‘Another Kyoto’: Alex Kerr’s roving thoughts on Kyoto as it stands today by Stephen Mansfield. Special To The Japan Times. May 20, 2017. It appears that when the Japanologist Alex Kerr was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, his tutors despaired at his unorthodox use of his time there, with one particularly testy don complaining, “He …Read More
Category: Kyoto Books (Page 3 of 4)
Books set in Kyoto
Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital by Matthew Stavros (University of Hawaii Press, 2015) Book review by Paul Carty, WiK member. This first appeared in the Kyoto Journal. ************** Kyoto is one of the great centers of culture in the world. We can find many traces of its long history as we explore …Read More
One of the senior members of Writers in Kyoto announced last year that they would no longer be buying or reading self-published books on the grounds that the lack of quality control meant that it wasn’t worth the investment in terms of time. There were too many typos, too much self-indulgence, and too much quantity …Read More
All it took was three days in Kyoto. A short holiday in the city was enough to convince writer Janice Tay to give up a settled life in Singapore and move to the heart of old Japan. A decade later, she is still here. From 2007 to 2013, she contributed a fortnightly column on Japanese …Read More
Living in Kyoto vs. Returning Home: Four Basho Linked Verses of Humanity Translations and commentary by Jeff Robbins Assisted by Sakata Shoko Basho’s well-known haiku offer us transcendental visions of nature usually with no human being in the scene — however beyond these nature poems is another, far most vast world: that of his renku …Read More
The Japan Times carries a short review today of Kawabata’s ‘Koto’, a short novel set in Kyoto that is as much about the city as it is about the twins at the heart of the story. (The original review can be read here.) ******************* by Nicolas Gattig Special To The Japan Times Mar 19, 2016 …Read More
Books set in Kyoto start with the classics… Murasaki Shikibu – The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) (c.1000-21) Sei Shonagon – The Pillow Book (Makura no Sōshi) (1002) Kamo no Chomei – An Account of a Ten Foot Square Hut (Hojoki) (1212) anon – Ōkagami (the Great Mirror) date unknown anon – The Tales of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) mid-13th …Read More
The well-known haiku poet Yosa Buson (1716-84) ranks among the finest of Kyoto’s literary figures. Born in what is now Osaka, he moved to Edo and studied poetry. After years of moving around, including following the footsteps of Basho to The Deep North, he settled in Kyoto at the age of 42 and took the …Read More
A literary stroll through the four seasons – Kyoto Encounters (1995) has to be one of the most attractive English-language collections ever produced about the city. Edited by J. Thomas Rimer (Professor Emeritus at Pittsburgh University and author of several books), it combines visual beauty in commissioned photos with extracts culled from the corpus of …Read More
From our friends at Kyoto Journal comes news of an exciting new publication… Robert Brady, one of the founders of KJ, has contributed to almost every issue — his voice and the magazine’s co-evolving over the years. Since April 2002 he has maintained an almost daily net presence at Pure Land Mountain, with well over …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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