frayed friendship.

One speaks of six degrees of separation, but in this town it’s easily only one or two degrees. It’s a small world. Kyoto is even smaller, and Hachimonjiya is its omphalos.

**************

For another colourful tale by Cody of Kyoto’s nightlife, see https://writersinkyoto.com/?s=monks+on+my+mind

For Sara’s intimate account of Kai in the 1970s, see https://writersinkyoto.com/2023/07/23/on-kyoto/the-day-i-met-the-photographer/

For an account of an exhibition of Kai’s photos, see here: https://writersinkyoto.com/2021/01/05/featured-writers/kai-fusayoshi-exhibition/

Writers in focus

Writers of Kyoto, Part 4: Kashiwai Hisashi 柏井壽

Introduction

The fourth writer of this series is one who is likely to be familiar to readers who enjoy modern literature set in Kyoto. Two books from his Kamogawa Food Detectives series have recently been translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. You may remember that Matsuda Michio, the third author in this series, was a noted pediatrician. Interestingly, Kashiwai is also in the field of medicine as a practicing dentist. Is there something about the medical profession that encourages the art of writing? Kashiwai does not yet have an English wikipedia entry, but I’d expect one would appear soon.

Kashiwai’s fiction falls into the category of light reads and the beloved “coffee/cat/food” genre that readers around the globe are immersed in right now, judging from the number of translations coming out of Japan that fall into this category. But my initial purchases of his books were a few of his nonfiction books on Kyoto — of which there are more than you can imagine. Some are guidebooks, some are very specific guidebooks, some are essays and some are a combination of the two. They are very readable and his likes and dislikes come through clearly. If you enjoy learning about Kyoto, they are must-reads. I do not see that any of them have been translated into English. I hope that they will be.


Biography

Kashiwai Hisashi was born in Kyoto in 1952. As of this writing, he is still alive. He grew up in Kyoto and graduated from Osaka Dental University in 1976 and opened a dental clinic in the Kita Ward of Kyoto City. Biographical information about him is scarce, but a glimpse at a few websites for his dental clinics reveals that the Kashiwa family have been dentists through four generations.

He started writing a series of short stories that later were published as the Kamogawa Shokudō books in 2013. One can easily infer that he is a foodie. In 2016 NHK aired the stories from the first two books as a television series. In addition to his novels and essays, he writes mysteries under the name of Kashiwagi Keiichiro.


Books on Kyoto

Kashiwai is a prolific writer and with new books coming out in both October and November of this year (2024). I’m simply going to tell you about the books of his that grace my own bookshelf.

Fiction

Here are a few from his most popular series.

Kamogawa Shokudo 鴨川食堂 – This is the first of this series and this has been translated into English under the title “The Kamogawa Food Detectives.” The Japanese version was first published in 2013 and the English version came out in February 2024.
Kamogawa Shokudo Okawari 川食堂おかわ – An English translation titled “The Restaurant of Lost Recipes” comes out in October 2024. It is the second book in the series. For students of the Japanese language, it might be interesting to read the Japanese and English side by side. Each book contains six stories or chapters and each one can stand on its own.
Kamogawa Itsumono 鴨川食堂いつもの – This is the third in the series. Perhaps we’ll see a translation of this one as well, if the first two English translations continue to be well-received. The story themes here include: kakesoba, curry rice, yakisoba, gyōza, omuraisu and the ubiquitous korokke.
Kamogawa Omase 鴨川食堂おまかせ – This is the fourth in the series. It begins with a more Japanese or washoku feel to it. The story themes are: miso soup, onigiri, ginger pork, cold Chinese noodles, karaage chicken, and finally macaroni gratin. It might be fun to go into a bookstore and leaf through every single volume in this series to see what foods whet your appetite, either for reading or consuming.

Nonfiction

I enjoy nonfiction more than fiction and I love reading about Kyoto and filing away tidbits of information. If you are this type of reader, Kashiwai has written and continues to write about every single corner of Kyoto that you can imagine. Here’s what happens to be on my own shelf. I look forward to the day when they are translated into English and/or other languages. They are meant for the average reader and are not particularly profound.

The Secrets of Kyoto For Those Traveling Alone – おひとりからのひみつの京都(2021) – Kashiwai details 48 different areas to explore. Food is mentioned. Available in Japanese.
Quiet Kyoto for the Lone Traveller – おひとりからのしずかな京都(2022) – In this book Kashiwai mentions temples and shrines that are appreciated for solitude. He also includes chapters on the Kyoto dialect and customs and naturally, restaurants. Available in Japanese.
Happy Popular Restaurants in Kyoto – 京都しあわせ食堂(2016) – As the name appears in English on the cover I’m giving it to you verbatim. As you can tell from the Japanese title, this book seems like a companion guide to the Kamogawa Shokudo series and the cover illustration also adds to that impression. It’s a guide to restaurants that won’t have lines in front of them. Restaurants that he calls cheap and delicious and not meant to be tourist attractions. Not all of them are shokudō; coffee shops are also included. Available in Japanese.
Kyoto Power – 京都力(2021) – In this volume, Kashiwai explores the power of Kyoto to attract tourists over and over again. Why is Kyoto so popular amongst both native Japanese and foreign tourists? There is some amount of reflection and, frankly, grumbling. Available in Japanese.
The Backstreets of Kyoto – 京都の路地裏(2014) – I was interested in reading some of his older books. This one is indeed more content heavy than his newer books, but he sticks to his favorite topic of lamenting the tourist influx, but also introducing the places that the locals go. Available in Japanese.
24 Solar Terms in Kyoto – 二十四節気の京都(2017) (Again, the title is given in English on the cover.) Kashiwai uses the solar calendar to introduce places that relate to each season or to the solar term itself. It’s an interesting and possibly unsuccessful way to structure a guidebook. Available in Japanese.

Resources

Kamogawa Shokudo – the Japanese wikipedia entry on the series. A very complete list of the books and stories and a listing of the particular dish that each story features.

Discover Japan articles – This is a link to the articles tagged with his name that he wrote on Kyoto for this journal. They include articles on travel, food, hotels, and traditions of Kyoto.

Entry point for the NHK dramatization – This is a Daily Motion link where I found the aforementioned series, subtitled in Chinese. Access may be limited by location, but I was able to view them from the USA. They are visually quite beautiful. They have that NHK feel to them.

The Kashiwai Dental Clinic – It looks like his son is currently in charge and he would be the fourth generation of dentists in this family. If you need a good dentist.…

Event: Kyoto Through the Ages (Tuesday, 10/22)

If you plan to be in Kyoto on October 22nd (Tuesday), please consider joining Kyoto Through the Ages, co-sponsored by CIEE Kyoto and Kyoto Journal, with a fabulous line-up of guest speakers including Writers in Kyoto member Cody Poulton. Admission is free, but pre-registration is required.

From Kyoto Journal:

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to spend a special evening with us on October 22nd, from 18:30 to 20:45, as we celebrate the 1230th anniversary of Kyoto’s founding with an exclusive panel discussion, Kyoto Through the Ages: Celebrating 1230 Years in the Ancient Capital.

Co-sponsored by CIEE Kyoto and Kyoto Journal, this event will feature a distinguished panel of renowned experts in Japan Studies, Japanese art, and history. Each 20-minute talk will focus on Performance & Play in the Ancient Capital, offering fascinating insights into Kyoto’s cultural legacy, from the premodern era to the present day.

Following the panel, there will be an engaging Q&A session and a unique opportunity to network with individuals who live and work in Kyoto or are connected to Japan.

While admission is free, registration is required to ensure your place.

(Please see the attached flyer for details and register here: https://forms.office.com/r/KUh8heMUJy).

We look forward to celebrating Kyoto, and its rich history, with you all on October 22nd.

CIEEパートナーおよび関係者の皆様

このたび幣センターでは、来たる10月2日18時半より、平安建都1230年を祝う特別パネルディスカッション「時代を超えた京都」を開催することとなりました。

CIEE京都と京都ジャーナルが共催するこのイベントでは、日本学、日本美術、日本史の各分野の第一線で活躍する専門家をパネリストとしてお迎えします。各20分の講演では、「古都京都における舞台と演劇」に焦点を当て、近代以前から現代に至るまでの京都の文化遺産に関する様々な見解をお届けします。

パネルディスカッションの後、質疑応答が行われます。京都在住・在勤の方々など日本にゆかりのある人々と交流を深めるまたとない機会です。

ご入場は無料となりますが、ご参加の場合お申込みが必要となります。添付のチラシで詳細をご確認いただき、下記URLよりお申込みください。

お申込みURL:https://forms.office.com/r/KUh8heMUJy

10月22日、皆さんと一緒に京都を、そして京都の歴史を祝えることを楽しみにしています。

CONOR AHERNE // CIEE

Writers in focus

Writers of Kyoto, Part 3: Matsuda Michio 松田道雄

By Sara Ackerman Aoyama

Introduction

For this third profile I’m veering away from novelists and writers actually born in Kyoto. Matsuda Michio is a transplant to Kyoto and he always qualified any writing he did about Kyoto by stating that he was not “Kyoto-born,” though his family moved to Kyoto when he was just six months old. It is evident that he developed an appreciation of Kyoto and he wrote a few books that expressed that. He may be an unlikely choice; none of his works seem to be translated into English, though it appears they’ve been translated into both Russian and Chinese. Matsuda doesn’t even merit an English Wikipedia entry. But when I first came to Kyoto in 1976, Kai Fusayoshi, a manager at the now defunct Honrayadō, plucked a copy of 京の町かどから(From the Corners of Kyoto) from the second-floor bookshelf and handed it to me, with the suggestion that I improve my Japanese reading ability by tackling some of the essays in said book.

I found it much too difficult to read and to this day I have not read all of this book. But I went on to read a few of this Kyoto-ish author’s other books which were intriguing to me due to their unexpected and sometimes bold content. For example there was an essay entitled “Women Have No Place in the Academic World.” This sounds dreadful, but if you read through the essay you realize that it is a bit of a click-bait title, because what he is actually saying is that academics must totally immerse in their studies and it would be impossible for any professor to do that if he didn’t have a wife at home taking care of and supporting his daily needs. Since women as a rule, don’t have wives (at that time) or that kind of support system, they would not be able to equally immerse; in this way it is an ode to the role women self-sacrificing-ly play in supporting others.


Biography

Matsuda Michio (October 26, 1908 – June 1, 1998) was born in Ibaraki Prefecture. However, his family moved to Kyoto when he was six months old, so he was thoroughly immersed in Kyoto life, at least outside of the home. He comes from a long line of physicians as it was the custom for doctors to inherit the family trade of medicine. His father was a pediatrician in Kyoto. Many of the medical doctors at that time were respected and prestigious as their practice was almost an act of charity. Matsuda followed in his father’s footsteps as a pediatrician, but also became a writer. His politics tended to be radical as he flirted with both Communism and Socialism, and in that sense I often think of him as comparable to our American Dr. Benjamin Spock. Both of them wrote bestselling books on baby and child care and had views that were ahead of their respective times.

During World War II, Dr. Matsuda was extremely conflicted internally over the practice of medicine in the war time system. He could not escape from serving the state that executed the war while his colleagues were exhausting themselves as they devoted themselves to working in the slums or in the laboratories.1

In 1967 he left his pediatric practice to become a full-time writer. Though most of his books had to do with pediatrics, they were largely geared towards the average parent and reader, rather than fellow physicians or academics. Climbing the ladder to become an esteemed academic was never his goal; he was always focused on being a neighborhood doctor, good citizen and free thinker. Two of the books he wrote were written in the voice of the child and one of them, 私 は二歳 “Being Two Isn’t Easy” was even made into a popular movie, directed by Ichikawa Kon. You may be able to find it on certain movie sites or you can rent or buy a copy from Amazon etc. It is quite interesting, especially if you are intrigued by danchi life in the Showa period.

Should any student want to take on a complete examination of his life and works, there is a Matsuda Michio Collection at Kumamoto University that houses his personal book collection and other documents. Personally, I think he is a Master’s thesis just waiting to happen.


Books on Kyoto

The first book I mentioned that is solely focused on Kyoto is called 京の町かどから and is an unusual collection of his essays that seems primarily geared towards explaining the habits of the people of Kyoto to outsiders. Contents include an essay on the well-known bubuzuke (ochazuke) story where the Kyoto host politely offers bubuzuke to a guest which is really a signal that it is time for that guest to leave.

Another book of his on Kyoto is called 『花洛—京都追憶(岩波新書, 1975) and examines some of the historical anecdotes of Kyoto. It was retitled and re-released in 1995 as 明治大正 京都追 憶.

His other books, while not focused on Kyoto per se, offer anecdotes and thoughts about the people of Kyoto in the context of childrearing or academics or broadly on everyday life. His views on women and relationships are oddly both behind and ahead of his time and are interesting to read. He is not shy about addressing controversial topics.

He also had a best-selling book using the dagashiya or traditional Japanese candy store as a vehicle for talking about how to live one’s life. It’s meant as a starting point for discussions about the future and the past and what lessons are offered.

The counterculture intellectuals of Honyaradō gave me a copy of 自由を子どもに “Give Children Freedom” which was published in 1970. Matsuda seemed especially taken with the opportunities the children of Kyoto had for all types of play on the banks of the Kamo River based on what he himself enjoyed in his Kyoto youth. Imagine, if you will, that Matsuda, in the late 1960s was already bemoaning and writing about the freedom children had lost–the freedom to explore on their own, cruise the neighborhood and beyond, and hang out without parents. He is probably turning over in his grave at the state of things today. I can’t help wondering what he’d think about the impact of smartphones and the like that we live with today. One almost wishes he was alive to share his thoughts.

Finally, I will add that the two books 私は赤ちゃん “I’m A Baby” and 私は二歳 “I’m Two Years Old” should be of interest to parents–and they are fairly easy to read.

Footnote

  1. Nakao, H. (2024) Based on a personal email to Sara Aoyama, August 30, 2024 ↩︎

Resources Consulted

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

What Happened to Momo’s Family

A Short Story by Rebecca Otowa

 (Historical note: This story is set in the late 1580s, in the mountains somewhere between Kyoto and Nagoya. At that time, Japan had been for centuries a conglomerate of lots of little strongholds based on clans, much as England was before King Arthur. Three men emerged as “unifiers” of the country in the late 16th century, all from Nagoya. The first was Oda Nobunaga, the second (during whose time of power this story is set) was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and the third was the ruler during the early Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Hideyoshi presided over Japan for many years, during which time (late 1580s) he put into practice the law that commoners were not allowed to carry weapons. There were searches of commoners’ dwellings (katana-gari) in those years, with some people being killed. It was not a wholesale bloodbath as in former times, however; Hideyoshi, then in his heyday, was turning his considerable talents away from fighting to political control and social structure. He thought up the precursor of the rigidly defined social strata that was made common practice in the Edo period, where samurai were at the top, followed by farmers. Hideyoshi, a commoner himself by birth, knew the importance of the common worker, especially the farmers, without whose support battles could not be won and campaigns would fail. This is the story of one such farming family.)

Momo ran through the mud of the dooryard with a bundle of dried grass stems. She was helping her father, Shinbei, with repairs to the thatched roof of their farmhouse. Shinbei stood halfway up a handmade ladder leaning against the eaves, waiting for her. “Come on, hurry up, Momo! I have a lot of work to finish by nightfall!”

Momo put the bundle into his outstretched arm and as he climbed up the rest of the way, she raised her face to the sunlight and took a deep breath of the clean, piney, foresty scent that always surrounded the house, especially now that summer was almost here. The woods and the steep uphill paths of the mountains began just beyond their back door. She listened for the hammering sounds of woodpeckers looking for their lunch in the trees, and the sounds, which were everywhere, of hundreds of frogs trying to find their mates and fertilize the wobbly masses of eggs that would soon ring the swampy puddles, leftover from the recent rains, that had formed further down the valley.

Momo had just had her twelfth birthday (she was named for the peach blossoms that came out, magenta-colored and breathtaking, in May). She was barefoot in the mud and dressed in a hand-woven earth-colored kimono that came to her knees, a hand-me-down from her mother, with the extra material of the sleeves caught up and sewn at the shoulder, and the hem which flapped against her thighs heavy where it had been turned up and would be let down as she grew. Her long hair was tied at her nape with a spare piece of cloth. She had a flat, pleasant face, like her mother’s, now a little smeared with dirt.

Suddenly, a noise brought her father down the ladder and her mother stepping out of the doorway of the house, wiping her hands on her kimono. It was a noise of horses and shouting men, just within hearing distance, and it came from the mountain. As one, the little family turned toward the sound. From inside the house came the muffled cry of Momo’s youngest brother, two years old, awakened from his nap. The shouts turned to screams as they listened, and then they knew what they were hearing – not another military party come to requisition food, but a minor battle between samurai warriors in the years-long struggle for supremacy of the whole country of Japan. It was whispered that this involved all the high-class fighters in the region. Sometimes they heard the noises of fighting or marching in the mountains nearby, and occasionally a messenger would run through the village, carrying presumably important news from faction to faction. Sometimes they even heard popping noises, and Shinbei had told them, having heard it from someone in the village, that a new kind of weapon had been introduced after being discovered inside a shipwreck from far away – a kind of stick that was filled with black powder and could throw death from a great distance.

Shinbei herded his women into the house, pulled the door shut, and told Momo to make sure that her other two younger brothers, aged eight and six, were safe. They were – she had just seen them making rope from straw inside the house. The family would have to hide until nightfall, because there was a danger that wounded men would come down from the battle site and demand succor. So many military requisition teams had already come past their house, leaving want and destruction in their wake; if they couldn’t find what they wanted, they would push over an outbuilding or piss in the yard. The domestic animals – ducks and a pair of goats – were long gone, vanished down the throats of famished soldiers, and lots of other provender, carefully hoarded since last fall, was gone too. The hole where radishes had slept the long winter through under layers of straw was empty, and the mother and children had been foraging in the forest for ferns and fruits to eke out the time until the summer vegetables would be ready.

And that was not all. Momo’s two elder brothers had been taken as foot-soldiers, and her two elder sisters also taken by the armies, though Momo had no idea why. Those who were left of the family were either too old or too young to be of use to the military men.

The family hunkered down, breath caught and held, in the fragrant darkness pierced with a few lances of sunlight from the holes in the roof, listening for all they were worth as the screams died down and the ordinary sounds of birds and animals returned to the forest.

When the sunlight ceased to pierce the roof and darkness gathered in the corners of the house, Shinbei commanded his wife to light a lantern and took it in his hand, pushing the door open and conning the dooryard for signs of disturbance. There were none. Sighing, he stepped outside, took up a bundle of grass stems that had fallen from the roof, and said to no one in particular, “I hope it doesn’t rain tonight, I have to get that roof fixed tomorrow.” He handed the lantern to his wife and the evening’s tasks began.

 *            *            *          

The next day, and a few days after that, dawned bright and clear, and Shinbei, assisted by Momo, was able to fix the roof thatch. But as she ran to and fro with armloads of dried grass stalks, she noticed something new, and finally called up to her father.

“Father, do you smell something?”

“Like what?” he panted.

“Like when the goat’s baby died – something rotten.”

Shinbei sniffed the air, caught the ribbon of decay, and immediately stepped carefully over the straw to the top of the ladder. “That’s the smell of corpses that lie around after a battle,” he said as he climbed down. “Now that that smell has begun, dangerous wild animals have had their fill and won’t come near. Now is our chance!”

“Of what?” asked Momo, appalled by the vision of a whole valley of rotting corpses, lying in various awful poses among the trees.

“To go up there and see what we can take! Get ready to go, and don’t forget your foot covering.” Shinbei ran toward the house, where his wife was sitting on the bench by the door, busy with some task involving separating seeds from dried heads for planting. “Come on, we have to go now before some other villager notices that smell!” She stood up immediately, scooped up the baby from where he was playing in the dirt, and tied him onto her back, yelling for the other children to come as well.

In a few minutes Momo was following her father through the new bracken up the mountain, and the rest of the family were coming along behind. All of them wore hand-woven grass sandals to protect their feet from the brambles which were just starting to grow. They walked quietly, heads down, until they came to a clearing at the side of which a spring freshet bounced and tumbled over rocks. Here, under the morning sun, about twenty dusty and bloody heaps of rags were scattered about. A dead horse bulked next to the stream. The smell was much worse here, and Momo tied a piece of cloth, that she had worn around her neck, over her mouth and nose, which helped a little. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, the rest of the family doing the same. They advanced slowly into the clearing. Several ravens rose up cawing angrily at the intrusion.

Most of the corpses had already provided food for animals. Momo glimpsed an arm, half eaten, lying some distance away in the grass. The faces were not so bad, because the eyes were mostly gone, probably down the gullets of the very same ravens they had disturbed. Insects and worms had not had time to burgeon yet. Momo’s mother began to strip pieces of cloth from the corpses with her short knife. She and Momo collected pieces of cloth, tying them into bundles with other pieces. A few banners, white with indigo-dyed family crests on them, lay here and there. Cloth was mostly all that was left. Helmets, leather straps, metal fittings, and other gear would have been taken by the jackal people that always followed battles, looking for things to sell. But cloth, washed with ash in water and dried in the sun, could be sewn together to make raincoats or bedding. Momo’s mother was a thrifty woman, and woven cloth was valuable in ways that leather and gold weren’t.

Meanwhile Shinbei walked here and there with his sons, looking for something valuable that might have been overlooked by the jackals. He paused, looking sideways across the field to detect the glint of metal. Suddenly he straightened and ran toward the edge of the woods a little way away, where seedling scrub and young trees were just beginning to grow.

He let out an inarticulate cry as he came to a corpse that lay on its belly just where the mature trees began. The cloth that remained was better-quality than that which draped most of the other corpses. The arms and hands reached out toward the forest, as though the man had dragged himself this far in an attempt to escape. Protruding from underneath his body was a glint of gold.

Shinbei used his foot to roll the corpse over, and disclosed a short sword, scabbarded, with a golden hilt. It now lay on the ground half hidden in mud. Perhaps the man, who was obviously a high-ranking general, had had some idea of cutting his stomach in suicide if the battle didn’t go his way. But everybody had died in this battle, including this proud samurai. Nothing remained to show what clan he had belonged to. His face was almost unblemished except for a broad smudge of dirt down one cheek, and his fatal wound was in the belly, which had bled and stained the ground for a good distance around. His eyes, still intact, looked up at the sky. Shinbei bent and clutched the short sword as if in a dream. His family, attracted by his cry, gathered round. 

“Look!” said the father. “We will be able to eat again!” He tucked the sword into his sash and looked off into the distance as his wife and Momo rapidly cut the trailing cloth from the body and rolled it up into a bundle. The family instinctively knew that the foraging was over, and they started down through the forest toward their house at the foot of the mountain.

As they walked, Shinbei thought long and hard about where to stash the sword until he could sell it to an itinerant peddler. He had no idea of using the weapon himself; it was so high-class that everyone would know he had stolen it. Best to get rid of it quickly, turning it into something that his family could use. We can’t eat gold and steel, he thought with a grin. He decided to hide the sword under a pile of trash, old moldy mats and straw, in the barn. When they arrived at home, he immediately went and did so, without a word to anyone.

*          *          *          *

It took about a week for the smell of the decaying corpses to subside and for the breeze down the mountain to blow sweet again. It was a week of nightmares for Momo, but she knew better than to mention it to her parents. They resumed their spartan life. Shinbei asked discreetly among the villagers if a peddler was due any time soon. No one knew.

On a cloudy, humid morning a little while later, the sound of shouts came up from the village. A little while later, horses’ hooves sounded on the well-worn path that led to the little family’s dwelling. Shinbei looked up, startled, from his work of fixing a handle to a carved wooden hoe, and saw several men approaching. He put his hand behind his back and with it, motioned for his family to hide. He saw Momo move rapidly toward the house, but didn’t dare call out to give the alarm. The house door closed silently.

In a twinkling Shinbei was surrounded by three or four heavily armed men. One of them knocked him to the ground and put his foot on his back as he sprawled in the dirt. Another stood to one side and unfurled a piece of paper – it looked very white to Shinbei as he saw it from below, even though the sky was obscured by clouds. This man began to speak in a measured tone – he seemed to be reading from the paper, but Shinbei had never learned to read and didn’t know.

“By order of the supreme Shogun, all commoners are ordered to relinquish weapons! No commoner is permitted to possess a weapon from now on. If you have any weapons, get them out and give them to us!”

Shinbei thought quickly. Whether he gave them the short sword or not, he would probably be killed. They might not find it if they searched. His only chance was to lie. If he died, his wife might find the sword and sell it to save the remaining children.

“I have no weapons! I am just a simple farmer!” he shouted as best he could into the dust.   

The man above him ground his heel savagely into Shinbei’s back. “Shut up! How dare you speak! We will search.” He jerked his head toward the others, who moved right away toward the outbuildings. Shinbei swallowed and closed his eyes.

In what seemed like a very short time, one of the men returned brandishing the short sword. “Look what I found!” He gave it to the leader with the paper, then turned to the others. “Anything else? Knives, anything?”

They said no. One of them picked up the hoe Shinbei had been working on and held it aloft. “What about farm tools? They could be weapons!”

“Our orders are not to leave the commoners, especially farmers, with nothing to continue their lives,” said the leader. He thrust the short sword into his belt on the right side. “However, this man must be punished – it’s clear that he stole this sword from someone much superior to him, and he lied about it! Off with his head!”

One of the men drew his long sword from his hip scabbard and swiftly brought it down on Shinbei’s exposed neck. He had no time to feel any pain – his head rolled under a nearby cart and his body shuddered and relaxed. The executioner wiped his shining blade on a tuft of grass and returned it to its scabbard. The men mounted and rode away.

Momo and her mother watched them go through a chink in the house wall, and when they were well away, opened the house door and rushed to the body of the father. Momo recoiled when she saw her father’s eyes looking at her from underneath the cart. The mother took her husband’s feet in both hands and dragged his body out of the dooryard. “I’m going to bury this in the radish hole,” she said over her shoulder. “That way the smell won’t give it away. Don’t worry, we will manage somehow.”

Momo took a deep breath and plucked her father’s head from the dust, closing the eyes and cradling it as she followed her mother around the side of the house.

It began to rain.

 *            *            *     

Rebecca Otowa is the author of The Mad Kyoto Shoe SwapperAt Home in JapanMy Awesome Japan Adventure, and the creator of 100 Objects in My Japanese HouseHer many valuable contributions to Writers in Kyoto, including stories, interviews, and reviews, can be found throughout our website. Rebecca provided all of the photos for this story.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Prologue to a War (Continued)

From a Work in Progress, by Malcolm Ledger

The first installment of Ledger’s “Prologue to a War” was previously shared on our website in 2021. Our readers may wish to refresh their memories of the storyline at this link before moving on to the following.

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No less incontestable, awesome, and powerful, was the Imperial Will of His Majesty the Emperor, the living god, which had long sustained and nourished both the glorious war and the ruined nation. Beyond the superficialities of mere technique, beyond the single-minded exhilaration, effortlessness, and triumphant artistry of a master swordsman, his will slashed and vanquished opposition with the certainty and unquestioned authority of a thousand years’ obedience. The thin moustache, a mere line above the lips, the expressionless, glacial face inherited through generations, he was resplendent and proud in Field Marshall’s uniform and immaculate white gloves, his rimless glasses deflecting the judgement of an outraged world. His Imperial Majesty graciously took upon himself the nation’s tragic and unavoidable burden, even as he nudged “Snow”, his uncertain mount, forward, with mirror-like jackboots and precipitous back.

A living god, he existed above all law, all sanction, all reproach. The weight of his sighs alone could crush – and did. The puniness of the merely human frame, slight and boyish, with its own needs, desires, frailties, and ill-fitting clothes, was irrelevant to the indwelling presence of the divine – Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. To bestow his personal name, Hirohito, on a child, even by mistake, was a sacrilege that could be expiated only by suicide. The entitlements and prerogatives of divinity were merciless and unforgiving.

As hierophant and Shinto High Priest, he alone communed with his immortal ancestor, the ultimate source of life. He was her mediator and interpreter. None might touch his sacred person – not even tailor or doctor – or meet the sacred gaze, any more than one might touch or look upon the sun itself. The mystic oracles and revelations of Amaterasu, mingling with the ceaseless susurrations of the mysterious wind at Ise Shrine, the Holy of Holies, he alone knew and bore. There, among the intense solemnity of the great black pines, he prayed for guidance in the conduct of the Just War being fought in his name. Before the sacred Imperial regalia of mirror, sword, and necklace, the Voice of the Crane, heard by few, carried whitely to the departed spirits of one hundred and twenty-three generations of ancestors far above the clouds. The sacred authority of the Chrysanthemum Throne was unequivocal and absolute.

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To view Malcolm’s poetry, please see the links here and here. Malcolm has also hosted some Writers in Kyoto events at his home (details here). In addition, Malcolm was the winner of the Japan Local Prize in our Seventh Annual Kyoto Writing Competition. His winning entry, “Plum Tree by the Eaves”, can be read at this link.

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