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Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Sakura Zuihitsu

by Edward J Taylor

Blame it on the low yen, revenge travel, whatever, but our city found itself quite quickly under siege.  After three lean but pleasantly restful years, it was startling to encounter this many people in town, and to do so many consecutive days of guiding. 

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with this city, have always questioned the amount of hype that it gets. But I’m happy to take on the work, and quite honestly it never bores me, even when returning for the nth time to sites that sit atop umpteen bucket lists.  I can easily put on the game face, introduce my guests to parts of the city that their friends back home will never see, places that never collect thumbs on social media platforms. Yet naturally I never share those places that I call my own.    

Since the autumn, I’d said yes to nearly every offer I got, disregarding the big picture, until I found I had allowed myself a mere five days off in six weeks. There were multiple trips to Tokyo, Kumano, Naoshima, the Nakasendo.  But mainly it was Kyoto, and its insane crowds. For the first time in this career, I found myself leading the same itinerary two days running. And the beer I needed, and I mean NEEDED, at the back end of every day, was inevitably followed by a shower to wash away the crowds.  As the weeks wore on, I was growing weary of the same meet and greet every few days, of telling the same stories and forgetting what I’d already told.

The days and the highlights are all jumbled up. The punters staking out party spots early Sunday morning. The foreign joggers reducing last night’s Michelin caloritic intake with every heavy footfall.  The flattened-light effect of the yellow Gobi sand. Rubbish towering above metal trash bins along the river.  Drive times and queues doubled, tripled, exponentially lengthened.  The lousy boy band under Shijo bridge, two nights running.  Seeing, or being sighted by other guide friends, out on their own respective missions.  Photographers striking their own yoga poses to frame out all the others doing the exact same thing.  A western couple sipping wine on the narrow back balcony of a Pontocho eatery, who give me a wave as I zip past on my bicycle, with an envious smile on my face. 

What saved me were the calm of the mornings before going into combat.  I’d leave early to sit quietly by myself on the river.  It reminded me of that summer after I’d finished university, the calm stillness of a morning after a heavy mushroom trip, sitting in a children’s playground, squeezing cool sand between my toes and not quite sure if the mental turbulence was finally past.  

I passed these quiet mornings of spring reading a book or simply listening to Bob Dylan through the iPod and watching the early risers go by, framed by the curtain of pink.  In fact this is the only recollection I have of my even acknowledging  the petals, even though they, and the eyes and the cameras pointed toward them, were everywhere. 

Then that peace would be broken by the phone call of my driver for the day, seeking confirmation to appease his or her own insecurities.  This was my signal to saddle up and rejoin the fray.  

Yet it was on one of these mornings, the very first, that I saw something that brought this all into perspective.  At the Kamogawa confluence, I am briefly puzzled by the sight of a guy slaloming down the slope on an odd-looking bicycle, until I spot his paramedic partner frantically giving CPR.  He kneels beside a man who can’t be more than thirty.  I wonder if he overdrank himself into this state and was found here this morning.  Or if he took a hard fall from the bicycle spilled atop the grass beside him.  But it is his expressionless face, and the furious pumping of the paramedic’s arms, and the raised hands framing the horror stricken face of the foreign tourist straddling her rental bike, that hint that this has been going on awhile, and nothing is going to get his heart started again.  

It is this image that stands out most from what had been a very long tour season, which somehow neutralizes all the joy and wonder and frustration I saw on other, uncountable faces over numerous weeks, faces drawn to this city in pursuit of metaphors for the ephemeral, as if this pursuit can somehow stave off the real thing.

(Photos by Edward J Taylor)

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Prayer –From tears to smiles—

Haiku and photos by Mayumi Kawaharada

Winter


Interminable queues
of displaced people—                                                
blizzard-ridden road                                                      
 
Mother and baby                                                        
carried off by the attacks—                                       
trampled winter roses                                                  
 
 War turns gentle siblings                             
into crazed soldiers—                                  
a frozen battlefield                                                    
 
 Soldiers loot,                                                              
for their loved ones…                                                
furious snowstorm                                                       
 
A doll in red                                                                
on a muddy snowmelt road —                            
immobilized tanks                                                         
 
Raging winter rain                                                      
to the ashen landscape—                            
endless tears                                                               
 
Evacuees’ singing                                               
echoes through the frozen air—                  
the Snow Queen’s “Let it go” 

Spring

 
The spring sun   
to both Ukraine and Russia—
more tears, more sorrows
 
Even plant buds             
have been scorched—                                        
silent devastation                                                      
 
Spring rain—                                                    
the shattered dreams of                              
a young soldier                                             
 
New grass time and again                  
trampled down—                           
yet still it keeps growing                
 
Sunflower seeds                                  
sown in a battlefield—                                      
longing for summer          
 
 
And… again, winter

Soldiers’ mums
stand against the Ukraine war—
winter comes again
 
Chess pieces
Scattered on a snowy road—
the battles continue
 
New Year’s greetings
from the battlefield…
smiles and tears
 
On a New Year ’s Day—
a white pigeon takes off
towards a rainbow

Writers in focus

John Einarsen on Seeing

Celebrated photographer John Einarsen has a new book out, entitled This Very Moment. Below he describes the process by which the striking images are created. This week not only sees the 104th edition of the Kyoto Journal which he manages, but the opening of ‘Perception beyond Borders’, an exhibition of his photographs at Kunjyunkan gallery from 4/20-5/21.

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For as long as I can remember, I have been spellbound by the visual brilliance
of our world, and always had the desire to share what I saw with others.

The kind of seeing I now practice is very deliberate. It works through a spaciousness of mind—a quiet, non-seeking openness. This state occurs naturally in the gaps that punctuate our streams of thought. Within this gap-mind we’re relaxed; our awareness is not focused on anything in particular, but we remain alert and in a receptive state. Present in the moment.

Recognizing and cultivating this spaciousness enables us to engage with our visual world more fully and directly without preconceived notions. It is always there and available. Yet it is hard to sustain. Our minds are easily distracted by a million different things. In addition, we have to work to dissolve all the ways we have been taught to see. We live in a described and categorized world, and most of the time that shorthand is what we experience. It’s a shame that we miss so much. When we stop trying to manage our experience and let go, the world comes to us in all its richness.

With spaciousness, a fresh perception can drop into our laps out of nowhere, anytime. It is delightfully disorienting. It fills our awareness as we concentrate to understand it. There is a feeling of elation and affirmation. We are fully connecting to what we see.

A genuine perception is pure—an unasked-for offering from the universe. For me,
it is meant to be honored, expressed with fidelity, and then shared with others.

The link for This Very Moment can be found at:  https://www.kyotojournal.org/product/this-very-moment/. For his work as a teacher of Miksang contemplative photography see here.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Kyoto Journal 104 — Flora & Kyoto

Ken Rodgers writes…

This special print issue of Kyoto Journal explores the ubiquitous role of flora as an essential subtheme in Kyoto’s timeless culture through essays, interviews, and poetry, illuminated by superb photography and artworks. The city is famously unique for its superb gardens, its rich heritage of tea ceremony and flower arrangement, its deeply-rooted culinary traditions based on heirloom vegetables, its longstanding literary appreciation of seasonal blossomings, and its impressive diversity of botanically-inspired decorative arts including the maiko’s monthly almanac of exquisite hair-ornaments, and the even more detailed 72-season Japanese calendar. The very names of flowers and plants have evoked codified associations since the Heian era, and in Noh plays the spirits of plants themselves speak. Family crests draw on minute botanical differentiations in their characterizations, and tiny indoor bonsai conjure visions of the vastness of nature.  Includes insightful contributions by WIK members Mark Hovane, Peter Macintosh, Stephen Mansfield, Cody Poulton,and Robert Weis. 

A perfect Spring read—or gift.

****************

KJ104 will be back from the printer around April 25th, available to order (or pre-order) through KJ’s website at www.kyotojournal.org/product/kyoto-journal-104-flora-kyoto/ and later, from selected bookstores throughout Japan.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Shinrin yoku poetry

WiK member Milena Guziak is a leading trainer worldwide of guides for shinrin yoku (forest bathing). To understand more about the practice, please see her ‘Mindful tourist’ website here. Below is a selection of poems, written in Japanese and translated by herself, that have been inspired by the prolonged periods of immersion in nature involved in her practice.

————–

折れた心
優しくなおる
森の中

oreta kokoro
yasashiku naoru
mori no naka

a broken heart
gently recovers
in the forest

—————

新年祝え
見る四季の変化
人生なのさ

shinnen iwae
miru shiki no henka
jinsei na no sa

i greet the new year
the changes of seasons i see
this is how it goes

————-

風が吹いている
花びらが落ちている
私は見ている
頰に触っている風が
私にほほ笑みかけている
心が嬉しくなっている

the wind is blowing
flower petals are falling
I’m watching
the wind that is touching my cheeks
is smiling at me

————

探しの心

ある雨の日、心は心に質問した。
「探しのは何か」「静けさです」と心は答えると、
「道が分からなくなっているじゃないか」 と寂しく言われてしまった。

a searching mind

one rainy day, the mind asked itself “what are you searching for?”
“stillness” – replied the mind
“aren’t you losing your way?” – said the mind sorrowfully

*********************

For collections of Milena’s poems, available on amazon, please click this link.
For Milena’s training programme, see here; for her Facebook page click here; and for Instagram take a look here.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

An Important Day

by Tetiana Korchuk

Mari nervously took a glimpse at her watch: it was 10:58, Two minutes left until her annual time travel. She already made it twice in the past, as obligatory part of her social studies class, first time when she just turned 13, and last year – at the age of 14.

Where is she travelling today? she closed her eyes and tried to hold her breath. 30 more seconds to go. Her first travel took her just a couple years back, to her first day of elementary school, second one was a little more exciting – from the glass hospital window she was able to witness her family just after her own birth. Mari softly smiled remembering her mom, looking exhausted but happy, and dad – pale and shaky, as if he just saw a ghost.

She felt a light wind breeze on her skin and almost instantly opened her eyes. She moved indeed and this time she also could easily recognize the area, as it hasn’t changed a bit in …how many years? Her watch gently vibrated and she saw white numbers appearing on the screen. Reiwa 5th year, February 25th.

– Reiwa… – Mari gasped trying to remember what year it was. 2022? 2023? History was not her strong point. Maybe somewhere around that time. Wow, more than 30 years ago!

Of course, Mari heard about adults traveling so far as to the dinosaurs era but for her 30 years felt almost the same. What happened that day that was so important? She slowly started walking towards the big torii in the background, shivering in her light sweater. Somehow it was much cooler than in February now. Kitano Tenmangu, she last came here with her mom just a couple months ago. Restaurants alongside the street haven’t changed a bit, the same long queues of people waiting there. What had definitely changed were the clothes. And those masks?

As Mari made her way through stalls with food, kimono, pottery and antics of the flea market, she couldn’t stop wondering why everyone were wearing masks. Was it that big covid pandemic? She couldn’t remember. But the thought of the flea market happening on 25th every month in those times too, suddenly made her feel some unexplainable warmth inside. Some things just don’t change! Too bad she can’t pay with her watch here.

Karaage from one of the stalls smelt delicious and Mari even considered for a moment asking one of the teenage boys to buy a pack for her. But talking would be considered a violation of time travel rules. Same as eating…

She reached the main part of the temple, after some hesitation threw a coin to a wooden box. No one used coins in her times anymore, but she always had some on her as her little talisman. She observed girls in pastel kimonos taking a million plum pictures with their smartphones. Mari wondered for a second how it feels to have a phone on you all the time. Must definitely be tiring.

She tried to observe as much as she could around, but nothing really happened.
Snow started flying in the air and she was fascinated by this beautiful contrast of pink plum flowers and white snow. Was she here to see the snow? It hadn’t snowed for years in Kyoto, as it didn’t’t snow almost anywhere in Japan anymore. Was that the reason?

Her hour ended and she found herself sitting in her room again. Snow on her clothes melted, and made her sweater cold and heavy. Mari’s tablet screen changed and a new assignment appeared. ‘Write an essay in free form about your time travel titled “Day when my parents met”.’ Mari’s heart started racing. Did she miss them? Was her father one of those teenage boys? What should she even write about?

She kicked her chair with frustration. What even was she thinking? Dreaming about karaage! She gasped and tried to calm down. She needs to write something. But then the solution came. Mari almost instantly became calm again. Thank god she has better relations with her mom than other girls in her class. She dashed from her room and rapidly entered the kitchen.

– Mom! Mom! Can you tell me really quick about that day you met dad?
Pleeease, it is for my school assignment.

***********************

Tetiana Korchuk was the winner of the Unohana Prize in WiK’s Seventh Writing Competition

Cody Poulton on Contemporary Theatre

ANOTHER WORLD

Report on a Lunchtime Talk by Cody Poulton, March 26, 2023
By Rebecca Otowa

Cody Poulton, middle right with arm on table, about to give his talk for WiK members. Opposite him is Rebeccca Otowa, whose report follows below. (Photo by Paul Carty)


Mark Cody Poulton (PhD, U of T) has been teaching Japanese language, literature and theatre in the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies since 1988. His recent research has focused on Japanese theatre and drama, particularly of the modern period. He has also been active as a translator of kabuki and modern Japanese fiction and drama, for both publication and live stage productions in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia and Japan. In addition, he has been collaborating with Hiroko Noro on a number of projects using drama for Japanese language pedagogy. He is also interested in pilgrimage and the Kumano region of Japan, and in the culture of Japanese cuisine. 

Twelve people gathered for lunch and a very interesting talk by Cody Poulton at Papa Jon’s at Rokkaku. Thanks to Charles Roche for making this very lovely venue (in food and atmosphere!) available to us. We were all very glad to see each other “in the flesh” again and hope these live meetings will continue.

Cody Poulton, a Canadian and longtime resident of Japan, expert on various Japanese theatrical forms including Noh and modern drama, gave a very interesting talk mostly about modern Japanese theatre. It felt to me like glimpsing another world, one which I myself knew nothing about, but that glimpse was fascinating. It’s always interesting to find out what keeps other people awake at night (or, conversely, helps them sleep soundly) — in other words, the biggest love of their life, and this was no exception.

The two “big names” I took from the talk were the Japanese Meiji-Taisho era novelist and recounter of the supernatural, Izumi Kyoka, and the 1960s avant-garde theatre producer, Kara Juro, whose “Red Tent” theatre still holds performances in Shinjuku. In the 1960s, a turbulent era for the whole world, dramatists were at the vanguard of change in Japan.

Drama itself is a “perishable” art form, in that no two performances are ever alike, and this gives a feeling of ichigo ichie (“making the most of every moment”) to it, which is a very Japanese concept spanning many different art forms.

Cody read some excerpts from synopses of a couple of modern Japanese plays, which contained a lot of what I would call surrealism. He introduced a book he had helped to edit, which was authored by the well-known Japanese playwright and producer, Okada Toshiki. At the end, he also passed around a calendar he had received from Joshua Breakstone, and since there were exactly twelve of us, we took turns reading the poem shown on each month, which caused much laughter. I for one would like to see such “audience participation” material in other talks by WiK. The mood as we broke up our meeting was excellent.

Perhaps one of the poems from this calendar, which was entitled (in English) “Clocks in Anamorphosis”, might sum up the atmosphere of this talk. Here is January:
If Clocks go Back and Forth
It’s Snowfall Upside Down
When Anamorphosis in Recollection
It’s Prosody Deepens.

**********************
Cody Poulton also recently contributed an essay on plants in Japanese culture and particularly the Noh theatre to the latest Kyoto Journal (no. 104).

Cody Poulton in mid-talk (photo by Ken Rodgers)
Audience participation: Rebecca Otowa shows the calendar with a verse for every month
Richard Holmes gets to display the calendar (photos by John Dougill)

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Kyoto and Anime Director Satoshi Kon

by Yuki Yamauchi

Photo by Yuki Yamauchi of Millennium Actress from his film collection

Japan has produced a great number of anime film directors, notably Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Mamoru Oshii, Katsuhiro Otomo, Hideaki Anno, Mamoru Hosoda and Makoto Shinkai. Besides them, I would like to mention Satoshi Kon and write about him in detail, especially his connection with Kyoto.

Kon was born in Hokkaido in 1963. As a child, he was fascinated with the works of Osamu Tezuka and Leiji Matsumoto. Inspired by Katsuhiro Otomo’s pieces Domu and Akira, he aspired to create his own works, and his career as a manga artist started in the mid-1980s.

He made a foray into the anime industry in Japan in the early 1990s by assisting Otomo with the production of animated science fiction film Rojin Z. After taking part in several productions of animated works, Kon made a debut as an anime film director with the psychological thriller Perfect Blue in 1997. The film drew international attention, earning him awards at Fantasia Festival in Canada and Fantasporto Film Festival in Portugal.

Kon’s director career went on with Millennium Actress (2001), Tokyo Godfathers (2003) and Paprika (2006), each of which came close to winning an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature. He had intended to create another feature film Dreaming Machine, but he died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 when he was only 46 years old.

Kon’s released works are still loved, as he depicted a world in which boundaries between reality and unreality become blurred in such an elaborate way that no one else could follow him.

Kyoto and Satoshi Kon

Kiyomizu without the crowds (photo by J. Dougill)

Speaking of Kyoto and Kon, one of the earliest links was his high school trip. The destinations included Kiyomizu-dera, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, according to his blog post.

The same post also says that he went to Kyoto together with some of the staff engaged in Perfect Blue shortly after a special screening of the film in Osaka. In the drizzling rain, they visited Sanjusangen-do to see scores of Buddhist statues and then traveled to Kiyomizu-dera and Kinkaku-ji. In addition, they enjoyed a good experience just before going back to Tokyo: they were riveted by the building of Kyoto Station, which had been renovated only one year prior to the tour.

Film Millennium Actress

Kyoto certainly helped Kon channel creativity into his next film Millennium Actress, which shared with Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away the Grand Prize in the Japan Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival. The outline of Kon’s second work goes as follows:

“When the legendary Ginei Studios shuts down, filmmaker Genya Tachibana and his assistant are tasked with interviewing its reclusive star, Chiyoko Fujiwara, who had retired from the spotlight 30 years prior. As she recounts her career, Genya and his crew are literally pulled into her memories where they witness her chance encounter with a mysterious man on the run from the police. Despite never knowing his name or his face, Chiyoko relentlessly pursues that man in a seamless blend of reality and memory that only Satoshi Kon could deliver.”

To explain the memories of the former actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, Kon realised that he should portray scenes of imaginary films that take place in different periods, including Meiji, Taisho and Showa. When he found it necessary to depict a jidaigeki scene set in the Warring States period, he went to Shochiku Studio in the Uzumasa area and got some hints about the atmosphere of the era.

Millennium Actress is Kon’s only film that depicts Kyoto. Toward the middle of the piece, you can see a street lined with traditional machiya houses nearby and a tall building like Yasaka Pagoda in the distance.* The city becomes a stage for a few of the imaginary jidaigeki films starring Chiyoko Fujiwara. In the first of them, she talks with several other actors in the Kyoto dialect.**

The film in Millennium Actress segues into another, in which Fujiwara acts as a common girl and happens to meet a man she eagerly hopes to see again. He leaves her right away because he is chased by three members of Shinsengumi. Then they threaten Fujiwara to get his whereabouts out of her, but she is narrowly saved by a man looking like Kurama Tengu, a live-action film character played by actor Kanjuro Arashi.

Afterwards, neither reality nor unreality in Millennium Actress shows Kyoto any longer. That said, the movie should be checked out. Many of the imaginary films are likely to look impressive as they were minutely made in homage to various masterpieces, which include Tokyo Story by Yasujiro Ozu, Twenty-Four Eyes by Keisuke Kinoshita and Throne of Blood by Akira Kurosawa.

Kyoto and Satoshi Kon after his death

When Kon died in 2010, not only the media in Japan but those overseas — Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Time magazine — reported the sorrowful occurrence. Many people and fans mourned his early passing. Among them was filmmaker Darren Aronofsky,*** who wrote to Kon’s right hand person Masao Maruyama. Part of Aronofsky’s eulogy goes as follows:

“It is a great loss for world cinema. A true artist has fallen and it saddens my heart.”
(from The Art of Satoshi Kon)

Posthumously, his fame continued to rise. Fantasia International Film Festival renamed its best animation award Satoshi Kon Award in 2012, and the late director also received the Winsor McCay Award at the Annie Award in 2019.

With the year 2020 marking the 10th anniversary of Kon’s death, diverse media paid tribute to him. Just to name a few, writer Matt Schley contributed a feature story on the director to The Japan Times in January, and the August issue of Eureka magazine from Seidosha gave prominence to Kon with more than 30 articles. As a matter of fact, two cinema houses in Kyoto — Demachiza and Kyoto Minami Kaikan — joined the anniversary celebration with a screening event featuring his films and his anime television series Paranoia Agent.

October 12th will mark what would be his 60th birthday. Until now, there has been no news yet about any events, apart from the announcement from Kyoto Minami Kaikan that it will screen, from March 31st to April 6th, Kon’s final work Paprika. It is one of the animated films that became an inspiration for the seven-Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once by the two Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert). However, it is highly probable that Kon’s ingenious works will be revived at theaters all over Japan, I hope, including those in Kyoto so that his genius can be recognised by wider generations.

*****************

Notes

*Art director Nobutaka Ike recalls that Kyoto was selected because the city could show the audience the most picturesque part of the Edo period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK6zHMpNPqI

**  The film within the film of Millennium Actress is titled Shimabara Junjo (島原純情). According to Satoshi Kon, it is loosely based on Kenji Mizoguchi’s A Geisha. Regarding the Kyoto dialect, voice actor Fumiko Orikasa recalls that the cast were taught how to speak with the accent by a Kyoto-born voice actor. https://animation-nerima.jp/topics/topic-news/1706/

*** Darren Aronofsky was much inspired by Satoshi Kon. Here is a YouTube video that helps you grasp Kon’s debut work Perfect Blue’s influence on Requiem for a Dream.
https://youtu.be/9GzZuRMwbW4?t=1011

References

Satoshi Kon’s blog post
http://konstone.s-kon.net/modules/notebook/archives/14

Outline of Millennium Actress
https://www.elevenarts.net/titles/millennium-actress

Making of Millennium Actress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK6zHMpNPqI

About the Kyoto dialect in Millennium Actress
https://animation-nerima.jp/topics/topic-news/1706/

Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-satoshi-kon-20100826-story.html

New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/arts/design/26kon.html

Time magazine
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2036477_2036995,00.html

The Art of Satoshi Kon
https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=2btvDwAAQBAJ

Demachiza in 2020
https://demachiza.com/news/7524

Kyoto Minami Kaikan in 2020
https://kyoto-minamikaikan.jp/movie/7047/

Kyoto Minami Kaikan in 2023
https://twitter.com/minamikaikan/status/1636698905206456320

The Daniels on Paprika and Millennium Actress
https://gizmodo.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-interview-the-daniels-1848778652

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Geisha limericks

by Peter MacIntosh

There once was a beautiful geiko
Famous from Kyoto to Edo
But if clients tried holding hands
She would whack them with her fan
Because that was the way she said “No No”

There once was this cheeky young geisha
So cheeky she’d even surprise ya
She would look here and there
When she was pouring your beer
And “accidentally” spill it all over ya

There once was a geiko so old
100 years old, I was told
But when she arrived
The parties came alive
So, the customers thought she was gold

There once was a geiko from Hokkaido
There wasn’t anyone she didn’t know
You could be poor or be rich
She was never a bitch
And would always wave and say hello

There once was geiko thought to be crazy
But writing her off would be lazy
Because when she drank with the men
Being drunk, she would pretend
Good enough to be hired by Scorsese

There once was a geiko, so pretty
Not just good looks but also quite witty
She told lots of great jokes
Much funnier than the blokes
So, they voted her mayor of the city

There once was a geiko so tall
When she walked, we were all scared she’d fall
One night after beers
She fell down the stairs
And of her dancing career, that was all.

There once was a maiko so shy
When she saw men, she would cry
The house mother got madder
And she got even sadder
So, she left without saying goodbye

There once was a geiko who smoked
She smoked so much she would choke
When others told her to quit
She’d have quite a fit
And one day, she suddenly croaked

The once was a geisha not so pretty
Her face was tad bit zitty
And without her white face
She’d scare the whole place
So, she moved to a faraway city

*********************

Geisha expert Peter MacIntosh runs tours and organises special occasions. See his website Kyoto Sights and Nights and Facebook page. To watch his documentary Real Geisha Real Women, click here. For a short story see here, and for a short short see here. His PR page can be accessed here.

Writers in focus

The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn

by Amber Logan

Below is an excerpt from Chapter Two of The Secret Garden of Yanagi Inn, a modern Gothic retelling of The Secret Garden. Here is a synopsis:

Still grieving her mother’s death, American photographer Mari Lennox is sent to document Yanagi Inn, an old, dilapidated ryokan outside Kyoto. By day, Mari explores the inn and its grounds, taking striking photographs and uncovering layers of mystery shrouding the old resort—including an overgrown, secret garden on a forbidden island. At night, eerie weeping (which no one else seems to hear) keeps her awake.

Despite the warnings of the staff, Mari searches for the source of the ghostly sound—and discovers a devastating secret tying her family’s history to the inn, and its mysterious, forlorn garden.

(Photos courtesy Amber Logan)

********************

The dimmed cabin lights brightened to a rosy glow, mimicking a sunrise though it was late evening in Kyoto. I wiped the drool off my lip with the back of my hand, glanced at the passengers on either side of me. The elderly woman to my right was awake, watching Roman Holiday on her seatback screen—Mom’s favorite movie, one I’d watched with her three times in the hospital alone.

The smartly dressed blond woman on my left had her laptop out on her tray table. Her stockinged feet rested on carry-on luggage with the same floral print as the weekender bag Mom had picked up in England years ago.

An optimistically small bag for her hospital stay.

The woman was probably working. Her nails on the keys tick-tick-ticked away, knocking on the door to my brain, reminding me I should check my work email. I reached for the bag between my feet. And Risa would need to be reminded of where I’d left Ginkgo’s pills. She needed to know he wouldn’t take them without sticking the pills inside butter. She needed to know—

STOP IT, Mari. I pictured my little sister smirking at me, arms crossed, standing next to my white puffball of a dog. Relax—I’ve got this.

I leaned back in my seat, rhythmically twisting the too-loose ring on my middle finger.

The flight attendant pushed a drink cart down the aisle. She wore a fitted top and pencil skirt, a jaunty kerchief with the Japan Airlines red crane logo tied around her neck. “Green tea, coffee?” Her voice was quiet, soothing.

I raised my hand. “Coffee would be amazing, thank you.”

She smiled a practiced smile, set a small cup on her metal tray, and poured the coffee from a carafe. The two women on either side of me asked for green tea.

Even over the aroma of my coffee, I could smell their tea. I’d missed it, the slightly bitter scent, the warmth of it. A scent from my childhood.

Japan. I’m really going back. This is real. This is NOW.

I took a sip of the coffee, hissing as it stung my tongue. A sharp, cheap flavor like the instant crap Thad used to buy when he’d finished off my good stuff.

I should’ve asked for tea.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing at Kansai International Airport in approximately half an hour. We anticipate a slightly early arrival. Local time is 7:14 p.m.

My cardigan was damp with sleep sweat. I’d take it off, but I was afraid of elbowing the ladies next to me, so I made do with pulling my hair back into a ponytail and hitting the button for my personal fan. It whirred to life, but the clicking annoyed me, and I turned it back off. In the row behind me, someone sneezed.

What the hell was I doing running away like this—abandoning my sister, my now ex-boyfriend, maybe even my job? Tears welled in my eyes and I fought them back, staring at the screen in front of me, at the image of the tiny airplane and the dashed-line trek it’d made across the Pacific Ocean. Even if Risa had made all the arrangements and basically shoved me out the door, it felt wrong to just leave.

Even if it was for only four weeks.

Deep breaths, Mari, deep breaths.

At first the timing of the grant had seemed fortuitous, if a bit rushed. But the closer I got to Japan, the more reality set in and the vague details of the NASJ grant paperwork felt more and more inadequate. Photograph an old isolated Japanese inn “for posterity’s sake”? It wasn’t much to go on.

Had I brought the right camera lenses? Would four weeks be enough time? It seemed an eternity to me right now, but I’d never been asked to document an entire estate, never even received a grant before. I was an artist, not a documentarian.

At least, I used to be an artist.

Maybe I should’ve splurged for the upgraded camera bag with better padding. I pictured the Roman Holiday woman next to me opening the overhead compartment and my camera bag tumbling out onto the floor. Contents may have shifted during flight.

Could she even reach the overhead compartment?

She was a tiny Japanese woman—probably in her seventies. I snuck a glance at her.

But Mom was sitting next to me.

I froze, my entire body turning numb.

Mom, leaning back in her seat, was watching the movie with a slight smile on her lips. Her platinum blond hair was tied back in a loose ponytail, but tufts had fallen out and were dusting her shoulders, her blouse, like dead leaves. She sipped her green tea.

I struggled for air. The sweat dotting my skin turned cold, clammy.

No, no, no. I’m just tired, didn’t get enough sleep. I closed my eyes, inhaled deep, gasping breaths. Mandarins, I smelled freshly peeled mandarins.

“Are you all right, honey?”

My eyes flew open. CEO woman on my left, with her slim laptop and flowered bag, stared at me. Her eyes were wide with concern.

I shot a glance to my right. The little grandmother had returned and was happily watching her movie, oblivious to my distress.

Am I all right? The dreaded question.

Did she mean “do I need medical attention?” Or was it more of the existential “all right” we all seem to strive for but never quite manage?

I smiled at the woman, responded with the only reasonable lie one can give to that question: “I’m fine.”

Deep breaths, Mari. Deep breaths.

The flight attendant in her perfect pillbox hat and red bandana came by again, this time with white gloves and a plastic trash bag. I handed her my half-empty cup of coffee with an apologetic smile.

I should’ve asked for tea.

*****************

Amber is an author, freelance editor, and university instructor. To learn more about her, please click here.

Amber’s family pose in front of a Japanese garden bridge
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