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Poetry that is about the ancient capital or was set in Kyoto

Spider Walks the Air

Poems and photos from Lake Biwa by James Woodham

spider walks the air
unspooling from his being
lifelines of silver

where the wind takes it
how light a life that’s floating
shadow on the sand

Santoka* walking –
nothing between him and death
haiku and sake

gift of his whole life
Santoka into the wind 
ragged spirit free

reeds flailed by the wind                         
cry of the crow through torn cloud
sun smashed on the waves 
                     
crows hang the branches 
with cacophony of sound
raggedly flapping

now and then a bird
sends out its notes across the sky
carol to no one

bird song floats into                      
the mists of meditation                                     
perches in the mind                                         

blessing of the lake –                       
ducks given all this mirror
to float nothing on

ripples at the shore
pebbles underwater 
clarity surreal

autumn still as glass
all the silence of the sky
all the lakelong blue

it’s all so clear now!
dust of a thousand days
wiped from the I-phone

lake instrumental –                                    
sun sparkles random notes       
jazzing the surface

yellow butterfly                                                        
leaves off writing its sky dance
to settle, a leaf

trail of ivy leaves
scarlet in the autumn sun
necklace for the rocks

the wind passing through
nowhere no one no body only
where it goes

the cat stops mid-scratch 
leg still raised eyes caught
by the air’s movement

the cat unmoving
eyes slowly closing feeling all 
that there is there

at the end of day                                           
slowly flapping from the reeds                                                     
herohero** heron                                                                            

hardly a ripple
the lake gunmetal grey
duck glides the silence

rain gentles the mind
giving it a space of grey
letting the thoughts drop

the rain relentless  
a liquid blind of sound
drowning vision

wings soaked in sunlight                                           
dragonflies under silver cloud
zipping the day up

the waves loquacious                          
liquid song unending 
search  for melody

Notes

*Santoka Taneda (1882 -1940). Free-form haiku poet, inveterate drinker, and lover of the open road, he walked the length and breadth of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku, an estimated distance of about 45,000 kilometres.

**herohero (Jap.): ‘completely exhausted’, ‘thoroughly worn out’.

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For previous contributions by James Woodham, please see the striking poems and stunning photography here.  Or here. Or here. Or here. For his most recent postings, see A Single Thread here, or The Wind’s Word here, and for Vagabond Song click here.

Writers in focus

Otomodachi

By Simon Rowe

The City Fathers call Omoide Yokocho by its official name—Memory Lane. Locals prefer ‘Piss Alley’. For me it’s a little of both: a place to sip cheap beer on a hot evening, to reminisce of my wayward youth, and maybe shoot the breeze with another seasoned drinker. Because that’s all you’ll meet down this crooked alley crammed full of bars and izakaya which have survived the fire bombings of World War II, the wrecking balls, and the foolish whims of our city planners.

Make no mistake, an Omoide Yokocho drinkerie is little more than a two-storied wooden box with a ground-floor bar and a faded noren curtain to hide the afternoon barflies. Knots of cables and disused telephone lines hang crazily overhead. At night, sodium lamps push back the shadows just enough to offer safe passage between the red lanterns.

What’s not to like? On warm evenings, when the braziers fill the lane with their greasy smoke, you’ll know the soul of this city by its laughter and shouts, and calls for more chicken wings, hearts, and liver, and through this symphony of the working class, you might even hear the wail of some sodden soul singing enka—the Piss Alley blues.

Yarikuri has always been my haunt (the bar’s name means ‘to make ends meet’), but on account of losing my job, and my bill being unpaid since April, I’ve given it a wide berth. Still, I can’t keep away from Omoide Yokocho. It’s the drinkers and their stories that draw me back every time.

Take last night, for instance: I stepped into Yamamoto Sake-ten, a liquor store standing bar at the end of the alley. No sooner had I taken my place at the counter than the man beside me declared, ‘This summer heat is cooking my eggs.’

I threw him a sideways glance. He was somewhere north of seventy and wore a yellow-green Hawaiian shirt covered in red ukuleles. There was a straw Trilby perched on his head, and beneath it, eyebrows which bristled like the antennae on a night moth.

‘Pardon me?’ I replied.
‘I said, it’s hot!’

I nodded, and to the elderly woman behind the counter, said, ‘Mama, biru chodai.’ A frosted bottle and glass soon stood before me, and as I drank, the man lifted his own glass and swallowed in rapid gulps, like a mudskipper at low tide.

‘Who can stand such heat?’ he said, turning to me. ‘I’ll tell you who. See that guy in the corner? That’s Aoki-san. He was a UN peacekeeper in Africa, drove an armoured car all over the Namib desert chasing rebels. Forty degrees was a warm day! Then he came home and drove a bullet-proof limousine all over Tokyo for hotshots and VIPs. You know Whitney Houston?

I nodded.
‘Well, he even drove her.’

I drained my glass and poured it full.

‘And you think that’s something? His eyes widened. ‘Well, let me tell you that man beside the door drinking red wine, see? That’s Bono-sensei, a retired doctor. He delivered a baby on the Yamanote line once.’

I said, ‘Mama, mo ippon chodai.’ When my second bottle arrived, he leaned in closer and whispered, ‘But not everyone’s that clever, you know. See that guy in the blue linen jacket behind me? That’s Tanaka-san. He owned the Maharaja Disco in Kabukicho in the Bubble era, but couldn’t pay his gambling debts so the yakuza bought him out for a pittance. Now it’s a UNIQLO megastore!’

I took a dish of chilled tofu and shallots from the small refrigerator beside the counter.

‘Nakano-san,’ he murmured, watching me drizzle the tofu with soy sauce.
‘Sorry?’ I said.
‘Nakano-san loves tofu. He’s not here tonight, mind you. He used to captain a skipjack boat in the Indian Ocean. Out for months at a time. He’d sell his catch at Tsukiji and drink his profits here. He loved cold tofu. Shipwrecked twice he was—once in the Maldives, another time, the Andamans.’ He turned to me. ‘What do you do?’
‘I’m between jobs.’

He drained his glass and slapped the counter. ‘Mama, okanjo kudasai!’ The elderly woman flicked her abacus beads, then scribbled something on a scrap of paper. He paid, said something to her I couldn’t catch, and with the tip of his Trilby, disappeared into the heat of the alley.

The old woman cleared away his bottles and said, ‘I’m sorry. He does that sometimes.’
‘Does what?’
‘Introduces customers to his friends.’

I glanced around at the empty shop.

‘He’s the last of the old timers.’ She wiped off the counter and rearranged the soy sauce bottles.

I drained my bottle, thought about a third, but asked for the bill instead.

‘It’s been paid,’ she said without looking up.

Bar bill from the very first standing bar that Simon visited in Himeji

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‘Otomodachi’ (Honorable friend) was a finalist in the Globe Soup 2021 Travel Writing Competition.

Simon Rowe is an Australian writer based in Himeji, Japan and is a 2021 International Rubery Book Award nominee, winner of the 2021 Best Indie Book Award and the 2013 Asian Short Screenplay Contest. His nonfiction has appeared in The Paris Review, the New York Times, TIME (Asia), the South China Morning Post, and The Australian. Website: https://www.mightytales.net/

For his previous contributions to WiK, see here, or here, or here, or here, or here.

Reminder: Eighth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition Deadline (March 31st)

Calling all Writers! This is a reminder of the March 31st deadline to submit your “short shorts” to our panel of judges for consideration. The Annual Kyoto Writing Competition is one of WiK’s biggest events and attracts a large global readership. An array of exciting prizes (including the prestigious Kyoto City Mayoral Prize) is waiting for successful participants. We accept English-language submissions in any genre from across the world. You do not need to be located in Kyoto to participate, but we do look for submissions which show a connection with Kyoto. Think you have what it takes to impress? Please refer to this link for detailed information about submission guidelines, prizes, and winning submissions from previous years. We encourage all of our readers to participate and to share this information with your social networks, and we look forward to hearing from you very soon!

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Kyoto Snow

by Adam Downham

(All photos by Adam Downham)

You wouldn’t know it from the body of photography books out there, but snow is fairly uncommon in Kyoto. I suppose it’s the infrequency of it that brings out the cameramen in droves when it does finally fall. I had rather naively expected this idealized version of winter in Kyoto to be fairly common, but was a little disappointed on living here to count the odd gentle dusting here or there, perhaps no more than once in a given year, if at all. I promised myself I’d try to make the most of those rare days.

The trouble was, ever the servile salaryman, with such light blizzards being at the year’s coldest, in February, I would usually have already splurged, or, more likely, failed to use and therefore forfeited, my limited annual leave days just a few months prior at the end of the previous calendar year. This meant that snow days to me were simply a wonderful barrier in catching my morning commuter train into the city centre, through the ensuing chaos and delays.

That said, one particularly chilly winter, a promised snowstorm had come a couple of days later than forecasted, giving me enough of a window to pack an umbrella and a pocket camera, just in case. I thought special moments tend to happen when it snows in Kyoto.

In my mind, I had just finished watching Kore-eda’s nostalgic adaptation of The Makanai, a story about the cook at a geisha boarding house and a great initiation into this secretive world. The only real issue I took with the story, as authentic as it sets out to be, was how it may yet give more stock to another romanticized version of Kyoto where geisha can appear beside you on a footpath at any moment. The reality, as many visitors often find, is that spotting a geisha, even in Gion to the east of the city, can be as rare as the flurry into which I was about to set out.

The advance weather warning had given me the foresight to prepare a 45-minute head start on my normal commute. Sadly, those 45 minutes were given to a rather soggy wait on the train platform, and after overcoming the snow-train chaos, I arrived into the city late for work. However, instead of rushing to the office, something itself best avoided on the slippery narrow streets of the day, I decided to reclaim some of my forfeited 45 minutes back, and squeeze in a bit of a cheeky detour through the teahouses and backstreets of Gion, having correctly assumed that the Higashiyama district where Gion was situated would be rather pleasant in a white dressing, particularly with fewer cars or people.

I was about to take one of my regular shortcuts through Ebisu Shrine, which backs out on to Miyagawa-cho, a popular Hanamachi ‘flower town’, a geisha district close to the Kamogawa river, when I got my moment. Two in fact. I saw an older gentleman at the shrine give the most animated bow, only to turn a little too quickly and slip over into the snow. Sadly I missed the window to take a snap of this rather entertaining scene, but instead caught sight of why the man had given such an effusive gesture; two young maiko were giving formal greetings to the people here.

While neither in full make-up nor wearing the elaborate kimono I had grown accustomed to seeing, the elegant way in which the two women sauntered past me and greeted the priest here felt unmistakably like the Ochaya Mawari, the neighbourly greeting custom of the story I had recently enjoyed, and I knew immediately that this was that rarest of glimpses into the daily life of a training geisha.

Unlike the Ochaya Mawari in the story however, this was still morning time, so I guessed too early for their daily rounds. What were the maiko doing then? Well, like me, they’d come out to enjoy the snow of course. As they danced around catching snowflakes, I took a couple of respectfully discreet photos, and basked in the charming serendipity of it all.

Writers in focus

Yokoo Tadanori’s House Garden

By Stephen Mansfield

Stephen Mansfield is one of the leading writers about contemporary Japan and a reviewer for The Japan Times. This modern garden profile will be included in a book he is currently writing and photographing about Japanese Gardens since 1900, due in July 2024 from British publisher Thames & Hudson.

 *********************

Teshima, a tiny island in the Seto Inland Sea, would seem an improbable setting for a collaboration between international artist Yokoo Tadanori and architect Yuko Nagayama.

Active since the 1960s, Tadanori, a prolific graphic designer, printmaker, illustrator, stage set designer and figurative artist, has appropriated ideas from the expressionist, abstract and surrealist movements, forging a style that mixes pastiche and sixties psychedelia. An engagement in science fiction, spiritualism, comic art, woodblock printing, and Japanese aesthetics surface in his creations, many of which seek, through dark, satirical humor and allegory, to usurp nostalgia.

The renovated and repurposed Yokoo Tadanori House Garden opened in 2013. First reactions are predictably mixed. Some visitors will be spellbound, others repelled at its sullying of tradition. The occasional visitor will burst into hysterical laughter. No one will be indifferent, or without an opinion. This is, no doubt, a calculated effect on behalf of Tadanori, known for blurring the line in his role as artist provocateur, between innovation and hoax.

Tadanori’s ersatz version of the Japanese garden in all its lurid splendor

An exercise in counter-intuitive aesthetics, a number of ornamental objects, a plastic crane and turtle, and blue and yellow mosaic tiles among them, items easily picked up in the discount corners of home centers, add to the curiosity, or effrontery felt by the viewer. In creating this disturbing, but iridescent work, Tadanori has deconstructed the Japanese garden and reassembled it in his own iconoclastic, color-saturated private vision of landscape art.

Tadanori’s early pop art style follows, as writer Donald Richie put it, “a hard-edged cartoon line in bright kindergarten colors.” It is, indeed, almost as if a class of toddlers have been let loose with brushes and pots of lurid, primary paints. In this landscape Tadanori’s retro pop vocabulary, however, extends beyond paint to the materials and composition itself. Look closely at the rock dispositions, alignments and spacing, and we see that Tadanori has a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of Japanese garden design.

In common with contemporary art in general, the work poses more questions than answers. A rare instance of high kitsch in this genre, is he ridiculing the Japanese garden, as he did in canvasses depicting icons like Mount Fuji, the Rising Sun flag and kamikaze pilots, or is he revering it? Are we gazing at a toxic interpretation of the Japanese garden, or an anarchic masterpiece?

If the purpose of the garden is to unsettle us, to up-end and trick-wire expectations and assumptions, it succeeds brilliantly.  

Tadanori’s plastic landscape clashes with traditional materials like clay, wood and tile.
Tadanori upends good taste with colored tile, painted rocks, and a cartoonish tortoise.
A winding stream flows beneath the floor of the main gallery.

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

Stephen Mansfield wrote the Foreword for Donald Richie’s Travels in the East, and prominent amongst his publications are books on Japanese gardens and Tokyo history. In addition to his authored books (Amazon page), over 2,000 of his articles have appeared in publications such as The Geographical, The Middle East, South China Morning Post, CNN Travel, Japan International Journal, Japan Quarterly, The East, The Japan Journal, Japan Inc, Qantas, Wingspan, Critical Asian Studies, The Japan Times, Ikebana International.

Further Reading on the WiK Website:

In After Act, Stephen considers virus related literature in a pandemic world.

In Metropolis Stephen writes about Japanese cities.

For a review of his life in writing, given as a lunchtime talk for WiK, see here.

For a review by WiK Founder John Dougill of his book, Stone Gardens, click here.

For a short treatise on light and dark in Japanese culture, see here.

For a review by Josh Yates of Stephen’s book on Tokyo: A Biography, see here.

For Stephen Mansfield’s review of the WiK Anthology 3, Encounters with Kyoto, please click here

Report on Talk by Timon Screech: “New Light on Nikko: The Cult of Tokugawa Ieyasu as Great Avatar”

by Rebecca Otowa
Jan. 21, 2023 at Ryukoku University Omiya Campus

On January 21, nine people gathered to hear Timon Screech’s talk, which was abundantly illustrated with interesting photographs. This talk was organized by WiK with the locale assistance of Paul Carty.

Timon Screech has about 20 books to his credit, including Tokyo before Tokyo and The Shogun’s Silver Telescope. His speaking style reflects his enthusiasm, especially for interesting sidelights on history which illuminate international trade, diplomatic connections, and political machinations. This talk was a good example of this.

It had been a while since I thought about Japanese history, and it is heartening to realize that people like Timon Screech make it their life’s work, as it is so fascinating in so many ways. The title made me wonder what, in this context, is meant by “avatar”, which is defined as an embodiment or symbol, in human form, of a concept, philosophy, or deity. It had not occurred to me to think of Tokugawa Ieyasu in this context, so it filled in some blanks for me with regard to one of the most important characters in Japanese history.

It seems impossible to talk about Ieyasu, the Great Unifier of Japan, without talking about his predecessor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The beautiful and ornate mausoleum of Ieyasu in Nikko, in the north of the Kanto Plain, echoes that of Hideyoshi at Amidagamine in the foothills of Kyoto.

Many historical figures sought “deification” as avatars of Shinto kami 神, or Buddhist figures. They also sought connection with the Imperial Family in order to confer legitimacy on their government, especially those in the new “eastern” capital, Edo, home of the shogunate, which was considered barbaric compared to the “western” court of Kyoto, where the Emperor resided. Both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu desired this kind of connection.

It is important to remember that at this period of history, Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines were not differentiated as they were later. For example, personalities like Sugawara no Michizane became the avatar of Monju Bosatsu (a Buddhist saint and patron of education) and was also, as a kami, associated with Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto.

In any case, the warriors who began the shogunate knew that they were looked down on by the Kyoto court, and by associating themselves with dieties and other important figures sought to give an air of legitimacy to their Eastern area. Thus, Ieyasu was made a daimyojin, the highest level of kami, and also became an avatar of the Buddhist deity Yakushi Nyorai; the person engineering this was a Tendai (Mt. Hiei in Kyoto) monk called Tenkai, who was charged with rehabilitating the ancient historical site of Nikko. In the process he started the cult of Ieyasu at that place. This mausoleum is referred to as Toshogu, “the shrine of Tosho”. Tosho was the posthumous name given to Ieyasu, and gu is an Imperial shrine. Nikko means “light of the sun”, (a word describing the Emperor), and the fact that this site was in the East, which is associated with the sun, bound these close together. Specifically, Tokugawa Ieyasu was seen as a light (lantern) which assisted the sun of the Emperor, and the lantern became a symbol of this; many different and interesting lanterns are scattered around the Nikko mausoleum. Lanterns are also used in the worship of Yakushi Nyorai.

For example, a metal lantern, which is a copy of the one at Daitokuji in Nara was donated by Ieyasu’s granddaughter, Masako, who was married to Cloistered Emperor Go-Mizuno-O. Others included two metal lanterns donated by Date Masamune, a famous general of both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, and three of Dutch manufacture, which were purported to be gifts from Holland, Okinawa and Korea through various political and diplomatic machinations.

There is a very complex hierarchy of lanterns, both those who donated them and those before whom they were burned. The material of metal was the highest level of this hierarchy.

Timon Screech said he is presently working on a book on the topic of this talk. We await the appearance of this book, which will certainly shed light for readers of English on this interesting and important part of Japanese history. Our thanks to him for speaking to us.   

* * *
Information about Timon’s academic background can be found within the original event listing at this link.

Speaker Timon Screech (3rd from R) with WiK Members in Attendance: Mayumi Kawaharada, Rebecca Otowa, Paul Carty, Jann Williams, Cody Poulton, and Fernando Torres. Not pictured: Malcolm Ledger, Karen Lee Tawarayama (Photographer)

Writers in focus

A Living National Treasure

by Malcolm Ledger

In the foothills of Mt. Hiei, in north-east Kyoto, is a Japanese cultural centre dedicated to the dance. Designed by the same architect who planned the State Guest House, it is a sprawling complex of rooms, magnificent gardens, stages, and halls. When money is little object, this is the result.

The first room into which I was shown was a large reception room with Regency-style sofas and chairs. The window, which stretched completely along one wall, looked out onto a raised garden of pink azaleas, into which large rocks had been set, with small paths leading up behind them. It was rather like looking into a silent aquarium.

Another long wall was made completely of black lacquer, with intricate and wonderfully conceived mother-of-pearl inlay. Though considerably simpler, the conception reminded me of the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg. A large sea-shell on a small table nearby bore similar patterns on the inside.

On the second floor was a large hall with a stage and all the accompanying paraphernalia of lights and curtains. There was a large pine tree painted on the back board for the Noh theatre. Gods are said to descend into the human world from it.

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Writers in focus

Accidental Real Estate

by Cody Poulton

When I moved back to Kyoto in August I had to find somewhere to live for the long term. The old house in Katsura was no longer liveable; besides, I wanted to be closer to town. A friend of a friend, Mr. Fujita, was a real estate agent, so I asked him if he could find me a few places to look at. I told him my price range and roughly where I wanted to live. In a couple of days, he had three places lined up, so we met the next Saturday to see them. The first was an apartment in a condominium building, the second a machiya, or traditional townhouse, and the third was a three-bedroom house built sometime in the ’eighties not far from the river.

It was a blazingly hot day just before Obon, the festival when the spirits return from the dead to be entertained by their offspring. After three days, the spirits are sent home with bonfires on five of the surrounding mountains. If you can stand the heat, it’s one of the most beautiful of Kyoto’s annual festivals. Many try to find the roof of a taller building to witness the lighting of the okuribi, or “sending fires.”

We first visited the condominium apartment, which was located on the top floor of a high rise in the north of town. Though an older building, I was assured that it had been built after strict laws had been enforced to make tall structures like that safe in all but the most devastating of earthquakes. The apartment had been completely renovated, with new flooring and wallpaper and a new kitchen with an induction range. The only thing unchanged apparently was the toilet, from which issued a mouldy smell, which bothered me. Mould had been one of the things that had driven me out of our old house in Katsura.

The best part of the place, however, was the extraordinary view to the west, north, and east of the city. From the bedroom windows I could see four of the five mountains where they light the bonfires of Obon. To the west was Mt. Funaoka and Hidari Daimonji, and behind that Atago, Kyoto’s highest mountain; to the north, Takagamine and Kurama; to the northeast, Mt. Hiei; and east, Nyoigatake, otherwise known as Daimonjiyama. These mountains to the east and west are called Daimonji because the character for “big” (大) is traced out on their slopes. The outlines of a sail ship and the characters 妙法 (myōhō), meaning “wondrous dharma,” were inscribed on the sides of two other mountains to the north. A fifth mountain with the image of a torii gate was hidden behind a hill over to the northwest in Arashiyama. You could see it only if you lived over that way.

I thought to myself, what a great place to throw a party when they light up the mountains at Obon! But better yet was the effect when I opened all the windows. A refreshing breeze blew through, from west to east. One hardly needed the air conditioning. For most anyone in this city, which sits in a basin hemmed in by mountains, the summer is oppressively hot and humid and one can scarce survive it without the blast of an air conditioner.

The second place we saw was the machiya, which was located further to the north behind Imamiya Shrine. The place had been modernized with a new kitchen and bathroom, but it was hot upstairs and it was hemmed in by other houses. I imagined the downstairs would be dark and cold in the winter. The third place was a fine house, well built, but much too large for a single person like myself.

I could have asked the realtor to show me more places, but classes were beginning soon, I was sick of moving from one Air BNB to the next, and I was taken with the first place I’d seen. I am not one for making snap decisions, especially on first impressions, but I liked what I saw and knew I couldn’t find anything like it anyplace else. After a couple of weeks of negotiations and pieces of paper passing back and forth, the contract was sealed and I had the keys.

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Event Announcement: Timon Screech (January 21st)

Photo from SOAS website

Members and Followers of Writers in Kyoto are cordially invited to join Timon Screech for a presentation on the topic New Light on Nikkō: The Cult of Tokugawa Ieyasu as Great Avatar.

<Event Date>
January 21st, 2023 (Saturday)

<Time>
16:30 ~ 18:00 (Doors open at 16:15)

<Venue>
Ryukoku University Omiya Campus, East Hall, Room 208 (approx. 10 minutes on foot from Kyoto Station’s Central Entrance and next to Nishi Hongwanji Temple) [Google Maps ; Building #10 in the image below]

From the Ryukoku University Website: Omiya Campus|Location & Access|About|Ryukoku University You, Unlimited


<Participation Fee>
Free for paid members of Writers in Kyoto. For other participants, a one-coin donation of 500 JPY at the door would be appreciated.

*Please RSVP if possible by clicking on this link and entering the names of people who plan to attend.

—————————————
Courtesy of Wikipedia….

Timon Screech FBA (born 28 September 1961 in Birmingham) was professor of the history of art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London from 1991 – 2021, when he left the UK in protest over Brexit. He is now a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. Screech is a specialist in the art and culture of early modern Japan.

In 1985, Screech received a BA in Oriental Studies (Japanese) at the University of Oxford. In 1991, he completed his PhD in art history at Harvard University. As well as his permanent posts, he has been visiting professor at the University of Chicago, Heidelberg University, and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and guest researcher at Gakushuin University and Waseda University in Japan, and at Yale, Berkeley and UCLA in the USA. His main current research project is related to the deification of the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, in 1616-17, and his cult as the Great Avatar.

In July 2018 Screech was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA).[1] Screech’s work had been translated into Chinese (Taiwan and PRC), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian. His leisure interests are aleurophilia, learning Burmese, and cultivating the former Kingdom of the Ryukyus.

  • Published work includes
  • 2020: The Shogun’s Silver Telescope: God, Art & Money in the English Quest for Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
  • 2020: Tokyo before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo (London: Reaktion Books & Chicago: Chicago University Press)
  • 2011: Obtaining Images: Art Production and Display in Edo Japan [London: Reaktion Books & Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press]
  • 2007: Oranda ga true: Ningen kōryū no edo bijutsushi [The Dutch Are Passing: Edo art and the exchange of persons]. Tokyo: [University of Tokyo Press].
  • 2006: Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779–1822. London: RoutledgeCurzonISBN 978-0-203-09985-8OCLC 65177072
  • 2006: Edo no igirisu netsu [Britain in the Edo Period]. Tokyo: KodanshaISBN 4-06-258352-6
  • 2005: “Pictures, the Most Part Bawdy: The Anglo-Japanese Painting Trade in the Early 1600s”, Art Bulletin. Vol. 87, No. 1, pp. 50–72.
  • 2005: “Introduction”, Japan Extolled and Decried: Park Oeter Thunberg and the Shogun’s Realm. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
  • 2005: Japan Extolled and Decried: Carl Peter Thunberg and Japan. London: RoutledgeCurzonISBN 978-0-7007-1719-4 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-203-02035-7 (electronic)
  • 2003: Sex and Consumerism in Edo Japan. In: Consuming Bodies: Sex and Consumerism in Japanese Contemporary Art. London: Reaktion Books.
  • 2002: “Dressing Samuel Pepys: Japanese Garments and International Diplomacy in the Edo Period”, Orientations. Vol. 2, pp. 50–57.
  • 2002: “Erotyczne obrazy japonskie 1700–1820”. Universitas Kraków. ISBN 1-86189-030-3
  • 2002: “The Edo Pleasure Districts as ‘Pornotopia’”, Orientations, Vol. 2, pp. 36–42.
  • 2001:”The Birth of the Anatomical Body”, Births and Rebirths in Japanese Art. Leiden: Hotei Press.
  • 2001: “The visual legacy of Dodonaeus in botanical and Human Categorisation”, Dodonaeus in Japan: Translation and the Scientific Mind in Tokugawa Japan. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
  • 2000: The Shogun’s Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760–1829. London: Reaktion Books. (London). ISBN 1-86189-064-8.
  • 1998: Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Imagery in Japan, 1720–1810. London: Reaktion BooksISBN 1-86189-030-3.
  • 1997: Edo no karada o hiraku [Opening the Edo Body]. Tokyo: SakuhinshaISBN 4-87893-753-X.
  • 1996: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressISBN 0-521-46106-5.
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