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Short Story Collective

THE SHORT STORY COLLECTIVE: 13 TALES FROM JAPAN

by Andrew Innes

Available from Amazon in paperback and ebook formats

Review by Rebecca Otowa

This collection of 13 short stories invites the reader to join the author in a challenging navigation of the seas of reality and fantasy. There are twists, turns and illusions galore, and the stories have many different settings and memorable characters.

Hopefully without spoiling things for anyone, the title story, “The Short Story Collective” (which appeared in Best Asian Short Stories 2021), and the final story, “Anger Management”, are connected by a river which is regularly turned into a drunken festival for the resident giant salamanders when a temperamental sake maker throws out a subpar batch. Between these, we are given a tour of many diverse facets of modern Japanese culture, such as the digitally-driven society, for example in “Miss Representation”, in which a hapless English teacher at a liberal university becomes a victim of “cancel culture” for correcting a student’s grammar; “Veritas”, in which a nefarious secret organization, controlling social media, is responsible for ups and downs in the careers of artists; “Digital Opium”, in which a game creator suffers from terrifying illusions; and “Generation C”, in which a teacher resorts to the latest technology to augment a disguise he has assumed in order to get a job.

Andrew Innes says that some of the stories, such as “The Rotten Mikan”, about an English school that suffers under the wrong boss, and “The Gaijin Parade”, about a small-town International Festival, originate from personal experiences. Others are simply the result of his imagination, and an amazing imagination it is. The fantastic daydreams of some of the characters before they are jolted back to reality are captivating.

My own favorite story was “Pattern Separation”, about an ice-cream company whose routine is so soul-crushingly boring that the workers start experiencing fractures in time. The gradual accretion of time-related disorientations on the part of the workers leads to one of them resorting to a novel action in order to save her own sanity and that of her colleagues. Pandemonium ensues, and we don’t know what really happened until the last line, which reveals the secret of her plan.

As a person who clearly remembers what life used to be like before IT crept into every corner, I liked the description of the farmer who looks to clean up by offering superficial foreign tourists a romp in Nature in “Digital Detox”. And as a person who (like most of us) clearly remembers the problems caused by “overtourism” in Kyoto before Covid, I was carried back to some vicariously embarrassing moments as I read the wince-inducing “When in Rome”, about some YouTuber good-time-Charlies who wreak havoc in the old capital.

One of the most difficult stories for me was “The Koan”, a story of how very unspiritual spiritual pursuits can sometimes be. It wove a web of cynicism that will not soon be forgotten, and ironically, raised the question of how (and whether) a temple-organized, centuries-old ritual ordeal, intended to produce enlightenment, changes the nature of reality for the participant. I guess a story called “The Koan” would understandably be one in which mental contortions are required.

Reading these stories, I was intrigued at how much Andrew Innes expects of the reader, in his rapid alternations between fantasy and reality, and in his subtle foreshadowing technique, which, in many stories, produces an incrementally increasing sense of desperation. These are challenging stories, no doubt about it. They would perhaps fall into a new genre, “Atama no Taiso” (“Mental Exercise”). When you read them, be sure your mental equipment is in good condition.

Also, be ready to be entertained. The large margin by which an arrogant “eco-tourist” misses his own points in “Digital Detox”; the neat way in which an unassuming office worker and her colleagues get the better of an unpleasant boss in “Hole-in-One”; and the broad, happy description of a jovial Australian introducing his culture to rural guests at a small-town “International Festival” by teaching them to say “Where’s me stubby cooler ya dirty drongo?”, as well as other moments, tickle the funny bone.

 The Short Story Collective, in short, is quite a ride. Fasten your seat belt.

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Andrew Innes came to Himeji in 2002 when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the Hanami parties were in full swing. He now works at three universities in Hyōgo and edits the online journal, The Font, where extracts from his book can be found. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and traveling. 

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

An Unveiling

by Malcolm Ledger

A ’phone call brings the unexpected and sad news of the death of a long-time friend … “— melanoma – in the right armpit. By the time it was removed it was already seven millimetres deep. They tried chemotherapy, but it began to spread over the right side of his chest…and after a while, the medicine didn’t work anymore. He died just before his seventy-seventh birthday, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.”

Cancer – a malignancy growing uncontrollably in the body, relentless, implacable foe – from which, Good Lord, deliver us. And another friend gone, never to be seen again.

Shoichi spoke matter-of-factly about Zack, his Jewish-American lover. They had been together more than forty years, and I had known them for thirty-five -– kindred spirits in an anti-gay world. But in Japan, life in a big city meant that no one bothered or cared. Gay bashing was unheard of. For the ordinary person gay people simply didn’t exist, though there was in fact a thriving underworld. No priest gave sermons about “perversion” or corrupting the young, and there were no tabloid headlines screaming that some well-known Japanese celebrity or other was gay. Professionally, discretion meant acceptance.

Shoichi already seemed to have come to terms with Zack’s death. He spoke calmly, and there were no sobs or hysterics. The demands of everyday life had already re-asserted themselves.

“Because Zack was an Orthodox Jew, he can’t be cremated or buried in a coffin. His body will be taken to the synagogue and members of the congregation will wash it clean there. Then it will be sewn into a shroud and lowered into the grave, where the Rabbi will be waiting to receive it. Sometime after that, when his headstone is ready, it will be ‘unveiled’.  Would you like to attend the unveiling?”

I accepted, and on a hot, sunny May 5th, Children’s Day, (a national holiday), made my way to the small synagogue high up on a hill, discreetly out of the way. One of their Japanese friends was already waiting outside, holding a bunch of lilies. We were early. Shoichi arrived soon afterwards wearing a suit. There was a large gold signet ring tightly squeezing the ring finger on his left hand. It had obviously been there a long time. Going in, I noticed, just inside the right of the doorway and nailed at an angle, an oblong container, the mezuzah, containing passages of scripture from Deuteronomy.

It seems that the angle at which it was fixed was something of a compromise between two Rabbis, one who thought that is should be fixed horizontally, in accord with the way scrolls were placed in cracks by a doorway, and another, who thought that it should be vertical, pointing to the Almighty. One of the scriptural passages took me back to my own Anglican church-going days, when the vicar would open the service by intoning the words: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” Comforting words, indeed.

 Inside, there was a spacious hall with tables and chairs for receptions, with an adjoining kitchen and bar. A large photo of an elderly, white-bearded Rabbi looked down from one wall. There were photos or pictures of other esteemed teachers posted elsewhere.

 Shoichi gave me a skullcap to wear and took me to see the sanctuary. Two huge chandeliers with multi-coloured light bulbs hung from the ceiling. It reminded me for a moment of the incongruous chandeliers in Westminster Abbey in London which made the nave look like the lobby of a posh hotel. Comfortable chairs in red velvet stood on either side of an elevated lectern facing an ornate, embroidered hanging. Behind this were concealed the scrolls of the Torah (the law of God, as revealed to Moses, and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures). There was a separate, segregated section at the back for women, who also had their own entrance.

Shoichi explained that the right to carry the Torah around would be “auctioned”. It struck me that since the rich could always outbid the poor, a rota system would certainly be fairer, no matter the need for funds.

He also said that the Rabbi had only recently returned from abroad and it had taken time to assemble the requisite numbers for the ceremony, a quorum of ten adult male Jews, a minyan. For some time, the congregation had been without a Rabbi, but now with his return they could go ahead with Zack’s unveiling.

The Rabbi himself was a great bear of a man, probably in his forties, in a dark suit and wearing a black trilby, and with thick black luxuriant eyebrows that met in the middle. (In Japan, beetle brows are something almost never seen. A barber will shave not only between the eyebrows, but also the eyelids.) The Rabbi’s voluminous beard might have been wire wool. He embraced Shoichi warmly, in a true bear hug. From Israel, he spoke English with a thick, Middle-Eastern accent. Despite his formidable appearance, there was a kindly twinkle in his eye. Obviously, a dedicated man with a vocation.

“When Zack died, it is the Jewish custom to light a candle in remembrance of him for a year”, said the Rabbi. “I buy large candles and when one is nearly finished, light a new one.” An excellent and sensitive custom, it seemed to me. He then switched on the air conditioning and left.

An elderly, retired American, Robert, from New York and his wife, Jacinta, arrived. Dressed in an open-necked shirt, Panama hat and baggy trousers, he was a professor of comparative literature and classical Greek. I noticed that he had lost the tip of his right index finger, but didn’t want to hear the details of how, and didn’t ask. Jacinta wore many rings, painted eyebrows, and a floaty, blue summer frock.

“Are you English?” she asked me, in cut-glass tones that placed her immediately on the European side of the Atlantic.

“Well – British. I don’t think there are any English left, are there? Even the Royal Family isn’t English.”

“You’re probably right. My father was from Scotland, and my mother from Ireland, although my grandfather was Jewish from Latvia.” Then, after a pause, she asked,

 “Do you think I should take this off?” and she lifted up a silver crucifix around her neck. “Robert bought it for me at Notre Dame last year.”

“Why don’t you just cover it up with your shawl?” I suggested. “I’m sure no one would notice or mind.”

She swirled her thin, blue diaphanous shawl around her neck and religious sensitivities were assuaged. Then she said,

“I’ve never understood why James Joyce is regarded as part of the canon of English literature, you know. I don’t think he would have approved.”

“For better or worse, Ireland is part of the British Isles”, I said. “And he did write in English, not Gaelic, though Beckett wrote in French, too.”

“I suppose you’re right” she said.

“How long had you known Zack?” Robert asked.

“About thirty-five years, I think”, I said.

“Do speak up, Bob”, said Jacinta, interrupting. And in an aside to me, “He mumbles so, you know.”

“I inherited it from my mother”, mumbled poor Bob, who obviously had no problems with his hearing.

“Where did you meet?” I asked.

“At a conference somewhere”, he replied, vaguely. “It could have been JALT”, (the Japan Association for Language Teaching). “I was giving a paper on something or other and we became acquainted that way.”

“And now?”

“I’m retired.”

Jacinta said, “I remember when I first came here and ‘phoned a university looking for a position. They said they didn’t have one, when I knew jolly well they did.” Jacinta was still miffed at having been lied to all those years ago.

“It was because she was a woman, you see”, Robert explained. “They thought she would have kids and leave.”

“But when I contacted them again much later, they took me on. How things change, even in this feudal country!”

Gradually, others drifted in.

First, there was Larry, a Charles I look-alike, with goatee, moustache, trilby, and florid, gold-patterned waistcoat. His liquid brown eyes were slightly prominent. His manner was warm, friendly, and welcoming. He went off to make everyone a cup of tea, while his small daughter rode around the hall on a tricycle.

Then came Isaac, a thin, bald man wearing a skullcap and a beige T-shirt and blue slacks.

I was beginning to feel overdressed in a dark suit and tie.

“His Hebrew is better than anyone else’s”, said Larry, bringing back the mugs of tea.

Then Joe came, probably in his fifties, from Michigan, hatted and with a silver beard clipped short. He went off to find something a little stronger than tea, and came back with a bottle of red wine from Israel, and some paper cups.

“There’s Scotch, too, if anyone wants anything stronger”, he said, and began pouring. No one did.

“Zack loved a drink and would have wanted us to celebrate”, said Joe. It was a good excuse.

We toasted Zack.

“Jolly good wine”, said Jacinta. “I suppose it’s kosher.”

“How can wine be kosher?” I asked.

“God knows”, said Joe. “I suppose it’s been blessed or something.”

It was time to leave for the foreigners’ cemetery and we all piled into several cars. Robert, Jacinta, Joe and I sat together. Someone I hadn’t met, drove.

The one-way system meant a considerable detour, but soon we were in the country, driving through forests of deep green maple, higher and higher.

“How long has the graveyard been there?” I asked no one in particular.

“It used to be in a different place”, said Robert, who was sitting next to me.  He seemed to be a long-time resident with considerable local knowledge.

“But then the bodies were disinterred and moved to the present site. I suppose it was too inconvenient to leave them where they were. Land is scarce, you know. It’s said that one man’s grave even contained a gin bottle, and that that was replaced exactly as it was in the new grave.”

“I hope it was empty”, I said, venturing a joke that raised a few laughs.

“Why is this ceremony called an “unveiling” ? Jacinta asked Joe.

“Don’t you call it that?” he asked, surprised. “That’s the only word I know. I’ve been to quite a few, and that’s what we always call it.”

On the way, we were joined by Paul, who began to follow us in a very expensive-looking two-seater red sports car.

“Do they always make that roar?” asked Jacinta, as Paul sped off ahead.

“Yes”, I said. “It’s part of the built-in Envy Index. The louder the one, the greater the other.”

“How much do you suppose one would cost?” she asked.

“About thirty million yen, I should think.”

“Gracious! You could buy a house for that much.”

“Yes, in England you could probably buy two.”

As we approached the cemetery gates, two keepers appeared and opened them. A notice asked all visitors to report via intercom first, but we were expected, and swung up the road to where Paul was already getting out of his enviable red sports car.

He wore a peaked baseball cap, a blue sweater, ripped white jeans, and comfortable, fur-lined carpet slippers, with the confidence that only money can buy.

And lit a cigarette.

No one knew what he did for a living, and were probably afraid to ask. Not surprisingly, he was President of the Jewish Community, though he was probably only in his late thirties. I could imagine who it was that carried around the Torah at services after the “auctions”. He wore a ring on the little finger of each hand. The clipped beard fitted in perfectly with everyone else’s.

The view was paradise itself. Pines, maples, and azaleas in riotous bloom covered the terraced slopes with nothing between the dead and the sunny blue sky above. Carefully maintained paths led from one section to another. Unless you lived in the prefecture, burial here for foreigners was impossible, someone said. Zack had lived elsewhere, but had trusted his friends to get him in, and somehow they had.

His grave, far from being “veiled”, was completely open. A large headstone was engraved with a Star of David and a Hebrew inscription. Below that, Zack’s name, dates, and the year of his death according to the Jewish calendar – 5,775. He was described as Honorary President of the Jewish Community, and a short phrase summarized his character, if that were possible.

All gathered around, and Isaac, not the Rabbi, led the reciting of the Hebrew psalms and the Kaddish, the prayer to sanctify God’s name. Some rocked back and forth as they spoke the words or said “Amen”, as if still in lamentation for the destruction of the Temple by the Roman Emperor Titus in 70.A.D.

Though I understood nothing of what was being said, I was deeply overcome with emotion to think of Zack lying there, stone-cold dead beneath the pebbles, in such a magnificent setting, and on such a glorious spring day, with the birds singing all around him, and to have the devotion and remembrance of such true friends. But I took comfort in thinking that he, too, must have known such days of ungraspable, vivid beauty, in his seventy-six years on this earth.

And I was reminded of another friend, who, when his lover lay unconscious in hospital, dying of an Aids-related illness, on the last dawn of his lover’s life, in a gesture of great sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and compassion, opened the windows around the bed, so that the dying man could hear the birds for the last time, for the sense of hearing is said to be the last to go.

So the quiet recitation went on in the idyllic cemetery, with Isaac matching the psalms with the Hebrew letters in Zack’s name. A stone’s throw away, I could see the Muslim cemetery, with its green crescent moons on the gates, and its rows of identical-looking headstones, and I thought…

“Separate in life, still separate in death. Kings, popes, geniuses, rich, and poor – all equal in death, the one great leveller, but still unable to relinquish the bonds of life, of who and what they were, and what they stood for. As if it mattered any more.”

I was reminded of some Zen monks who once asked their teacher what they should do with his body when he died.

“Just leave it under a hedgerow and get on with your lives”, he replied.

When the recitation was over, and people began to wander back, I took a little time to look at some of the other Jewish graves. The earliest one I could find was dated 1848, twenty years before the Meiji Restoration, one of a family of three. The middle headstone had been cracked sometime in an earthquake and then repaired, though not very well.

There was also a small, pathetic little grave on its own, inscribed, “Died at birth, December 30th, 1965.” I thought of the terrible heartache the parents must have gone through that day, just before the start of the New Year. But on the little grave flourished two large and beautiful pink azalea bushes in full bloom – life eternally renewing itself.

On the way back, we met a late arrival at the cemetery gates. He said he would walk up on foot and join us later. The journey back was much shorter, and we arrived to find the table already set with food and wine, courtesy of the Rabbi’s wife. While we stood around, she busied herself feeding one of her three daughters.

A young Westerner and his young, female, Japanese companion were standing inside, and I spoke to him.

“Are you waiting for the Rabbi?”

“Yes”, he said, in an unexpected German accent that threw me for a moment. “I have an appointment at 4 o’clock.”

“He should be here soon.”

Hearing German in a Jewish synagogue was slightly unnerving, and momentarily I thought of Kristallnacht, November 1938, the night of broken glass, when the Nazis attacked and set fire to synagogues throughout Germany in a frenzy for the death of one of their own. Perhaps it was because I was English – or British, anyway. Or perhaps it was because I was still wearing my skullcap and was beginning to feel a little bit Jewish myself. A friend used to remark to me how people change when they put something to wear on their head, especially a funny hat – not that a yarmulka is a funny hat.

“Are you teaching German?” I asked.

“Yes, and European culture. That’s what I want to see the Rabbi about. I should like him to explain Jewish culture for the benefit of my Japanese students, and to let me videotape him. I also want to explain to them about Chiune Sugihara.”

I recommended a video about the man who, as Vice-Consul in Lithuania during World War II, had saved thousands of Jews by issuing them transit visas, (against the policy of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, it must be said). He already knew about that particular video, however, as well as several others.

I also told him that as a child I used to live in Germany and loved it, especially Christmas and Advent, when every day I would open a different little window on the Advent calendar.  Memories of whipped cream and the pungent aroma of coffee and cigar smoke flooded back. He himself was from Dusseldorf.

“So you speak German?” he asked.

“Used to, fluently, but now have mostly forgotten it. But it’s still in there, rattling around somewhere.”

The Rabbi appeared, but declined to be interviewed, citing his lack of English ability. He suggested Isaac, instead. I sympathized with the difficulties on both sides. The young German man and his silent Japanese lady friend left.

Joe produced another bottle of wine and we fell to toasting Zack again. When the latecomer from the cemetery arrived, another bear of a man, we all sat down to eat: salad, tahini, some green beans, fried potatoes, chicken curry, and good fresh white bread. And, of course, kosher red wine.

“What brought you to Japan?” I asked Joe, who was sitting on my right.

“Buddhism and meditation”, he said, unexpectedly.

“Zen?”

“That’s right. Every morning I chant scripture and meditate.”

Joe was a free spirit, and Judaism was not going to stop him doing what he thought was spiritually beneficial.

“Been here long?” I asked.

“Thirty years or so.”

“Fancy a drop of whiskey?” I tempted.  He looked as if he might appreciate it.

“No, thanks. I’m off it now.”

Why, I didn’t ask.

We were seated at the far end of the table to the Hebrew-speaking group, which had grown by several members, none of them known to me. As everyone tucked in with gusto, conversation was lively.

“I hear that the Spanish government has offered Spanish nationality to anyone whose ancestors were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492”, said Harry. “They want them to come back.”

“So soon?” I asked. “It’s been only – let me see – five-hundred and twenty-three years”, I said, performing a quick mental calculation. It was a glacial pace of change worthy of the Vatican, which had taken only three-hundred and fifty-nine years to apologize for mistakenly convicting Galileo of heresy in 1633.

“And now they want them back?”

“Well, I know my grandfather was Sephardic”, said Jacinta, “but I don’t know if my ancestors were from Spain. It could have been Portugal. I lived in Spain for several years, you know, and sometimes used to talk Spanish with Zack. He could also read Ladino, too, though he couldn’t speak it, of course.

“Were your family conversos?” she asked Harry, as if it had been only yesterday she was talking about and not 15th century Spain.

“Yes”, said Harry.

“What’s your surname?” she asked.

“Cruz.”

“It means ‘Cross’”, said Joe, translating for the non-Spanish speakers.

Conversos were Jews who had converted to Christianity in order to escape persecution. If they relapsed, they were handed over to the Inquisition, for “special treatment”, that is, burning alive. For me, conversos was a word found only in history books. Here, it was something that might appear in everyday conversation, as part of a collective memory stretching back centuries.

“Are you going to take up the offer?” asked Jacinta.

“Yes”, said Harry, though no one asked why.

Eventually one of the men at the far end of the table stood up and asked for silence. He wanted to say a few words about Zack.

“We all knew and loved Zack. He wasn’t always easy to understand”, (he had a slight speech impediment), “but I would visit him in hospital, and he was always optimistic. So imagine my shock when I received a call on the eve of Rosh Hashana saying that he had passed away. I have so many memories of him. It was one of his proud boasts that he had hitchhiked across America seventeen times. He told me that the longest he had ever had to wait for a lift was in Alaska, and that was eight hours. It turned out, unfortunately, that the man who picked him up was driving a stolen car, and he was arrested.” (Laughter) “No charges were brought, though, and he was later released. One of the last things he said to me was never to take advantage of the weak, and I shall carry that with me always.”

We drank to Zack again. Sometime after that, the man who had arrived late at the cemetery stood up to speak, but was quickly overcome with emotion and sat down after saying only a few words. One would never have thought to see such a tough-looking man with tears running down his cheeks. I was quite moved by the sincerity of his emotion, and empathized.

Presently, the meal came to an end, and everyone filed into the synagogue again for parting prayers. Isaac presided authoritatively, facing the embroidered curtain, and the Rabbi sat contentedly to one side.

I don’t know if the service was representative of what normally happens in a Jewish synagogue, but here, people recited the psalms, walked to and fro, looked at their phones, and children ran about as if it were a school playground. Perhaps the Rabbi was a renegade. Isaac surged on, regardless. No one batted an eyelid. I thought it was wonderful to sit so easily to the Almighty, not that I doubted their devotion or commitment. It was simply such a marvellous contrast to the normal, regimented, Christian service, where everyone stands and sits at the same time, and everyone seems so po-faced. I loved it. If this was Orthodoxy, what must Liberal or Reform Judaism be like?

From listening carefully, I also concluded that God is not addressed directly in the liturgy, but referred to as “Hashem” (‘the Name’). I already knew that “El Shaddai”, ”Adonai”, and “Elohim” were epithets expressing different aspects of the Deity, such as Justice or Mercy, but “Hashem” was new to me.

As we left, I noticed Tough Guy go up to the embroidered curtain and embrace it, almost in an act of passion.  Appearances to the contrary, he was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. I was most impressed by his obvious level of devotion to, and love for, his religion.

At the door, a departing Frenchman said, in a friendly, but backhanded way, “I hope never to see you here again!”

“Amen” to that, I thought.

And so the day finally came to a close, having ranged from 15th century Spain, through Nazi Germany, to 21st century Japan, reflecting something of the long and tortuous history of the Jewish people.

Central to all was their devotion to God, to each other, and to the community. I envied Zack that he should have had friends like these, who so genuinely cared about him in both life and death, and couldn’t help thinking, “We should all be so lucky.”

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Rocks, Moss and Waterfalls

From Japan’s Kumano mountains to Luxembourg’s Mullerthal forests

by Robert Weis

Reminiscent of Japan? Photos of the Mullerthal region in Luxembourg (All photos by Robert Weis)


“I got lost even though I know where I am” – these words, from Rebecca Solnit’s intriguing memoir, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, echoed in my head as I continued my solitary walk through the deep forests of the Kumano Mountains. The Kohechi Trail I followed is not uncharted territory; countless hikers and pilgrims have walked these steep slopes over the centuries. But still, I had left behind an entire emotional backpack, and my inner compass had lost its north. In this mental void I certainly felt lost, but it also meant being present, focusing on every step, every tree, every vista on endless ridges of dark green hills and mountains.

The landscape I entered with every step, its deep geography, its intimate essence – the rocks, the mossy ground, the little waterfalls of the mountain streams, all these details seemed to be part of a picture I had seen before. I got lost in these thought trails and knew where I was: suddenly I was walking in my homeland, in shady beech forests, dotted with mossy rocks and small waterfalls. Forest spirits could hide anywhere, under the roots of trees, in dark caves with evocative names like “Hell”, “Robber’s Den”, “The Owl’s Castle”. Legends of the devil, of women dressed in white appearing in moonlight, of goblins digging for fool’s gold, of robber knights waiting for the unwary wanderer, of a weeping cave – these all became a substitute for kami, Shinto forest spirits, cunning fox goddesses, drunken raccoon dogs, and spirits of the unborn that I had encountered in my wanderings through Japanese forests.

The landscape, its genius loci, breathed the same air, the rocks had the same aesthetic quality, the damp, mossy forests the same smell and feel, the little waterfalls the same singing sounds of Nature’s unwritten sutra. Everything flows, and instead of the immense mountains of Kumano, I was now walking on the narrow paths of the forests of the Mullerthal, in Luxembourg, and I had never felt so close to what I loved in the mountains of Japan. The words of a famous fellow traveler came to mind: “Lose the whole world, lose yourself in it, and find your soul.” And I knew where it would always be, in this place that is home, surrounded by rocks, moss and the whisper of water.

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For other outings by Robert Weis, see Mind Games in Arashiyama, or 71 Lessons on Eternity. For more, see his account of a walk from Ohara to Kurama here, or his spiritual journey to Kyoto here. His account of Nicolas Bouvier in Kyoto in the mid-1950s can be read here.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

88 Seconds

by Simon Rowe

Matthew Gordon (WikiCommons)

The biggest robbery in Japanese history occurred on March 5, 2004, in Tokyo’s wealthy Ginza ward. It was carried out by a gang belonging to a loosely-knit criminal group of eastern Europeans who have come to be known as the Pink Panther gang. The loot — the Comtesse de Vendome — has never been recovered. This is a fictionalized reconstruction of the robbery.

Milo Simović brushed back the sleeve of his Armani suit and glanced at his Omega Speedmaster.

11:45 a.m.

The streets of Ginza were already filling with lunchtime crowds. He stepped to the curb and gazed across the street. The Serb was seated at a cafe window counter. She wore a red leather jacket and dark sunglasses and did not acknowledge him.

            Simović looked beyond the skyscrapers of Tokyo’s luxury shopping precinct and into the cloudless March sky. He wondered what the weather was like in Cetinje at that very moment, 4.45 a.m. Montenegro time. His mother would be milking their goats, or stoking the fire to bake ražani for the long day ahead. He felt a pang of homesickness strike at his gut.

            Something hit him on the shoulder.

            ‘Let’s go,’ came a smooth, unhurried voice behind him. It belonged to Dusko Popović, sharp in his Henry Bailey pinstripe and a half-smile softening his lantern jaw.

            ‘The wig looks stupid,’ Simović said.

            ‘Yours too, budalashe.’

No one ever knew who he would be working with. But it was a sure bet there’d be a Cetinje man in the crew; the best jewel thieves came from there. Popović had gone to the same high school but the two men were not close.

            The brief for the Tokyo job had come in late January; the target, logistics, the forged passports, and the Israeli stone cutter — all coordinated by hands higher up. The snatch team consisted of the Montenegrins, Simović and Popović. The Scot, having arrived two weeks earlier, had arranged hotel rooms, acquired four phones and two Russian-made Marakov pistols from a local contact. The Serb, a tall, fair-skinned woman with striking blue eyes, flew in from Paris soon after.

            It was her gaze which now trained on Simović and Popović as they applied their paper hay fever masks and made their way along the teeming sidewalk to the double glass doors of Le Supre-Diamant Coutre de Mamiko.

            At the precise moment Popović tugged on the chrome handle, the Serb’s manicured finger pressed ‘start’ on her Chopard timepiece.

0 seconds

            Inside, Popović moved towards the marble stairway leading to the showroom, acknowledging with a nod the two female attendants dressed in black who stood behind the counter on his left. He pulled a small camera from his pocket and pointed it at the only male employee standing at the foot of the stairs. A flash of light filled the room. ‘Nice, fantastic,’ he said, smiling broadly.

16 seconds

            Momentarily blinded, the attendant returned a weak smile. Simović slipped past him and made his way up the stairs.

25 seconds

At the rear of the showroom, enclosed in a large glass case, the Comtesse de Vendome blazed one hundred candle-strength beneath its display lighting. A week earlier, Simović and the Serb had entered the shop posing as husband and wife, asking to see it — a necklace of the most outrageous beauty, strung with 116 of the world’s purest diamonds and valued at US$31 million. Simović slipped from his belt a five-dollar rock hound’s hammer and with one deft movement smashed the case.

48 seconds

            The attendant uttered a cry and rushed forward. He ran right into the butt of Popović’s Marakov pistol. Again and again. The Montenegrin pulled a canister from his pocket and quickly sprayed the stunned clerk, pushing him coughing and gasping into a small bathroom reserved for customers’ use at the back of the showroom. Simović, meanwhile, lifted the necklace from the smashed glass and slipped it into his left pocket. From his right, he pulled out his Marakov.

73 seconds

            The two men descended the stairway at neither a run nor an amble, but were met at the bottom by the two female staff, alarmed by the commotion upstairs. At the sight of the pistols, both women froze. Fish in a barrel, Popović thought, filling the air with pepper spray. To the sound of their whimpers and cries, the two men pushed through the doors and out into lunch-hour of Tokyo’s busiest shopping precinct.

            The Serb straightened.

She watched the two foreigners, sartorial in their expensive suits, walk briskly off in opposite directions, melting into the throngs of office workers and masked hay fever sufferers. Her slender finger pushed the ‘stop’.

88 Seconds.

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This story originally appeared in the anthology Noir Nation: International Crime Fiction No. 3. More from Simon Rowe on Writers in Kyoto here or here.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Kodokushi (A Solitary Death)

A Short Story by Rebecca Otowa (October 2021)

Keiko opened the metal front door with her key and almost fell inside. Her shadow, cast by the streetlight, lurched, and her white shoes seemed to tangle together. She recovered her balance, hauled her big carrier bag and a smaller one inside, and closed the door. She stood there in the dark entranceway, panting, for a full minute before she found the strength to slide off her shoes and raise her arm to the light switch.

The overhead light revealed a small unremarkable room, with a narrow kitchen behind half-open sliding screens to the right and a large window of pebbled glass in the wall directly opposite. The floor was straw matting, with haphazardly folded bedding in the corner. On top of the bedding cowered a small white cat, who when it recognized her came forward,

“It’s all right, Shiro, I’m home, and you’re right, it’s your dinnertime.” Keiko walked slowly toward the kitchen. As she entered it, she kicked aside a couple of plastic boxes that had once held food from a convenience store. The sink was full of dirty dishes. She cleared a space on the countertop, picked a dish from the dirty stack, and removed a purple KalKan pouch of cat food from the smaller plastic bag she had brought in, emptying it into the dish. She placed the dish on the floor in front of the cat’s nose and verified that he was indeed eating before once again rooting in the bag for her own dinner.

Holding a plastic box containing rice and chicken and a bottle of tea, she slumped down on the floor, legs stretched out straight, and wolfed the food in five minutes flat. Her eyes were closing from weariness before she was done. Keiko looked into the corner of the room at a glass door, slightly ajar, the entrance to a small bathroom. Take a bath? But the bath would be reeking from the cat box she kept in there, and she was so tired, so tired… Tomorrow night maybe. Or a shower in the morning. She tossed the empty plastic box and bottle toward the kitchen and crawled over to the bed. In a moment she was asleep, forgetting to turn off the light.

Keiko Matsunaga was a nurse in a big-city hospital. Lately, with the virus that was causing havoc all over the world, she found herself busier than ever, working every spare minute, with hardly time to turn around, much less think whether this was the life she had intended to have when she graduated from nursing school a generation ago. No matter how hard she worked, she never seemed to manage to make a dent in all the things that had to be done in the hospital. She sometimes thought she was little more than a glorified maid, changing sheets and disinfecting floors around the beds of terminally ill patients that overflowed into the hallways, trying not to disturb the machines and the plastic pipes inserted here and there into their bodies under the sheets.

Keiko couldn’t remember when she had last had a vacation. Overtime was the order of the day in the hospital, especially among the nuts-and-bolts nurses like her. Every day she was there, and regular holidays came and went unnoticed. Even the larger sets of holidays, one per season, were not important to Keiko, who had no family to visit (she was an only child, and her parents were dead), or friends to share a trip to a hot spring or the beach (she had only the businesslike relationships that resulted from working shoulder to shoulder all day long). She worked, came home, slept, and went back to work the next day. Her only companion was her old cat Shiro.

But lately exhaustion was taking its toll. Keiko was almost fifty. She was slowing down, and the repetitive movements that made up her day were getting harder to perform. Perhaps even more worrisome was her mind, which was getting sludgy with tiredness and lack of stimulation. Keiko never did anything for herself. Her paycheck just barely covered her expenses, and she dreaded to think what would happen – not to her, but to Shiro – if she were no longer able to work and buy the purple packets he loved.

Daylight crept into the small cluttered room, insinuating itself under Keiko’s closed eyelids. She sighed and turned over, her leg kicking out at Shiro, who got up from his accustomed place on the bed and walked off in a dudgeon. A minute later the alarm of her old-fashioned clock shrilled, and she flailed with her arm, knocking it flying. It blatted a second or two longer, then was silent. Keiko tiredly flung the bedcovers aside and stripped off her crumpled nurse’s uniform, which she had slept in. One of the most pressing issues of her life was going to work looking presentable every day, and the morning routine that ensured this had been painstakingly honed till it was second nature.

The nurse’s uniform went into a plastic bucket into which Keiko ran hot water and added a squirt of detergent. While it soaked, she plugged in an iron which she stood upon a towel spread out on the floor, took from a hanger on a nail the previous day’s uniform (she had only two), and with quick practiced movements ironed the uniform, spraying it with spray starch from a can, and hung it back up again. Then she squeezed out the other uniform and hung it up too, to dry until the following morning when she would do it all again.

This was the extent of the housework that Keiko felt able to do, and she only did that because she wanted to hide the squalid truth about her life from the people at work. A slovenly nurse was unheard of, and to appear less than spick and span would probably result in her being fired. The only indulgence she permitted herself was a good cup of coffee each morning before she left for the hospital. All her coffee cups had been dirtied long ago, so these days she used paper cups. She set up the coffee maker with a pod of her favorite Blue Mountain coffee, and while it did its magic, she checked her bag and changed into the freshly ironed uniform.

Keiko drank her coffee, sighing, and noticed that during the night, Shiro had licked clean the lunch box from the convenience store. She gave his head a pat, added the plastic box and her coffee cup to the growing pile on the kitchen floor, and left the apartment, remembering this time to switch off the light.

Every day, every night, was like this. The year and the pandemic wore on, with no end in sight. Every time people thought that the disease was slackening off, there would be another surge and back to overtime all the hospital staff would go. Keiko was getting so tired she couldn’t even think straight, but she couldn’t ask for time off to recuperate when no one else was getting any.

She continued her cheerless lifestyle. Work all day, then retrieve her tote bag from her locker. Home on the subway, popping into the convenience store next to the station where she bought dinner for herself and Shiro, and occasionally topped up her supply of coffee pods and paper cups. Back to her one-room flat on the ground floor of a large boxlike building, giving thanks every evening that getting into her room didn’t involve climbing the stairs that wound upwards at one end of the building. The stairs in the subway station were bad enough. She sometimes used to wonder how many people living in the big city were just too exhausted or ill to face going out, where long walks and staircases ensured that only the healthiest people would be part of ordinary, mobile society.

Each night she fed Shiro, ate her dinner, threw the plastic boxes in the direction of the kitchen, and collapsed on the futon. Each morning she drank her coffee, laundered her uniforms, and stepped out for another day of work. There was nothing else to do – she just had to keep going, like so many who did this kind of important work in the disease-ridden city. More and more patients just kept coming and coming, the equipment was scarce and overworked, places had to be found for deceased patients and grieving relations. Providing hospital facilities like cleaning, laundry and food was made more complicated by the insistences from superiors that everything be disinfected.

Cleaning was starting to go by the board in the hospital – there just wasn’t time to keep everything as spick and span as usual. Cobwebs appeared in the corners of the ceiling, and areas not frequented grew dusty. And, as Keiko knew but usually tried to put out of her mind, her apartment was rapidly becoming unliveable. The trash from the convenience store, originally confined to the kitchen floor and countertops, had started to invade the main room. Shiro finally disdained the cat box in the bathroom, full and unchanged as it was, and would do his business among the paper and plastic. The unmade futon now formed a small island in a sea of junk. Keiko fell into her front door every night and breathed in the new, gamey scent of her home. It was a rich, deep funk that somehow made her sleep better. Anyway, there was nothing to be done. She simply didn’t have the energy to begin cleaning it up. It was beyond her.

One evening Keiko felt even more tired than usual. She staggered from the subway station to her apartment without even stopping at the convenience store. Coughing, she lay down on her futon in the dark. Shiro crept close to her, for a wonder not meowing for dinner, which was just as well because there wasn’t any. Keiko lay there, watching headlights intermittently illuminate the pebbled surface of the window. She felt hot and uncomfortable. The night passed slowly. Keiko wished she had something to drink. The tap in the kitchen still worked, but it seemed so far away. At last the morning light came in through the window as usual, but there would be no work for Keiko that day. She lay on the futon gasping like a landed fish. Her whole being was focused on the next breath, and the one after that.

At the hospital that day, amid the flurry of the morning tasks, one of the nurses noticed that Keiko wasn’t there. She mentioned it to her supervisor, who decided to call Keiko on the cell phone she had been issued by the hospital. She sat in her cluttered office and dialed the number. It rang and rang.

In the basement of the hospital, in the deserted locker room, a small but insistent ringing pierced the silence. Keiko had forgotten her phone in her locker.

The supervisor tried to call a couple more times that day, when she remembered. But there was never any answer. She decided that Keiko had just taken the day off, and had not bothered to ask permission, knowing it would not be given. Herself overworked, with emergencies erupting every few minutes, and a head full of plans for getting through the evening’s demands with a family to care for, the supervisor eventually forgot all about Keiko.

In a fog of pain and exhaustion, Keiko lay on her futon. When she opened her eyes, she saw the daylight shining on the vast pile of trash that seemed just a few inches from her eyes. Sometimes she was aware of Shiro rooting among the paper and plastic, sometimes he came and lay down beside her. She couldn’t even lift a hand to pat him, her one companion in the world. “I’m not going to make it, Shiro-kun,” she croaked. His green eyes looking at her were the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes.

Keiko died alone after being sick for three days. Her neighbors were alerted by the meowing of the cat, and called the police. The neighbors stood behind the officer who came and forced open the lock. The smell of the apartment hit them like a wall, and they fell back, staring at the huge mound of trash in the doorway. The two officers – they always did things in pairs – waded through the trash and found Keiko lying on her futon, and Shiro crouched in the corner next to the trash-filled kitchen.

The neighbors looked at each other knowingly, and muttered, “Gomi yashiki” (Garbage castle). They didn’t know her, had never spoken to her, but obviously the woman who lived alone here was a slovenly, dirty woman who didn’t care what her apartment looked like. No wonder she had gotten ill and come to such a bad end. They went back to their apartments, shaking their heads.

The cleanup crew came later the same day, after Keiko’s body had been removed and someone had seen her nurse’s uniform and phoned up the hospital. One of the crew, a young girl who didn’t look strong enough to brave such awful scenes as the one that met her eyes upon stepping into the trash-filled apartment, was sorry for Shiro and took him home with her. Unfortunately Shiro died himself a couple of days later. He couldn’t be persuaded to eat or drink, but sat motionless with eyes half-closed, seeming to wait passively for the end. Yet another casualty of the dreaded virus had moved on to the next world.

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(This story was inspired by the book Toki ga Tomatta Heya (Rooms where Time has Stopped), written by a young woman called Kojima Mu who works on a cleanup crew putting apartments in order after someone has died alone. One of the most common types of these deaths is the overworked person, usually a woman, who has given up the struggle to keep her apartment clean and lives in a pile of trash. More often than not such a woman is some kind of professional who has no relatives and keeps up appearances so that no one knows that the squalor of her residence has reached critical mass. The accumulation of trash elicits judgmental comments, but most people (like me) aren’t aware of the truth about these poor people.)

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Rebecca Otowa has published three books, At Home in Japan (essays, Tuttle 2010), My Awesome Japan Adventure (children’s book, Tuttle 2013) and The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper (short stories, Tuttle 2019). All are illustrated by the author. She has also painted over 50 pictures of various genres, and held 2 shows (2015 and 2019).

To learn about the artwork of Rebecca, see this page.
For the report of a lunch talk by Rebecca, click here.
For her self-introduction, see this page.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Smiling with Light

Extracted from Edward Levinson’s Whisper of the Land (2014)

sitting in the lotus position     蓮華座組み
the Zen carpenter       禅の大工が
hammers nails         釘を打つ
along the long hall of his life   長い人生の廊下に沿って

renge-za kumi, Zen no daiku ga, kugi o utsu, nagai jinsei no rōka ni sotte

*****
Edward Levinson, aka Edo

My garden is not a Zen garden but it does have some symbolism, with little islands, dry rivers, and rocks that look like miniature mountains. Like life, where and how you look at it determines what you see. I try to balance local nature spirits with the global breath of the cosmos.

As a photographer, gardener, and lover of the old and sacred, I often visit Kyoto for inspiration. After Tokyo it is always a breath of fresh air, a small city but it has a cosmopolitan feeling. Because my first homestay was near there, it feels like my Japanese hometown, my furusato.

One fall I spent some time exploring the northeast of the old capital city. A beautiful woman in a seasonal chrysanthemum-patterned kimono walked ahead of me along the wooded Philosopher’s Path. With a little help from my will, we had naturally fallen in step together; it seemed unfair that she walk unescorted. As I walked and talked with the stranger, nature’s colorful maples and gingko trees grinned at the thought of us. Being separated from the other strollers, it must have looked like a scene out of a doomed Japanese love story.

We made quite a pair, I in a dirty down coat with a clunky camera backpack, attempting to walk philosophically in my green Reebok sneakers while she shuffled along gracefully in her clean, white tabi socks and zōri sandals.

We exchanged a few pleasantries; I was ready to stop and have tea with her, but she bowed her apologies and slipped off into the twilight, wanting to get to Ginkaku-ji Temple at the end of the path before it got dark. Or so she said. I guess our outfits and budgets didn’t match. I settled for a bowl of udon noodles alone at a greasy spoon shokudō (restaurant) watching near-naked sumo wrestlers on TV with a pack of smoking taxi drivers waiting for their passengers, who were eating at the expensive restaurant across the street.

Walking around Daikaku-ji Temple and vicinity the next day with my cameras, I was having trouble seeing what I was experiencing. As I reached the far side of an island in Osawa Pond which borders the temple, I was ready to give up shooting and move on to the next site. Suddenly, I found myself standing under a wonderful old tree. The tops of its big roots were bursting out of the clean swept soil, its thick limbs perfectly balanced in nearly every direction. A small torii and shrine confirmed the sacredness and majesty of the tree. From the right perspective, the tree is the center point of the Daikaku-ji area; it holds a position of power. Earlier in the day at another very crowded temple, red maple leaves attracted hordes of tourists. Here, I was alone with a magnificent tree that loved me for taking time to love it.

“You only pass this way once” (Ichigo ichi he) is one of my favorite Japanese expressions, but in Kyoto I often visit the same sacred places over and over again, trying to get to know them better. Sometimes I find something fresh. Over time, be it fifteen minutes or fifteen years, I savor the essence of the place. When I leave it’s as if I’ve been on retreat. I am on a high, and sometimes it’s hard to go back out into the city streets. Then I will encounter temple and shrine people doing real things, and it reminds me of the middle way, of balancing the spiritual and material worlds.

Every day a Japanese man dressed in white judo-like work clothes sweeps the stairway to Yoshida Shrine, putting the few leaves into small neat piles. In Shinto as well as Zen, the broom metaphorically sweeps the heart clean. He is only a shrine worker, not a monk or priest, but he seems content and focused on the work at hand. I wouldn’t mind his job or that of the elderly couple of cleaners who were polishing the railings and floors of Shōren-in Temple on a rainy summer day. Good daily exercises in polishing the heart. Even the parking lot attendant had a Laughing Buddha smile on his face as he bowed and collected my money.

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http://www.edophoto.com (Edward Levinson’s photography website)
http://www.whisperoftheland.com ( Whisper of the Land  book website)

This tree is at Shōren-in Temple in Kyoto. It sits on top of a stone retaining wall outside the entrance to the temple, blessing all those who walk by on the street under it. I always visit there, enjoy its energy, and take its photo when in Kyoto.

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Gion Higashi

A Glimpse into the History of Gion Higashi
by Yuki Yamauchi

Scene from the first performance of Gion Odori in 1952 (Public domain)

The flamboyance of Kyoto has long been enhanced by the culture of five kagai (geisha quarters). Since my heart was touched by the performances of geiko and maiko in the Gion Odori of 2016, the focus of my interest has been in particular on Gion Higashi – a district, roughly speaking, bordered by Shinbashi-dori in the north, Higashiyama-dori in the east, Shijo-dori in the south and Hanami-koji in the west.

This two-section article focuses on the history of Gion Higashi (the district has also been called Zeze-ura, Gion Otsubu or Gion Higashi Shinchi in the past).

  1. The Birth of Gion Higashi

The start of what is now the Gion Higashi district marked a farewell to Japan’s feudal times. The area had hosted a gigantic residence for a samurai clan from the Zeze domain (current Shiga Prefecture), which was removed in 1870. It was replaced with ochaya (tea houses), which became part of the Gion district. In 1881, however, the expanded Gion area was split into the current two parts – Gion Kobu and Gion Higashi (known then as Gion Otsubu).

Kunimichi Kitagaki, the third governor of Kyoto Prefecture, ordered the separation. It happened not only due to administrative purposes, but also due to a fiscal problem. According to Nakunatta Kyo no Kuruwa (Defunct Pleasure Quarters in Kyoto), published in 1958, the issue had much to do with an educational institution for girls, known as nyokoba:

[The association of the Gion district] received a 50-percent refund of three yen (about ¥90,000) that it had paid to Kyoto Prefecture and was supposed to allocate the money for education expenses of girls attending the institution. The money from the prefecture amounted to 2,000 yen (about ¥6 million), but only 200 yen (about ¥600,000) was spent for tuition fees and the rest was kept, so the association amassed a substantial amount of cash. Therefore, people at Zeze-ura (Gion Higashi) insisted since spring, 1881, that 40,000 yen (about ¥12 million) be reimbursed to taxpayers.

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[The amounts in parenthesis are calculated based on a formula taken from a page in the Collaborative Reference Database.]

The establishment of the nyokoba was prompted by the Maria Luz incident in 1871, in which Chinese indentured laborers were rescued from poor working conditions in a Peruvian ship that docked in Yokohama for repairs. The occurrence helped raise awareness of human rights in Japan, and thus the country enforced the Geishogi Kaiho Rei (Emancipation Edict for Female Performers and Prostitutes) in the same year, which led to the launch of the educational institution.

The founding of Mima Nyokoba, a new educational institution, worsened the feud within the pre-separation Gion district, and it was in 1886 that Gion Higashi completely parted from Gion Kobu by establishing its own association.

In 1872 Gion Kobu and Pontocho started dance shows (Miyako Odori and Kamogawa Odori), and the new district of Gion Higashi began holding its own, Mima Odori, in 1894. It was a predecessor of Gion Odori, the now-existing annual performance that began in 1952. It is uncertain how long the performances were held regularly, but it could be speculated that such events, if they took place in the 1930s and the early 1940s, might have adored Japan’s militarism just like the Miyako Odori and the Kamogawa Odori – the former’s program title in 1942, for example, was Mikuni no Hokori, which translates as Pride of the Imperial Nation, while the latter’s in 1940 was Nanshin Nippon, which roughly means, “Go southward, Japan.”

  1. Post-WWII years and the present day

In the final year of World War II, the city of Kyoto was air-raided five times. However, its kagai quarters remained unscathed, according to a report in Kagai Shimbun (Nov. 1, 1948). Nevertheless, the journal also refers to the fact that some employees were forced to evacuate.

In April 1948, the entertainment magazine Shin Furyu described what the atmosphere was like then and what Gion Higashi was planning to do:

Despite gloomy social conditions brought by the defeat of Japan, the country greeted the flowery spring season this year. While kagai quarters in Kyoto are developing events to show their performers’ skill, Gion Otsubu will hold Onshukai dance performances on May 5, 6, 7 and 8,… In the meantime, the association has already purchased land to found an art school that can cope quickly with the changing times.

As explained in the magazine Kenchiku to Shakai, the offices of the Geiko Association of Gion Otsubu served as a dance hall for the Allied Occupation forces. By the time the issue was published in August 1949, the building had been returned to its original owner and rebuilt, resulting in the addition of a hall for dance performance upstairs and a Western tea room downstairs.

In the following year, Kagai Shimbun (Sept. 15, 1950) reported on events that would happen in the near future as below: 

When Kyoto enjoys autumn with beautifully colored leaves, there will take place the annual Onshukai for six days, from October 13 to 18, at Gion Kaikan; the performances of Gion Higashi Shinchi will be the leadoff and the choreography is arranged by Ryosuke Fujima.

The gala continued the following year when Gion Higashi Shinchi held the ninth installment of the Onshukai event, presenting pieces including the ambitious work titled Shikibu to Borei (Izumi Shikibu and the Ghost) from Oct. 25 to 29. The work, set in the Heian Period, was put together by film and stage director Akira Nobuchi and the historical research was made by traditional Japanese painter Hisako Kajiwara, with choreography overseen by Ryosuke Fujima.

The following year, 1952, is a watershed in the history of Gion Higashi as it launched the famed annual dance performance: Gion Odori. The inaugural edition of the festival featured experts including Akira Nobuchi, Hisako Kajiwara (she was also in charge of stage costumes and scenography) and Ryosuke Fujima and around 50 geiko and maiko. The performances are believed to have taken place at 1:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. each day between Oct. 21 and 30 at Gion Kaikan, but the Kyoto edition of Asahi Shimbun (Nov. 1, 1952) reported as follows:

The first installment of Gion Odori, which Gion Higashi Shinchi started instead of Onshukai, ended on [Oct.] 30. It did not draw a crowd during the first few days, but it came to enjoy more and more popularity. On the last day there was an additional show, which became a sell-out. There was actually another on the morning of [Oct.] 31. This is how the curtain finally fell, without a hitch.

Gion Odori has since served as an annual showcase for the public (there were no performances from 1955 to 1957 and in 1989 – the year the Emperor Showa passed away). To the chagrin of fans of traditional dance, Kyoto will have a second autumn without Gion Odori, as its cancellation was announced in August. Let us hope that geiko and maiko can show their proficiency to celebrate the event’s 70th anniversary, so that next year we can celebrate one of the greatest shows in Kyoto!

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Picture (Link to the photo of Gion Odori published in the 26th volume of Kyoto):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gion_Odori_in_1952.jpg

(On a side note, the year 1900 saw Shogi Torishimari Kisoku, a new law to impose stricter rules on prostitutes. It helped the president of Gion Higashi in those days weaken the dominance of prostitutes in the district and improve the status of geiko and maiko instead. The status of traditional performers has been stable since the Prostitution Prevention Law came into effect in 1958.)

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For an introduction to Yuki Yamauchi, please click here. For his piece on Portraits of Uji, click here. For his portrait of prewar academic critic, Tatsuo Kuriyagawa, click here. And for his piece on theatre and film director, Akira Nobuchi, click here.

Kyoto Journal 100 Views of Kyoto

Kyoto Journal 100th Issue Published

Review by Rebecca Otowa     Sept. 24, 2021

Cover photo from Gion Matsuri’s mikoshi arai ritual, by Patrick Hochner

This month, throughout Japan and the world of people who love Japan, a great sigh of relief and satisfaction could be felt. The 100th issue of the prestigious Kyoto Journal was published.

Since it first saw the light in 1987, this quarterly publication has had many printing vicissitudes, and twice has had to go to online publishing due to cost considerations. But thanks to many generous donations, and to the SunM printing company, this 100th issue has been lavishly and beautifully printed and can be held in the hand. Devoted readers will surely raise a cheer.

Kyoto Journal and Writers in Kyoto have gone hand in hand for years, although KJ is much more venerable; we are both volunteer organizations. We can count several key members of the KJ editing and publishing team among our members, including John Einarsen and Ken Rodgers. In addition, this 100th issue contains many pieces by respected voices of the Kyoto foreign community who are also members of WiK, including John Dougill, Alex Kerr, Robert Yellin, Felicity Tillack, Mark Hovane, Catherine Pawasarat, Edward J. Taylor, and many more.

Spoiler alert! Herewith a few highlights from members’ contributions. John Dougill’s piece, View 2 “Dimensions”, describes the various facets of Kyoto, from the physical buildings to educational institutions, craft traditions and tourism, finally touching on the “unseen” city with all its historical milestones and panoramas. Robert Yellin contributes information about some of Kyoto’s contemporary potters in View 28, “Clay Play”. And Mark Hovane, expert on gardens, introduces a wonderful Japanese phrase that he learned while walking through Honen’in soon after he arrived, in View 59 “Komorebi”, the beauty of dappled sunlight through the trees.  

This issue includes articles from past Journals, as well as photography, poetry, and essays on every conceivable topic from “Heian Era” (View 3) to “Intoxication” (View 72) and “Pokemon” (View 39). Each View is accompanied by a cute stylized logo designed by Hirisha Mehta. Due to space considerations, this print version ends at “An Astonishing Amalgam” (View 82); the remaining 18 Views will be available to read on the KJ website. Each View shows a different aspect, and they are all imbued with the love that each individual has grown to feel for the fair city of Kyoto. The pieces are short and easy to read, and the visual content as always is superb, highlighting the talents of both illustrators and photographers.

If I may be permitted a small personal reminiscence, years ago I was pleased to appear as an extra in the film “Chikyu no Heso” (The Navel of the World, 2008), in which (in a not too far distant future) Kyoto’s traditions have been taken over by the people who love them most, the foreign residents. I had to wear a Japanese style white apron and pray at a roadside shrine; my little role was of a neighbor lady who was “more Japanese than the Japanese”. There are certainly many foreigners who have made this city their home, and their love of it shines through each page of this beautiful Kyoto Journal. And they may be more deeply responsible for getting the word out about the wonders of the city, particularly in other countries, than the Japanese themselves are. 

The cover shows a gathering for purification (Mikoshi-arai) at the end of the Gion Festival, which is very timely, considering the plight of Kyoto with fewer numbers of tourists since the Covid pandemic hit 18 months ago. We at WiK would like to express a heartfelt wish that our beloved city of Kyoto can recover and resume its place among lovers of all things beautiful and evocative in Japan.   

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Although the issue has sold out, readers can get a taste of the contents (plus some extras) by looking at this page from the Kyoto Journal website.

Cover full spread photo by Patrick Hochner

Storied (Rachel Davies)

Storied is a high quality glossy magazine in print as well as digital editions. It was set up by a resident of Kyoto, British born Rachel Davies, and thanks to Tina deBellegarde WiK was able to host her for a Zoom session on Sept 12.

The concept behind the magazine is to promote lesser known tourist places and facets of Japan in a way that is sustainable and responsible. Each issue is themed, and the first which focussed on Kyoto came out in the summer. Rather than the usual suspects, the magazine looked to steer potential tourists to off the beaten places and crafts in Kyotango and Keihoku. Volume 2 features Islands, which will be followed by Volume 3 on Cedar and Volume 4 on Water.

Tina deBellegarde who hosted the session and put questions to Rachel Davies (bottom).

Rachel has a background in PR marketing as well as doing freelance travel tourism. Frustrated by the focus among foreign media on only the well-known aspects of Japan, she found a business partner, and having laid out the details of how they wanted to proceed they turned to Kickstarter to raise funds for their venture. Thanks to their preparation it proved an unexpected success, reaching their target in the first three hours!

With the money they raised they were able to go about producing a print magazine. Though they realised they would have to have a digital version too, the print magazine was their priority. They also saw the need for social media, and thanks to quality photographs they have run up 12,000 followers on Instagram.

As far as outlets are concerned, most of the sales and retails are overseas. In Kyoto they have just three outlets, and interestingly none of them are bookshops. Instead they are using niche outlets such as art galleries and event spaces.

What has Rachel learnt from undertaking the project so far? ‘Everything takes much longer than expected.’ There have been a lot of delays, and each delay can have a knock-on effect. Also she learnt the wisdom in the old adage that you only get what you pay for. At first she and her partner tried to save money with a cut-rate printer, but the quality was so poor they had to reject the shipment. Instead they turned to more expensive printers who clearly love their job (it turned out to be the same printer as used by Kyoto Journal).

These are difficult times for print, and Covid-19 has made anything connected with tourism a daunting challenge. So it is refreshing and heartening to hear of a new high-quality product run by young entrepreneurs with optimism and a vision fr the future. Aware of the problems of overtourism, they are hoping to help with the expected surge that will follow when the great pandemic comes to an end by steering readers to the great wealth of experiences to be had off the beaten tracks.

Writers in Kyoto wishes them well and we look forward to future cooperation.

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With thanks to Tina deBellegarde for organising the event, and to Lisa Wilcut for running the Zoom session. To see the video of the event, please click here.

To see the Storied website, please check out https://storiedmag.com/
If you are a WiK member and would like a copy of the media kit for contributors, please send an email to John Dougill.

Jann Williams (WiK Anthology 4 Contributor) and the Gorinto of Kyoto

Award-winning ecologist, writer, photographer, and Writers in Kyoto member Jann Williams was a contributor to Structures in Kyoto (WiK Anthology 4) but unable to attend our virtual book launch on August 22nd. Having missed that opportunity to introduce her essay “Beyond Zen – Kyoto’s Gorinto Connections” about the essence and evolution of the five-ring pagoda, she has created the short video below. In addition to attaining your copy of the anthology to read more, Jann’s intriguing explorations of the elements in Japanese culture can be found on her blog Elemental Japan.

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