by Rebecca Copeland Sometimes it’s the unexpected detours that provide the greatest pleasure. Last week, I spent the afternoon with PhD student Ran Wei, who has been in Osaka on a Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We had planned to meet at Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, tour the garden, and then enjoy a long and …Read More
Category: Featured Writers (Page 2 of 26)
Writers in focus
by Sara Ackerman Aoyama Sara Ackerman Aoyama first went to Japan in August, 1976 as a member of the Associated Kyoto Program (AKP). It gave her just a bare taste of Kyoto and after she graduated from college, she returned to Kyoto in the summer of 1978 with no plans other than conquering the Japanese …Read More
by Simon Rowe A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. ― FDR Sea kayaking isn’t an activity you hear much about, yet Japan’s coastline is made for travel-by-paddle. I have lived in Hyogo for 26 years and bought my first sea kayak in 2001 — a folding Folbot Greenland II — and later added an …Read More
Marc Keane is well-known to readers for his remarkable books on Japanese Gardens, and during his lunchtime talk for WiK last autumn he revealed that he was working on three new writing projects. One of them has now come to fruition, The Name of the Willow. Like Rebecca Otowa, whose artistic talents were evident in …Read More
Monochrome images capture the stark realities of Okinawa’s vassal status. Stephen Mansfield is a Japan-based writer and photographer, one of the leading contributors about contemporary Japan, and a reviewer for The Japan Times. He is the author of 20 books, and his work has appeared in more than 60 magazines, newspapers and journals worldwide. This …Read More
One of the foremost Western celebrities with a particular connection to Kyoto was British philosopher and entertainer, Alan Watts. He has appeared previously on this blog in a 4-part series extracted from his autobiography, but a 2012 biography sheds a different light on the man and adds some further insight into his attachment to Kyoto. …Read More
by Stephen Benfey Kazu sat in the freezing waterfall beside the white-bearded yamabushi. The mountain priest’s temple lay below. Kazu knew it from hikes in Kyoto’s hills with his high-school mountaineering club. He’d sought refuge here three months ago, in November. Heartbreak had sent him, and fear. It was her smile. Every time his co-worker …Read More
Robert Weis has a passion for Japan, and for Kyoto in particular. ‘It’s my spiritual home,’ he says. He draws inspiration from its famous and not so famous spots, and for WiK’s fifth anthology he wrote of the significance of mountains around Kyoto. His appreciation of trees, especially maples, is evident in his writing. ‘When …Read More
Malcolm LedgerThursday, 7th September 2023, Kyoto It makes you think. A time to reflect and take stock. Three-quarters of a century. An easily comprehensible number, in a way that fifty-million, say, is not. Twenty-seven thousand, three-hundred and three days, each lived second written, engraved, on your face, body, and heart. The joys and griefs, the …Read More
by Amanda Huggins Beth and James arrived in the Japanese Alps after yet another petty argument. It had started before they left Tokyo and then worsened when they reached Shinshimashima train station and were unable to agree on their onward bus route. When they finally found the right bus for Kamikochi, a previous disagreement resurfaced …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
Recent Comments