This year, the Australia-Japan Society of Victoria warmly collaborated with Writers in Kyoto in offering a complimentary one-year membership for an exemplary piece submitted by an Australian author to our Kyoto Writing Competition. Simon Rowe’s “Diary of a Rickshaw Puller” was selected for this honor. Simon is an Australian writer based in Himeji, Japan and …Read More
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Greenhouse Bluesby Simon Rowe Last month a fortuitous thing happened. I discovered a large greenhouse beside the university where I work. It is used by the Faculty of Pharmacological Science to grow medicinal plants for research and is tended by a retinue of elderly men in powder-blue overalls who water and weed and keep the …Read More
‘Fragrant Harbor’ they called it. But Hong Kong was anything but fragrant the night Poh Seng Pang flew in. The air outside the terminal was dank, vegetative—like the smell of the Singapore River in wet season, or the streets of the Jurong Wholesale Market after a deluge. Poh found it strangely comforting. He checked his …Read More
Peddling Papa: A Writer’s Tale of Selling His Book by Simon Rowe On a foggy November night, a ship named the MOL Grandeur hauls anchor and departs Hong Kong bound for the port of Kobe. Listed on its bill of lading are eighteen cartons of freshly-minted paperbacks, destined for the samurai castle city of Himeji …Read More
Notes from Himeji, Hyogo: I am a Passenger by Simon Rowe What do commuters think about on their long rides to and from the mills each day? I bet they don’t think about how lucky they are that the wheel was invented. I was a commuter once—a nameless man in a salt-stained suit and headphones. …Read More
Notes from Himeji: Life on the Razor’s Edge Simon Rowe Sometimes good things can be found in the most unlikely places. For the best shave in my city, I go to the hospital. The Himeji Junkanki Centre Hospital, to be exact. This mysterious facility hides in the hills south of the train tracks and is …Read More
Birth of a Book Coverby Simon Rowe While working on a screenplay project in 2019, I discovered the artwork of Tokyo-based Canadian illustrator, Jeremy Hannigan. He had been commissioned to create the visual references for yokai (spirits, monsters and goblins) which appear in the script. At the time, I was looking for a unique hand-drawn …Read More
Pearl City by Simon Rowe A Mami Suzuki Mystery Silhouetted against the noonday sky, the president of Tokai Pearls Ltd. stood at his suite window and surveyed the harbor. His gaze ranged from the shipyards and submarine docks of Kawasaki Heavy Industries to the Mosaic shopping mall and its slow-turning Ferris wheel, then to the …Read More
Island of the Wind Child There’s an island off the coast of western Honshu Where six men in kayaks camp beneath moons Sometimes a crescent, sometimes a half But beware a full moon The king tide might just steal your craft. When the weather is fair and the sea breeze is soft They paddle …Read More
Travelling North by Simon Rowe Uramoto was short, in his thirties, with a buzz cut and a smile that practically broke his face in half. At eight p.m. he fired up his Fuso and told me to jump in. We would be carrying a consignment of senbei to Kōfu city in Yamanashi prefecture, he said. …Read More
WiK Writing Competition
WiK Anthologies
The Nature of Kyoto (2023)
Eds. Lisa Twaronite Sone & Robert Weis
Foreword by Pico Iyer
Structures of Kyoto (2021)
Eds: Rebecca Otowa & Karen Lee Tawarayama
Foreword by Judith Clancy
Encounters with Kyoto (2019)
Eds: Jann Williams & Ian Josh Yates
Foreword by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Echoes (2017)
Eds: John Dougill, Amy Chavez, & Mark Richardson
Preface by Alex Kerr
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