What Kyoto Chose Not to Replace
I noticed it first in a teacup.
A thin fracture ran from the rim to the base, sealed in gold that did not try to hide it. The cup was still in use. Passed, lifted, set down again. No one mentioned it.
Later, I began to see it everywhere.
A wooden step worn uneven where thousands of feet had chosen the same hesitation. A paper screen repaired in a patch that didn’t quite match. A sign outside a shop, its ink softened by years, still trusted to speak.
Nothing was broken. Nothing was new.
I kept expecting replacement—the quiet correction of imperfection. But it never arrived.
Things remained slightly altered, slightly incomplete, as if the city had decided that continuation mattered more than improvement.
In a small café, my receipt was written by hand, the characters careful but not identical. The woman paused once, as if remembering how it should look, then continued as it was.
It did not feel careless. It felt deliberate.
As though each object had already been lived with enough to earn its place, not by usefulness, but by duration.
I thought of the things I had removed. The ones that had not fit cleanly into who I was becoming.
Here, they might have stayed.
Nothing in Kyoto was exactly as it had been. Nothing had been replaced enough to forget it.
Diyora Kabilova is a writer from Uzbekistan interested in memory, place, and the quiet ways people and cities preserve what matters. Her work often explores what remains when everything around it changes.
“What Kyoto Chose Not to Replace” won the Unohana Prize in WiK’s Tenth Kyoto Writing Competition, 2026.
Here’s what some of the judges said:
“One of Kyoto’s greatest charms remains as the objects which do endure. The writer notes the worn wooden steps upon which thousands of feet have trodden. Similarly, it is a unique Kyoto experience to have the chance to sip sake from a centuries-old cup and to wonder who had previously placed their lips on the same rim.”
“The details of things that are old and broken or flawed, and the oldness is kept, one feels, because of respect for the way they endure. I am reminded of a hole in a door in my own house, which has never been fixed, perhaps because the story of how it was broken is more precious than a fixed door.”
The Unohana Prize is awarded to the national of a country in which English is not an official language.
Unohana (Deutzia crenata) is a flower which frequently appears in haiku.
The winner receives a copy of Future of Kyoto (Writers in Kyoto Anthology 6), and inclusion in a future WiK Anthology.
See the full list of this year’s competition winners.
See this year’s competition notice with prize details.