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Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

A Life or Death Decision

by Sara Ackerman Aoyama

Photo, courtesy of John Dougill

Natsumi opened the door cautiously and walked into the Starbucks. She was counting on being able to grab a chair at the window overlooking the Kamo River. But first, her eyes went to the menu on the wall. She could hardly believe it but today, finally, was the day that the S’Mores Frappuccino was coming to Japan!

Before Natsumi could confirm that today was indeed the day, her phone rang. She stepped back outside and drew in a long breath before she answered.

“Natsumi? We’ve got the results.”

“We’ve found the allergen. As long as you never drink a cup of coffee again, you’ll be fine. But, I’ll warn you. Just one more drop of coffee could kill you within 24 hours. I know you’re a coffee drinker, but as of this moment, you simply cannot imbibe. It’s an unusual but lethal allergy….”

Natsumi stood there absorbing the information. It seemed a simple choice.

She took a few steps away from Starbucks, but then stopped again and instead reversed her direction and went to sit on a bench overlooking the river. It was so  hot and muggy. Just like that summer so long ago in New Jersey, she mused.

Natsumi had only been eight years old when her father was transferred to the New York office of his company. They’d arrived in April. At school, Natsumi was the new kid. She spent a lonely three months in the unfamiliar classroom.

When school was out for the summer, her mother enrolled her in a day camp. On the last day of camp, they’d had a sleepover and cooked dinner over a campfire. As the night fell, the counselors came out with one more treat.

S’mores!” 

Other campers knew just what kind of treat was coming, but Natsumi was puzzled. Marshmallows on a stick, and then something else? What was she to do with the graham cracker and chocolate? Surely you couldn’t roast chocolate, and a graham cracker would just burn. She watched the older kids carefully and saw that a S’more was a kind of sandwich. Yum! She had not liked American food very much. But this was a kind of sandwich that she could appreciate. She smiled in pleasure as she took a bite and the three different flavors came together. She’d finally found something about America that she really liked.

School went more smoothly in the fall. She made friends. And then a few months later it was all ripped away when her father was suddenly transferred back to Japan. She’d never had a chance to go back. But now she had a chance to recapture a memory and a taste of her past in a cup of coffee. What could be better? She could die a quick death having circled back to her childhood memories. Sometimes she felt so ready to go.

A flock of birds flew overhead and startled her from her thoughts. She shook her head and brushed back a few wisps of her graying hair. Had there really been any question at all here? She got up, smoothed her skirt and smiled. She liked green tea, too.

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Sara Ackerman Aoyama first went to Kyoto in 1976. Her last visit was in 2016 and she hopes she’ll be there again someday. She blogs her memories here.

Seventh Writing Competition Results: USA Prize (Robin Hattori)

Robin Hattori was awarded the USA Prize in this year’s Kyoto Writing Competition for her moving piece, titled “Conversation with a Ghost”. The judges appreciated how it captures one family’s story in the wider historical picture, and how a search spanning thousands of miles ends in a sweet conversation with one’s beloved grandfather.

Robin is a sansei (third generation Japanese-American).  Originally from St. Louis, she has lived in Japan as a student, English teacher, and a JET Program Coordinator for International Relations, and currently works at Washington University in St. Louis as a research lab manager. She is active in community organizations including the Campus Y at Washington University, Central Institute for the Deaf, and the Japanese American Citizens League. She often provides educational presentations on her family’s incarceration at Rohwer, Arkansas during WWII.  Robin has a background in Asian Studies and Master’s Degree in Non-Profit Management.

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Conversation with a Ghost

Every day after kindergarten my first stop was your room. You let me crank your fancy mechanical bed to a sitting position and munch on senbei from the tin on your nightstand. I would prattle on and show you my drawings. You held up each one reverently, smiled and said “kirei, kirei”.

“No, grandpa!” I would giggle, “You’re holding it upside down!”

This was our routine. Until one day I came home and rushed in only to find that you were gone.

Forty years have passed. I have so many questions I never got to ask: Was it hard leaving Japan? Did you love your picture bride? Could you forgive the U.S. for putting you behind barbed wire? Were your children and grandchildren enough to make you happy?

I have searched for you, but a language barrier and 6500 miles stand in my way. Finally, a cousin remembers that your ashes are interred, “somewhere in Kyoto, close to Maruyama Park.”

I arrive on a drizzly day with a smudged charcoal sky. The first cemetery has no knowledge of our family. Dejected, I trudge onto the next. Higashi Otani Bochi snakes up the hillside like kudzu. I ask the monk if you are here. He hesitates before making a call. At last, he confirms your location.  I thank him with inadequate Japanese and wind my way through the endless warren of polished concrete.

Our ancestor’s grave stands out from the rest. It is a weathered, natural shaped rock with the name of your hometown engraved in the front. I should have brought incense or flowers. Or better yet, one of my drawings.

The rain starts to ebb and the sun warms my face as I kneel down. We have so much to catch up on, Grandpa. How have you been?

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Gods of Useless Things

By Simon Rowe

Stands to reason that in tough economic times, people spend less on luxuries and more on small pleasures—like beer, cigarettes, and Uniqlo underwear. A new rooftop beer garden opened in Himeji last week (two floors above Uniqlo), affording more skyline drinking space for the hard-working denizens of this town; another place for them to catch a cooling Inland Sea breeze, run their snouts through the all-you-can-eat troughs, and drink whatever it takes to forget tough times.

When will they end? They may never end. The bean counters in Tokyo would like them to end because people who don’t spend keep prices down, which keeps salaries down, which forces retailers to cancel each other out in fight-to-the-death discounting wars. But you can read all about that in the papers ….

There is another, less sophisticated way to measure consumer spending in this country. It goes like this: twice a month, usually at dawn, in villages and towns and cities across the archipelago, Japanese shuffle to a designated spot—a street corner or car park—and toss out their unwanted household goods. This purging of solid waste, or sodai-gomi, is both a barometer of economic health and a measure of excess. 

Let me explain. Back in the Bubble period of the 1980s, materialism went berserk; big companies issued juicy bonuses twice (sometimes thrice) yearly to their workers and a newly-arrived foreigner with zip to his name could furnish his home with two or three trips to sodai-gomi collection point. The pickings were fat: Onkyo stereo systems, Panasonic vacuum cleaners, Toshiba refrigerators, heated tables, snowboards, scuba diving gear, pachinko machines, suitcases filled with dildos (sighted), many of them abandoned for no fault of their own other than they had ‘lost their sheen.’

The ghosts of those ‘gaijin gomi hunters’ still haunt the late night and early morning junk piles, or what little there is of them. See, now that company bonuses are down, only really boro-boro household appliances are released from servitude. Which leaves the professional scrap metal collectors to fight over the greasy microwaves, bent futon poles, cracked coffee makers and wheezing electric fans. It’s a solemn and less sartorial species of man who does this job. 

I pulled my sodai-gomi duty last week. By some weird design, I was paired with Smokin’ Joe Matsumoto, my friend the old kitchen gardener who lives down the street. For three times a year we get to play Big Kahunas of the junk heap, greeting our neighbors, helping them with their empty beer cans, bottles and newspapers, reaping news of who has died, gotten married, gotten divorced or gotten a hip replacement, and generally facilitating this ‘bush telegraph’ until 8 a.m. arrives and we split for coffee and cigarettes. 

Some observations: low-malt (cheap) beer consumption is up, so is cheap Chilean red wine, sake is down, newspaper readers are down, too. In fact, year on year, the size of our trash heaps grows smaller. Blame it on a languishing economy? Or maybe a disappearing neighborhood?

“Old people think old. If it’s not broken, they don’t throw it away. If it is, they mend it,”  says Smokin Joe. He lights up, puffing thoughtfully. “A lot of elderly still believe in “Tsukumogami,” the ‘Gods of Useless Things.’ They believe that when a tool or a container or a piece of kitchenware reaches the 100th year of its working life, it receives a soul. And that must be respected.” 

Tsukumogami belong to the yokai world of Japanese ghosts, goblins and other mythical trouble-makers, and while they’re generally harmless, they can be mischievous, says Smokin. “They can take revenge on owners who are wasteful or thoughtless.”

Days later, in the cool depths of the Himeji Museum Library, I found an example of the Tsukumogami yokai: the Boroboroton—or possessed futon. 

Borboroten, Courtesy of Wikipedia

It warned against leaving your futon out in the rain, eating food or spilling drink on it, forgetting to air it and clean it, for on one dark stormy night it will rise up, toss you out, entwine itself about your head and neck and strangle your worthless, lazy bones! The caption beneath this horrifically graphic depiction read, “A Boroboroton will come to life when feeling ignored or needless.” Fair enough. Other potential mutineers in your household are the Kameosa (possessed sake jar), the Zorigami (possessed clock) or the Ichiren-bozu (animated prayer beads).

And may the Gods of Useless Things have mercy on your soul should you do wrong by your Yamaoroshi. I couldn’t think of anything messier than a fight with a possessed radish grater. 

Ouch

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You can read more dispatches from the author’s blog at Seaweed Salad Days.

For more of Simon Rowe’s work on this website, click here.

Seventh Writing Competition Results: Australia Prize (Simon Rowe)

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 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 the competition judges, the skillfully-crafted verses in this delightful piece masterfully evoked tactile sensations of previous visits to the western side of Kyoto city. Readers follow the path of a tourist rickshaw winding its usual route, providing a well-narrated tour of one of Kyoto’s traditional sections. However, the subtle rapture of pulling a kimono-clad beauty inspires poetic fantasies in the young man doing the work. The rickshaw puller is rewarded with an unexpected, but hoped for, surprise.

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Diary of a Rickshaw Puller

At Togetsukyo Bridge
awaiting customers
faces reflected in water

School excursion —
blue, white, and freshly laundered
a carnival passes me by

Lovingly polished
wheels of chrome, lacquer wood
who’ll ever know?

Sipping hot coffee
quickly —
a customer!

Her slender feet
white rabbits beneath
a peach kimono

Sunlight on her nape
my breath quickens
as I join the morning traffic

On a forest path
her sigh — or mine?
scent of bamboo

At Nonomiya Shrine —
care to make a wish
for love?

Nearing Jojakkoji Temple
a bush warbler sings
she speaks of a husband

Mountain breeze —
tailwind to Takiguchidera
her husband in Tokyo!

Uphill to Nisonin Temple
dew on hydrangeas
sweat beads my brow

Matcha ice cream —
her glistening lips
beneath a kiosk parasol

Passing Rakushida
ghost of Basho smiles
life is poetry!

At Seiryoji Temple
a lotus pond
from mud a flower blooms

Crossing railway lines
gently —
so as not to startle her

Towards Togetsukyo Bridge
my heart
a pounding drum

Alighting riverside
her hand in mine
coolness of silk

A school excursion —
her smiling face lost
in a river of blue

In my hand
folding faces of Fukuzawa
a phone number inside!

Bamboo Grove in Sagano, Western Kyoto (Photo by Karen Lee Tawarayama)

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

What Japan’s 1,150-year-old Gion Festival can teach us about sustainability

Funaboko – courtesy of Gionfestival.org

By Kirsty Kawano (written for Zenbird in August 2021)

For more than one thousand years, Kyoto has held Japan’s biggest festival, the Gion Festival. In a regular year, throughout the month of July, more than one million people crowd into downtown Kyoto City to experience the street stalls, the towering wooden floats adorned with gorgeous antiquities from the Silk Road, their parade and the constant jangle of ancient music. All this happens amid the oppressive heat and damp of the rainy season.

It began in 869 on the directive of the emperor, with the aim of appeasing the gods at a time when epidemics had ravaged the city three times that decade. Despite centuries of change, the festival continues. We talk with author Catherine Pawasarat about why the festival has lasted so long and what it can teach us about living sustainably.

Pawasarat has studied the festival for decades, since living in the community during the 1990s. Her book, “The Gion Festival: Exploring Its Mysteries,” is the first comprehensive English-language guide to the festival. Much of its content is new even to the Japanese public and is born of the close relationships that she has maintained with festival organizers.

Community pride and commitment

One of the keys to the festival’s sustainability, Pawasarat says, is its connection to community. “The neighborhoods are really proud of their floats and their history and they really want it to continue and they are really willing to commit themselves to helping it continue.”

There are currently 34 floats, which are assembled, maintained and displayed by residents of each of the various neighborhoods. In its heyday, the kimono industry was the backbone of this area, and of the festival. It was the kimono merchants’ display of wealth and stature that adorned the floats with artworks that include textiles from as far away as Europe. They would close their businesses for the month of July so that their employees could devote themselves to working on the festival, instead, Pawasarat says. The decline of the kimono industry has robbed the festival of that reliable patronage and workforce.

Urban flight is also taking a toll. Costly inheritance taxes make it hard to keep local buildings in the family. And as downtown real estate prices skyrocket, it’s more profitable to build a parking lot or an apartment building than to maintain one of the traditional buildings that the communities usually use to house their floats.

“The apartments are being bought by Tokyo people who want to come and spend the weekend in Kyoto, but they don’t necessarily have a link to the Gion Festival. So that’s a big challenge right now that the festival has never experienced before.”

Adaptability and autonomy are crucial to survival

Many of the neighborhoods are staying afloat by adapting to these changes. Pawasarat gives the example of how the Koi-yama float made the opening of a big apartment building work with its needs. “They did it very skillfully. Every person who moved in was given a packet of information about the Koi-yama float and the Gion Festival and they were invited to participate. And they managed to do it in such a way that it’s mutually supportive with the traditional residents and is working quite well.” 

Modern technology is also being used. Two floats that have been reconstructed in order to rejoin the festival (Taka-yama and Ofune-boko) have used crowdfunding to do that, Pawasarat says. It enabled them to receive donations from all over Japan. The festival’s “chimaki” talismans are also being sold online now, particularly while the parades and street stalls have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some communities have created online, 3D videos that explain their floats.

Another key to the sustainability of the overall festival is the number of floats. It means, for example, that the loss of the two floats mentioned above, due to a large fire in 1864, didn’t threaten the existence of the event. In modern times, too, as many of the floats struggle with common challenges, they can learn from each other. Within that camaraderie, the independence that each float has is also crucial to the festival’s continuity.

“There are now 34 floats, and they do all have a fair bit of autonomy in terms of self-direction, deciding how they want to do their float, how they want to organize, and so on. I think that really makes for great sustainability,” Pawasarat says.

That autonomy allows adaptability. It has meant that while some of the floats stick stoically to the principle of not permitting women to take a hands-on role, some are now including them, particularly as musicians.

“In some cases it comes down to these little girls that are just like, ‘Dad, I really want to play music.’ And the Dad is like, ‘OK, honey, I’ll ask.’ And if people say ‘yes,’ then it all changes. It’s kind of amazing,” Pawasarat says. “That freedom within the structure helps a lot in terms of sustainability.” Click here to continue reading.

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For more about the Gion Festival, be sure to visit Catherine Pawasarat’s site here.

Click here to read more about Kirsty Kawano and her writing.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Tool of the Deity

by Lisa Twaronite Sone

Sweeping the dust, that used to be my job at Hounji.

I also worked as a maid at a nearby hotel, but I liked being outside. So when my shifts there were over, I would walk over to the temple, pick up a broom and sweep for hours.

It didn’t pay much, but it was an easy job compared to making beds and scrubbing toilets. Sweeping was almost like meditation to me: swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, day after day, month after month, watching the seasons change.

I swept up the litter that collected next to the stone pillars supporting the old wooden buildings, and I swept the fallen leaves beneath the cluster of tall trees in the garden. Whenever it rained, I used the free water from the sky to sweep the grime off the paving stones. In winter, I tried to sweep away the snow as it fell, so it wouldn’t accumulate. In summer, I would sweep up the dead earthworms baked onto the pathways, where they had stranded themselves in a vain attempt to escape the relentless heat. I rarely looked up, only down, so I eventually came to know every square meter of Hounji’s ground as well as I knew my own body.

Hounji belongs to the Jodo sect but most visitors come to pray to its resident deity, a large stone known as Kikuno Daimyojin. The characters of the stone’s name mean “chrysanthemum field,” but some people think it was once written with kanji meaning “sharp,” which would make more sense. Kikuno-san’s sharp edges are said to have the power to cut away misfortune and bad relationships.

A few times a year, foreign tourists would wander off busy Kawaramachi Street into Hounji, and I had a chance to practice my English with them.

They always asked the same question, as they snapped photos of the straw dolls impaled with iron spikes that covered every inch of the temple’s lower walls.

“Is it….black magic? Voodoo?” 

I would nod. That’s not exactly what it was, but it was close enough.

I had memorized some basic information about Hounji, which I recited for them.

“This place was a battlefield in the Onin War, so it had many demons. In 1567, the holy priest Genrenja Nenyo calmed the demons and built a hermitage here for people with disturbed minds. Kikuno-san is a spiritual stone deity that was believed to walk around the city of Kyoto before settling here.”

I then tried to explain what they clearly wanted to know most.

“People seek Kikuno-san’s help with separation. The straw dolls represent what they wish to separate from. Sometimes they want to separate from a person, so they wrap the person’s hair around the doll. They nail it to the building with their prayers.”

My description usually satisfied them. When it didn’t, my English was rarely good enough to understand their followup questions. And even when I understood what they were asking, I usually didn’t know the answers. I was only the sweeper. 

I’m not sure, but I think the proper way to pray to Kikuno-san was to purchase the straw doll and the iron stake from Hounji. How else would the temple stay in business and pay its expenses, like my wages? I never had a reason to buy a doll myself, but I figured the information was probably posted in the temple office somewhere, or maybe people had to phone the priest.

Of course, people came with their own homemade dolls and nailed them to the building – often secretly after dark, but sometimes in broad daylight. And in addition to hair, they attached other objects to their dolls, even though they weren’t supposed to: documents, shreds of cloth, even food, like dried fish or plums, or partially consumed bread with jagged bite marks.

Someone at the temple – I never knew who – would remove the dolls adorned with anything besides hair, and they also periodically took down the old dolls to make room for the new ones.

I almost never spoke to any of the visitors leaving offerings, but some of them wanted to speak to me. Maybe they thought having a witness would increase the odds that their prayers would be answered?

“I’m putting a curse on my boss!” declared one young man in a business suit, brandishing his straw doll with a few white hairs wrapped around it. But then he stopped and blushed a deep red, and turned away from me – why? Was he lying, and ashamed? Were his prayers really aimed at separating from someone else in his life?

One middle-aged couple came together, and greeted me pleasantly. “We’re not here to curse anyone – we’re just praying to the deity to separate us from our bad luck,” the man said with a smile, but I noticed their doll was wrapped in so much hair that it completely covered most of the straw. Their “bad luck” obviously had a human form.

The majority of supplicants were women. Even though I stared at the ground as usual, it was impossible not to notice them: rich ladies in expensive silk kimono or the latest designer dresses, students carrying backpacks full of books, and workers wearing plain uniforms and cotton aprons like mine; high heels, zori, leather boots, and cheap plastic sandals covered their feet, as they marched, trudged or crept forward, all of them begging Kikuno-san to separate them from their troubles.

One chilly day in early spring, a tiny, elderly woman scuttled past me. She was wearing a bright green coat with a reddish orange woolen hat and matching scarf, the color of nandina berries in winter. I thought those colors seemed much too showy for someone of her age.

Something made me look closer at the straw doll in her hands, and I was horrified to see a baby’s pacifier bound to it with strands of thick, black hair.

My first thought was that she was someone’s mother-in-law, trying to get rid of her son’s wife – this was a common scenario. But cursing a baby was going too far! I decided to do something I had never done before, and speak up.

“Excuse me!” I said. “You can’t leave such objects here! Only straw dolls and hair are allowed.”

She turned to face me, and I was startled to see she looked younger than I was – really no more than a child herself. I had mistaken her for an old woman from the side because of her stooped posture and the deep lines of the frown on her face, which I now saw was tracked with tears.

“It’s my own hair,” she whispered, squinting beneath her furrowed brow. “I want to separate from something inside my body. And I wanted to make sure the deity understands this, so it doesn’t think I’m putting the curse on myself.”

I understood immediately. 

She lowered her eyes. “My doctor said there’s a law, so he can’t help me without my husband’s permission. And it’s not…it’s not my husband’s.”

I didn’t ask whose baby it was. Was she an unfaithful young bride? Or maybe she wasn’t married at all, and a man had forced himself on her? Or had she eagerly consented because no one had ever explained to her exactly what might happen? And now she knew, too late.

“Don’t worry! You’re hardly the first young woman in your situation. There are lots of people in this city who can help you.”  

I took a pencil stub out of my apron pocket, and then fished around for paper. I found an old store receipt and scribbled an address on the back. 

I pressed the paper into her hand. “There’s a midwife in Fushimi. Ring the bell and ask for old Mrs. Saito. She’s very kind and gentle, and she won’t ask you any questions. You can pay her bit by bit afterward. She’ll even do it far along, but that’s much more expensive.” I glanced down at her belly – was it slightly protruding? “Don’t wait. Go as soon as you can.”

Then I looked up at her face, and was astonished to see a completely different person before me.

The shadows under her eyes and around her mouth had completely disappeared, or maybe they were just less visible because of the way her smile tightened her cheeks. It seemed as if her skin had actually changed color somehow, from ashen gray to milky white, and her eyes were now wide open, fringed with long lashes. She was actually beautiful. 

She stepped forward, and for a moment, I was afraid she was going to kneel in the dust at my feet. Instead she did something even more unexpected: she clasped my hand in both of hers, and vigorously shook it, like a Western businessman closing a deal in a movie.

“Sorry for being so dramatic, but you saved my life! If I didn’t miscarry soon, I was going to buy a train ticket for somewhere far away and walk into the sea. I thought every doctor everywhere would just say what mine said, about the law.”

“I’m glad to help. I guess you didn’t need to do that after all,” I said, gesturing at the doll she still grasped in her hands. 

“Of course I needed to do it – I came here with my offering, and Kikuno-san sent you to me! You’re a tool of the deity, and it answered my prayers.”

She handed me her doll, its straw slightly damp with her tears and sweat, and I took it. I would put it in my pile of sweepings, to be burned later. 

This happened a long time ago. I worked at the hotel until it was torn down, and the Ritz-Carlton now stands where it used to be.  I still sweep at Hounji sometimes, and I suppose I’ll keep doing it as long as I’m able.

Visitors still ask Kikuno-san for help, but the temple ended its doll ritual sometime back in the ‘80’s. They can now buy a ceramic disc and write their separation wishes on it and then smash it with a stone, which I suppose must feel satisfying – but probably not as satisfying as pounding an iron spike through hair and straw.

I think about the young woman from time to time, and even though I never saw her again I can still picture her face. I remember feeling sad for the little life inside her, about to end before it drew its first breath. What I recall most, though, was her transformation – her shining face, and her insistence that her own life had just been saved.

And I’ll never forget the lightness of my own heart that day, as I swept away our footprints in Hounji’s dust. 

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To learn more about Lisa, check out this interview with her.

To learn more about Hounji, please see an English explanation here.

Seventh Writing Competition Results: Solidarity Prize (Vladyslava Konotopets)

The world watches with anger and great sadness as Russia continues its months-long bombardment of the Ukrainian people and their infrastructure. While much of the violence appears to have shifted to the eastern regions, Kyiv residents were shocked when explosions once again rocked the country’s capital at the beginning of June.

For those of us who are based in tranquil Kyoto, it is impossible to truly grasp the daily horrors faced by the Ukrainian people who are forced to hide or make the decision to flee, as well as those in the country’s ever-growing diaspora who fear for their loved ones’ safety on the home front. We recognize the heroic bravery of those who have remained or returned to stand firm with pride for their country’s independence. One such individual is Vladyslava Konotopets, who studied abroad in Kyoto from September 2019 to February 2020 and submitted a contribution to this year’s Kyoto Writing Competition. Vladyslava’s husband was required to leave their home to defend Ukraine when the war began, and since that time she and her parents have taken a proactive role in aiding the soldiers and freedom fighters.

We recognize the love that Vladyslava holds for her country and for Kyoto, and we admire her unwavering positive mindset. Therefore, the decision was made to award her a special “Solidarity Prize” for her contribution to our competition. Writers in Kyoto stands in solidarity with the Ukrainian people in this very difficult time. We desire a swift end to the war and wish for the continued health and safety of all who have been affected.

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Blooming Ukrainian Freedom

Now I am standing and breathing Ukrainian air of freedom during the war. The spring has come, and I feel that our lives will blossom as well as starting-to-bloom flowers. I am diving in the memories of my well-being when living in Kyoto a few years ago. My native Kyiv and Kyoto are twin cities, or as Japanese say, shimaitoshi. I know and feel it with my entire heart. The soul of Kyoto is so close to Ukraine’s capital – It is pure, strong and authentic. In Kyoto you keep in touch with nature, history and modern civilization, just as if you became a small part of Japanese history, especially the Heian period. You admire Kiyomizu-dera, Shimigamo shrine, contemplate with Murasaki Shikibu about the future… You ask yourself: “Am I in the miracle?”

Then there is the sudden noise of bombing and a return to reality. “The miracle will be to survive, to stay alive despite the scorching breath of death,” sounds in my head, but I am not afraid of this thought. I very often hear bombing and shooting outside, but there are things I know for sure: This unfair war is unable to stop the charming spring, and death cannot overpower life and the soul’s memories. I will remember my time spent in Kyoto forever. I will be strong enough to wait for peace, to do everything for Ukraine`s victory (its blooming), and for my next journey to the Land of the Rising Sun.

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Vladyslava Konotopets was born and raised in Kyiv, where she married her soulmate. She works remotely at the local university and continues her efforts to build her future, as well as that of her country. She wrote in a follow-up email:

It’s impossible to imagine a meaningful life without peace and freedom, so I appreciate the recollection of living, studying and working in Kyoto. The friendship between our cities has grown stronger and deeper. The war has shown very clearly who the real friends and brothers of the Ukrainian people are.”

Writers in focus

Spirit of Shizen

“Spirit of Shizen – Japan’s nature through its 72 seasons” is an exhibition to be held this summer at Luxembourg’s Natural History Museum (www.mnhn.lu). The accompanying catalogue constitutes an anthology featuring essays and contributions by several WiK members (Amy Chavez, Karen Lee Tawarayama, Mayumi Kawaharada, Ted Taylor, Ed Levinson, Rebecca Otowa, Amanda Huggins, Jann Williams, Robert Weis, John Einarsen, Mark Hovane), as well as other writers of international fame (Pico Iyer, Naoko Abe, Yuri Ugaya, Sébastien Raizer, Bruce Hamana, Patrick Colgan, Marc Peter Keane). 

We are pleased to introduce here an excerpt by Amy Chavez, who takes us on a journey through a year’s worth of seasons on a small island in the Seto Inland Sea. (Robert Weis)

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Seasons of the Seto Inland Sea
by Amy Chavez

Spring comes early to Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. During winter, the 250 inhabited islands lay hunkered under a blanket of cold clouds. In line with the Chinese calendar, spring arrives in February, when the islands emerge from the mist like stars in a twilight sky.

On Shiraishi Island, plum trees reach towards the nascent rays of the sun and when the fragrance of plum blossoms mingles with the smell of the sea, the elderly are drawn from their cold dark houses to search for spring in their Japanese gardens. In the morning sun, they sit on the edge of the wooden veranda at the back of the house, slippered feet propped on the top of stepping stones. There they gaze upon wrinkled pines, leafy azalea bushes, melting pond ice and stone lanterns still too cold to touch. Beyond the garden, wild mountain cherries will soon sway pink next to stalks of young bamboo. In the front yards of these grand old homes, beyond their entrance gates, the lonely beach waits for summer.

When shore birds steal fruit from mulberry trees and splotches of lavender guano appear on the docks, spring is giving way to the wet season. Rain dribbles down masts, soaks hydrangea stems, and lotus leaves bead up. Dampened weeds—nourished—stretch taller, insects frolic in the growth.

It’s time for the locals to shoulder a wooden boat and carol through the fields: “Root eaters, leaf-eaters, we send you all away!” The vessel, once full of the guilty pests, is carried to the beach and pushed off-shore. Rid of crop-destroying insects for another year, the planters plant and the fishermen make offerings to the Goddess of the Sea. The Shinto priest blesses the water to make it safe for swimming.

In the port, mullet fish jump: once, twice. A raptor trills, a seagull swoops, a heron screeches in the summer night. Fishermen clamber into boats, glide out past the lighthouse, out with the tide, out until they can no longer be seen. They return in the dark of the night; still they cannot be seen. Voices carry across the water as they chatter away half-hitching their boats, sorting their catches—tonguefish, sea bass, red snapper—and lay them in shallow wooden boxes. They’re stacked, loaded (ice jiggling), and readied for the fish markets on the mainland. As the captain leaves the port, the mast light bobs and blinks like a firefly crossing a stream. The fishermen’s day complete, they walk home to dream the rest of the night away with their families. 

When the birds pluck figs from branches and drop the seeds onto the decks, the typhoons are nigh. The swirling storms warn ferries to stop and fishermen to secure their boats with long hawsers fore and aft; they stretch across the port like giant spider webs. Gales mount, halyards clink against masts, islanders crouch inside their dark houses. When caterwauling waves flatten to foam and the tailwinds disappear, red spider lilies bloom. 

It’s almost the Autumn equinox, a time to visit the ancestral graves on the hill. Chrysanthemums placed, mantras intoned, incense burned next to beer and sake. The wind stirs, the sea wells, crested waves jump over the sea like white rabbits.

“Washoi, washoi!” shout costumed islanders to the background of screechy festival music. They are pulling a mikoshi, wooden and wheeled, up the steep slope to the Shinto shrine. They haul from the front, they heave from the back, they strain against the creaking weight. When the procession passes under the stone torii gate, they bow to the four main gods, protectors of the island, and invite them into the palanquin. The exalted guests of the day are escorted to Ebisu Shrine (deity of fishermen), Kompirasan Shrine (deity of seafarers), and treated to a dance of shrine maidens performed on the beach by elementary school girls wearing scarlet lips, red robes and white tabi socks. 

Mikan oranges, chestnut rice, the sweet potato harvest. With full bellies, folks lay on the ground and watch the pampas grass plumes nearly touch the sky and the Harvest moon rise over the sea.

It’s the height of kōyō, but the trees don’t dare flaunt their autumn colors in front of the stately green pines posing in front of the blue Seto Inland Sea. In the offing, flat topped boats crouch under long nets as they’re lifted over frames to release their green-jeweled strands: ichiban nori—the first seaweed harvest of the season. Closer to shore, a fisherman muscles his net of flopping sea bass into his boat’s fishhold, while an octopus tentacle stretches out of the opposite hold, testing the possibilities of escape. 

Rice cakes, temple cleaning, the toll of the New Year bell. Tossing aluminum coins into offering boxes: they bounce on their sides, heads and tails, down the sloping pallets until they land “toink!” on the bottom. Hands clapped together, eyes closed, prayers recited. They pay their debts, wish their neighbors well.

Battledores melt into black smoke, sacred sakaki branches curl and sizzle, Shinto ropes fray and smolder, and bamboo stalks pop as New Year decorations are cremated, sent back up to the gods in puffs of smoke. Rice cakes and orange dai-dai fruit slump in the ashes. From the final embers, they will be skimmed out, pulled open between gloved fingers, and their warm flesh shared among the participants. The pearl white drops of melting rice and the dripping orange pulp are treats to bring them health and good luck for the coming year. 

The elderly amble home in the evening, step onto their wooden verandas and into their homes, not to emerge again until the fragrance of plum blossoms mingles with the smell of the sea. The islands retreat into the silver-blue mist, snuffed out like stars on a cloudy night.

Jazz and The Spoken Word

by Ted Taylor

A few years back, renowned guitarist Joshua Breakstone came up with the idea of doing some jazz and poetry nights, where local poets could join his band on stage.  We’d start in Kyoto, and if it went well, we’d try to expand it to other cities in Japan, and liaise with local creatives there.  Pandemic restrictions delayed the event for a while, but the first one was held last December, before a sold out audience.  WiK members Mayumi Kawaharada and Robert Yellin gave terrific performances. 

I reflected afterward that poetry is a medium that is better spoken than simply read, for it is in performance that verse really comes alive.   Test this theory for yourself, as we will return to Kyoto’s Bond’s Rosary on July 1st.  A Tokyo event will hopefully follow later in the year.  

Below are the haiku I read at that December event.  The Kenneth Rexroth essay was edited together from a few sources.  The haiku were split into two sets, Autumn and Winter.  

REXROTH INTRO:

“What is jazz poetry? It isn’t anything very complicated to understand. It is the reciting of suitable poetry with the music of a jazz band, usually small and comparatively quiet. Most emphatically, it is not recitation with “background” music. The voice is integrally wedded to the music and, although it does not sing notes, is treated as another instrument, with its own solos and ensemble passages.  […] It comes and goes, following the logic of the presentation, just like a saxophone or piano… 

…Poetry and jazz gain new and different dimensions in association. Poetry has always gained by association with music . . . ancient China, Japan, India, Greece, the troubadours and minnesingers and scalds. […] Jazz poetry reading puts poetry back in the entertainment business, where it was with Homer and the troubadours. […] Poetry gains from jazz an audience of widely diversified character, people who are seriously concerned with music, but who do not ordinarily read verse and who care nothing for the conflicts and rituals of the literary scene. […] Jazz poetry gets poetry out of the classrooms and into contact with large audiences who have not read any verse since grammar school.

…[Here] the voice [becomes] another instrument in the band.  […] The reciting, rather than singing voice, if properly managed, swings more than an awful lot of vocalists.  With a poet who understands what is going on, they are not at the mercy of a vocalist who wants just to vocalize and who looks on the band as a necessary evil at best.  [The] emotional complexity of good poetry provides the musician with continuous creative stimulus, but at the same time gives him the widest possible creative freedom… 

… This poetry and jazz combination is harder work than either of the arts taken separately. 

 Jazz poetry is an exacting, cooperative, precision effort, like mountaineering. Everybody has to be perfectly coordinated; […] everybody has to be as socialized as six men on a rope working across the face of a cliff…

…[Thus] the combination of jazz and poetry requires good poetry, competent recitation, everybody in the group really digging what everybody else is doing, and, of course, real tasty music. Then it’s great, and everybody loves it, ‘specially you, baby.”

AUTUMN:

1.
Shinadani’s Treasures 
Lay scattered on the ground 
Crimson and gold.


2.
Yellow leaves 
Shown no regard
By men in grey suits.


3.
All that ripens
Must eventually fall.
Deepening autumn.


4.
Under a stone Buddhas sixth century gaze,
The temple’s lunch bell
Rings from a microwave.


5.
Trees speak of autumn. 
But winter too has a voice, 
Whispered on a slate grey sea.


6.
Under autumn’s perfection, 
My feet follow the ancient road, 
Bound-up in concrete.


7.
Gray obscures the edges,
As winter bides her time.
Days away, days away...

WINTER:

8.
Double-helix of steam
Rises from my coffee,
DNA of the day ahead.


9.
Across a gentle canvas of
A soft winter sunset,
I spilled my ink.


10.
Nothing growing   
In winter paddies  
But the shadows of running boys



11.
Sitting in the mountains,
Giving my life away
With every exhale.


12.
Wild grasses
Grow from cold moss
On Iwabune’s stone lantern.



13.
No rain,
But the clouds are daring you
To make plans.


14.
Flickering warmth
Helps stave off up to
12 centuries of cold.


15.
Old man in white mask
Covers his mouth
When he coughs.


16.
Resolution found,
The bickering weather gods
Settle on snow.


17.
In old Kyoto,
What is the 'kigo'
For tourist season?



18.
Young cut cedars, 
Thick as my leg,
To be used in the New Years celebrations.



19. 
Of a year on the wane,
Traces washed away by 
Sake and rain.


20.
Counting syllables
Will certainly cause you to 
Leave a haiku un...









							
	

KANAZAWA —A novel by David Joiner

Review by Rebecca Otowa

I wanted to read and review this book for two reasons. First, I was captivated by the very attractive cover illustration by Kawase Hasui. Second, I myself had visited the city of Kanazawa in 2021 – though my visit was short, I did manage to see some of the more important sights, such as the old quarters, the castle, and Kenrokuen Garden, in, as it happened, the height of cherry blossom season. It gave the impression of a city that would repay many visits, in many seasons. I thought the novel would help me learn more about it.

Kanazawa seemed to me to be a very civilized place, with plenty of art, beauty and culture. But also, it seemed very dark. The dark and cold of the long winters seemed to produce an atmosphere that hung over the city even when warm and decorated with gorgeous blossoming trees. As well as culture, Kanazawa has within its bones the atmosphere of blizzards blowing from cold Korea and China across the Japan Sea, a very different feeling from those other cities – Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe – which face the bright Pacific and the dawn in the east. It is also near the looming mountain known as Hakusan, which forms the backdrop for many of the scenes in the novel.

Reviewing fiction always has the possibility of spoiler alerts, and doubly so here, with so many people in this group and elsewhere that have a deep connection with this city. But I will do my best, without giving away (I hope) too much of the novel. 

This, to me, was a story of longing. It is the story of two couples, a Western man, Emmitt, and his Japanese wife Mirai, and her mother and father, all living in the same house in Kanazawa. They all long for different things. There are many sparsely drawn but affecting scenes of the young people’s marriage, each partner longing and hoping for some fulfillment in life, and both suffering when they realize that the separate longings they have may take them away from each other. Meanwhile, the father longs to return to a talent he gave up years ago, which deepened his relationship with his wife, and she, in her turn, longs to be part of the revivification of famed Kanazawa writer Izumi Kyoka through the English translation of his works, in which she hopes to be assisted by her son-in-law. 

Even Izumi Kyoka himself longed – for his mother, who died when he was very young; “that longing motivated his works. It gave his writing distinction.” This is a story containing lots of literary and artistic references. The mother and her foreign son-in-law have literature in common; the father and daughter, the visual arts (he drawing and she flower arrangement). This seems to be a microcosm of Kanazawa itself, with its rich cultural history. Most of the characters in the novel are either actively involved in some artistic pursuit, or take its existence and importance for granted. 

In another way Kanazawa provides a rich backdrop for the story of these four people. There is always the push-pull between modernity and tradition. Some of the characters are fascinated by the past, and the beauty of the traditional, either within their own lives or in that of the city; others are attracted to other places far away, especially Tokyo. The foreign protagonist wants to stay in Kanazawa for a simple reason: he feels he has only scratched the surface of a city he feels instinctively to be his spiritual home. He is fascinated by the glimpses of tradition he sees all around him. He also becomes captivated by the natural beauty around the small hot spring town of Shiramine, at the foot of Hakusan, and his fate becomes unexpectedly tied to this town after an impulsive decision.

Meanwhile the father-in-law has been injured, and to rehabilitate himself, starts taking long walks. He also gets in trouble for his obsessive drawing of the statues found around Kanazawa. It seems to me that he is resisting getting older, with all its changes: changing relationships with his grown children, and his decreasing ability to rely on his own body. He fixates on the idea of climbing Hakusan, where a friend died years ago. This longing of his affects Emmitt, who himself has been thinking of climbing the mountain. When the family are at Shiramine, the father suddenly disappears, and finding him again entails both men climbing part of the mountain, which results in some secrets from the past being uncovered and also in some surprising supernatural occurrences.  

This novel leaves the impression of delicately interwoven human relationships set against the rather tough and perhaps even harsh background of unremitting tradition, the imperatives of the past, and the unmoving mountain. Many themes appear, including the choices and compromises necessary in marriage, the beauty of nature and art, and the twists and turns one must go through if one is to find one’s true calling in life. 

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

Kanazawa is published by Stone Bridge Press and is available from amazon or amazon.jp. It is David Joiner’s second novel. See his homepage.
Rebecca Otowa is author of books on Japan and Reviews Editor for Writers in Kyoto.

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