From the Judges:
“The vivid and beautiful imagery of this piece was striking, and its ambiguity left the judges wondering from the beginning whether the elderly woman described was actually Kyoto personified in its feminine aspects.”

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Limbo

She wakes up in the morning amongst mountains dotted with clouds and dozes off on the train amongst words she doesn’t know.

She runs in her heels and stops for a prayer; in her office attire, she doesn’t mind lingering on the bridge.

Her old back relentlessly bent on the veggies, the radio plays songs of her youth. Behind dusty packs of cigarettes and dirty glasses, she stares at the traffic of the evening.

She hangs out with friends and robot-dogs at the temple garden, but at dusk you might see her walking down the street with a rabbit on her shoulder.

In the evening, she puts on her makeup of signs and lanterns, her whites and reds so much more alive in the rain.

She lives in silent houses and plays music by the river.

She dines on art, sitting amongst bicycles and motorbikes.

She enjoys elegant cafes, but tired bakeries, like wrinkles, can tell all of her struggles.

She boasts about flowers, colours and dances, but keeps behind the mushikomado* the ancient rituals that spell her name. Shadows shelter their private routines.

You’d say one could see right through her, across her straight alleys from mountain to mountain, and yet she plays hide and seek, opening the doors of her houses and concealing herself in their twilight.

She smiles, inviting me in. Somehow, she leaves me lurking at her gardens beyond a noren*, slightly moved aside by the breeze.

Kyoto embraces me and has me at her threshold, staring and wondering. And it is not so bad, after all, raving in this limbo, red torii in my eyes and a sakuramochi* in my hand.

Photograph by Licia Braga

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Licia Braga is an Italian who studied Japanese language and culture in Venice. After much traveling and living abroad (and ending up forgetting much of what she learnt of her Japanese language studies), she finally managed to move to Japan last year, straight to the core of its fascinating ancient capital. She loves reading, painting, dancing and hiking, and she has just recently started trying her hand at writing to give shape to the colors and impressions gathered from her new daily life, which she enjoys very much.

*Japanese terms:

mushikomado: a unique window style found in Japanese townhouses. These windows have a fine lattice like an insect cage, and are believed to have gained popularity during the Edo period

noren: traditional cloth partitions hung in the doorways of businesses or as general interior decorations, with one or more vertical cuts from the bottom to facilitate passage.

sakuramochi: a traditional Japanese sweet enjoyed during the spring season, consisting of a sweet, pink rice cake filled with red bean paste which is wrapped in a pickled cherry leaf.