Writers In Kyoto

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Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

The Last Ghost of Summer

September 10, 2021

by Fernando Torres

I have become a yūrei, my disembodied form drifting through the streets and back alleys of Kyoto — unseen — unnoticed. There on my left is my neighbor, frozen in time, her nose almost touching the ground from decades of "floor culture" and bones that stretch back to the Taishō era. "Ohayō gozaimasu!" I shout, but her broom doesn't move. There is no point to my aisatsu; I have become a fuyūrei, a wandering spirit. My neck pivots to the sky to gaze at birds who are still like flowers, preserved between pieces of wax paper. My neighborhood is surprisingly unchanged; our trash is even under the same blue net that prevents the large-billed crows from carrying it away. Walking further, I reach where our street narrows, as they often do in Kyoto, and I am unable to continue. I can see the top of my house, but no matter how much I strain, I am frozen but ten meters from my door. Is this Purgatory? No matter how much I yearn for my front gate, there is an invisible wall. My virtual reality headset comes off, and the 360-degree image collapses. Back in America, I experience momentary disorientation, or perhaps it is melancholy. No matter how complete the app's database, it lacks the final images to allow me to return home.
My transformation into a ghost begins at Kansai airport, which greets me as an apocalyptic wasteland, like something from a dystopian novel. My friends in Asia have urged me not to leave Japan. America is at the height of the pandemic, but life in Japan is only starting to become constrained. "You have a house in Kyoto. There is no reason for you to leave." But I know differently.

My last days in Kyoto are pleasant. People elsewhere in the world are in total lockdown, yet I enjoy strolls in Shosei-en Garden and buying the washi for the poetry lantern I'm creating. Aware of the shortages that hit America, I am one of the few prepared when the shelves start to empty. Hoping to get just a couple of small items, I stop by the large market at Katsuragawa, but everything is already gone. I have one final lunch with my neighbors where we exchange gifts of masks and toilet paper. That night, sitting by the Kamo river, the future is uncertain, but little do I realize how long it will be before I see Kyoto again. The next time I return, my physical form will not accompany me.

As I walk towards customs, I am a condemned man voluntarily pursuing their executioner. The airport shops are barren, their boxes of omiyage undisturbed. Thousands of empty chairs pass by, with not one weary traveler to fill them. I start to wonder if this is even real, or perhaps I am the one whose reality is deceived. Does this scene not resemble that of ghostlore, where spirits are forced to wander the places they once knew, ignorant of their circumstances? What else could explain how my backpack has no companion as it passes through the x-ray machine? I linger, but no one joins me. Where is the grumpy ojisan I usually encounter, the one annoyed at how long it takes for me to gather my things? Where is the multitude of other voices who drown out the announcements to which we pay no mind? I continue downstairs to customs, a vast area designed to process thousands of international travelers, but I am alone. Only those who work there remain, their eyes fixed upon me at once. They all look as if they have seen a ghost.

A few months later, back in America, I am in the emergency room, the ER ward's first VR-related incident. My finger is askew, and it appears like I won't be playing the piano any time soon. My misfortune is the result of a virtual ping pong game. The app's real-world physics are so close to reality that I subconsciously forget that the table doesn't exist and as I lunge for the ball, my finger jams into the wall. When I throw off my headset, it is discovered to be at a most bizarre angle—I am rushed to the emergency room. Only one doctor is available, as it is the weekend. With another patient in the midst of a heart attack, I clutch my hand and wait. When the doctor finally arrives to pull it back into place, I experience the kind of pain reserved for heretics and prisoners of the crown. Apparently, there really are a lot of nerves in your hands. When the x-ray technician returns, both he and the doctor are astonished; nothing is broken. But I know the reason. I have become a ghost, and y(u)rei are not susceptible to the injuries of men. My accident does not deter me; within twenty-four hours, I am back in the metaverse.

My first encounter with virtual reality was at the Aichi Expo in 2005. Hitachi had an exhibit that demonstrated AR, or mixed reality. Visitors to the unfortunately named "Ubiquitous Entertainment Ride" could interact with endangered species via a hand-held display that superimposed digital 3D graphics over moving dioramas.  A hand sensor allowed you to feed digital monkeys bananas or play with a sea turtle. It was an astonishing display of a technology that is only now becoming available to the general public. I had written about virtual and augmented reality in the early 1990s, but that material never saw publication. However, I revisited many of those themes in my recent novel, "More Than Alive: Death of an Idol," a sci-fi novel set in a near-future Tokyo and Kyoto. It retained the same premise that the yakuza had developed a drug that numbed suspension of disbelief, making VR seem real—but with a supernatural twist.
 
The story's ghost angle, however, came from a rather disturbing incident at Inari shrine. Wanting to impress a visiting friend, I waited until nightfall to show him how beautiful the shrine could be without tourists from Kansas taking selfies. An hour later, though, it almost appeared my friend was going to need counseling as he kept murmuring about the ghostly cat lady he kept seeing in random locations and the dark void he feared would swallow us. I'll admit I was a little surprised when I later learned that there had been many disappearances in that particular area at night, but I was more concerned about the sound of snorting wild boars in the shadows. Our neighborhood actually made the local news when some of those demon hogs came down from the hills and attacked a couple of people. There was blood smeared all over a metal door not far from my house. Still, I had only had a problem with ghosts the first night I moved into my 120 year-old-house, but that was most certainly a fluke.

For centuries, artists have attempted to illustrate the wandering spirits of Kyoto. For all practical purposes, I have become one of them; my mortal coil peeled away by technology and not death. I imagine my ethereal form illustrated upon a hanging scroll with a VR headset, something not often found in a kakejiku. 

Actually, a couple of my Kyoto neighbors have become aware of my plight through our message group on Line. They have seen the recorded footage of my virtual journey and how I am trapped at the point where our street narrows. What happens next is quite unconventional, though. My next-door neighbor, Kaori, has decided that she is not willing to accept the familiar mantra that "it can't be helped." Perhaps she has sensed my immaterial form at the end of the street, fixed in place by the policies of nation-states and the limitations of technology. Stepping into the sweltering Kyoto sun, she raises her phone and snaps several pictures. The database is complete, and as she clicks "send," I find myself immediately released. My spirit surges forward, and I complete the final leg of my journey, arriving beside my inuyarai gate. My hyosatsu greets me, and for once, I no longer feel like a stranger. For at that moment — if only within a waking dream — I am home.

Online Launch of Structures of Kyoto, the 4th Anthology of Writers in Kyoto

September 1, 2021

On August 22, 2021 Writers in Kyoto launched its fourth anthology, Structures of Kyoto. One blessing in this difficult year has been how technology has bridged the distance gap. We had attendees from across the globe tuning in from different time zones, some just waking, some staying up late, all happy to be sharing this moment honoring a special book.

Lisa Wilcut, our Zoom host, opened our event with the agenda for the evening and passed the microphone to the editors. Rebecca Otowa thanked the contributors and all those involved in bringing the anthology to print, especially John Dougill and her co-editor Karen Lee Tawarayama. She extended her thanks to the editors of prior anthologies with special recognition to Jann Williams, the chief editor of Encounters with Kyoto (WiK Anthology 3), for all of her guidance and encouragement. She also expressed her gratitude to Rick Elizaga for formatting the publication and acting as Amazon liaison, and to the illustrators, Stuart Ayre (who created the cover picture and other illustrations), Karina Takata (who illustrated the 100 Poems translations on the section head pages) and Sharon Sandberg (who provided illustrations in Karen Lee Tawarayama’s story  “The Life Dispensary”).

Kyoto has many physical, as well as cultural, social and psychological structures. Rebecca explained that she chose the theme of structures because of its broad scope and potential for variety. Indeed, the variety can be witnessed in the anthology, especially in the organization of the book itself. The order of contributions is aligned with the map of Kyoto from West to East so that the interconnections between the pieces become even more apparent.

Karen Lee Tawarayama offered special thanks to Rebecca for guiding her in the co-editing process. She led a toast to all the contributors and the previous editors and passed the microphone to John Dougill, the founder of WiK. John joined us from Hokkaido and commented on the evolution of the organization. He reminisced about starting as a small group around a table in Kyoto and marveled at how we have grown into a large international membership. We are now “writers whose hearts are in Kyoto.” John shared how he prefers to write in coffee houses, away from the distractions calling for his attention at home. In his anthology essay “Three Literary Cafes”, he describes his experience based on places associated with the Beats, Cid Corman and Pico Iyer.

Rebecca Otowa
Karen Lee Tawarayama

In her foreword to the anthology, Judith Clancy reflects on her fifty years in Kyoto and the evolution of the writing community. Judith was unable to join us but sent a message of gratitude to all involved with the publication.

The contributors then talked about their pieces in the order of the Table of Contents. The first contributors were Rona Conti and Brenda Yates, who unfortunately could not join us. Rona’s essay “What Does This Say, Sensei?” addresses her experiences learning Japanese culture through calligraphy. Brenda Yates was the third prize winner of the 2020 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition with “Interlude: Kyoto,” a beautiful poem on the four seasons in Kyoto.

With a diorama of Ryōan-ji garden in one hand, Mark Hovane explained that his essay “Rocks, Gravel, and a Bit of Moss” is about Kyoto’s invitation to forge new ways of seeing, how Kyoto challenges our structures of perception.

Amanda Huggins could not join us, but her contribution “Sparrow Steps” won Second Prize in the 2020 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition. She conjures up the city in this delicate piece about a precarious relationship.

Rebecca Otowa spoke about “Structures of Tea” and her personal, poetic, and aesthetic relationship to the tea ceremony and how it has the power to transcend ordinary sensations.

The banks of the Horikawa was the first place where Felicity Tillack felt a sense of community in her new home of Kyoto. She shared an experience from her first year, when her young students held a regatta of homemade boats on the Horikawa and how it inspired her to write “The River.”

Mike Freiling thanked Karina Takata for the illustrations that accompanied his translations of the Hyaku Nin Isshu. He read from those and from his own poems, “The Streets of Miyako.”

“Sunrise Over the Kamogawa” by Ina Sanjana won Second Prize in the 2019 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition. Ina wrote this poignant poem about a homeless man as a way to highlight a part of Kyoto that is not often witnessed.

Karen Lee Tawarayama discussed her story “The Life Dispensary” about a mythological creature’s attempt to survive climate change in a future version of Kyoto. Her striking story is illustrated by Sharon Sandberg who joined us from Michigan.

Robert Weis, who could not join us, wrote “Converging Waters: Kamogawa Delta Blues” using the delta shape of the Kamo River as symbolic of life choices.

Kyoto is a city of training structures and Reggie Pawle, speaking about his piece “The Magic of the Training Structures of Zen and Kyoto”, explained how the adherence to the structures allows one to reach the heights of mastery, then understanding (as well as pleasure), and eventually freedom.

“December” won Lauren E. Walker the First Prize in the 2020 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition. Lauren explained how she tried to capture the magic of Kyoto through a long walk from Kawaramachi to Ohara. Lauren’s discussion led us in to Edward Taylor’s “Ohara, After Scarlet Leaves.” Edward discussed the themes of impermanence and decay.

Jann Williams could not join us to discuss her fascinating piece “Beyond Zen: Kyoto’s Gorinto Connections,” an essay on the subject of Kyoto’s Buddhist Gorinto monuments.

The 2019 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition First Prize went to Lisa Wilcut for her atmospheric poem “Okuribi” about the send-off of ancestors at the end of Obon. Simon Rowe tuned in from Himeji and followed Lisa with a tale of two reluctant outlaws executing an escape using the festivities of Obon and the Daimonji fire as cover. Both Lisa and Simon expressed admiration for each other’s ability to capture the energy of that special evening.

Catherine Pawasarat had to sign off before she was able to share thoughts on her essay “The Gion Festival: A Hero’s Journey”, in which she poses such interesting questions such as “If we are present for a purification ritual but don’t know it’s happening, does the ritual still affect us?”

The photographs of John Einarsen and his short piece “The Gate” are a perfect respite from heady philosophical questions. John could not attend, but his photos of Nanzen-ji gate speak for themselves. They are lovely in the paperback edition and even more beautifully rendered in the e-book version.

Robert Yellin shared some ceramic pieces of various styles on screen and reminded us that touching them can be a way to connect with nature. He discussed his essay “A Kyoto Ceramic Dynasty”, about the eight generations of Kiyomizu Rokubey family ceramics.

Ken Rodgers, in “Sanjusangendo, Reinterpreted”, spoke on imagined structures. He shared 17th century illustrations of Sanjusangen-do created by Westerners guided by the written descriptions found in Dutch merchants’ accounts from their travels to Kyoto.

We learned that the 450-year-old candy shop located behind Kennin-ji and their “candy for raising children” was the inspiration for Marianne Kimura’s story “Yurei Ame/Ghost Candy”, for which she received Third Prize in the 2019 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition.

In closing, Alex Kerr spoke on “A New Philosophy of Tourism.” He believes Kyoto’s future is bound up in how over-tourism will be handled post-Covid.

We wrapped up the event with questions and further discussion as we sipped our cocktails and coffee.

In a time when Kyoto is inaccessible to many of us, this anthology has the power to transport us back to the city we love. The power of words and the power of technology worked hand in hand to bring us together and to honor the city WiK calls home. Our hearts are in Kyoto regardless of where we find ourselves on the globe.

We look forward to the next edition. There is no more appropriate way to end than with Karen Lee Tawarayama’s toast, “May Writers in Kyoto prosper, and may we all continue to inspire each other.”


Contributed by WiK member Tina deBellegarde, a novelist and short fiction writer. Tina lives in New York and joined Writers in Kyoto in 2020. Her poem “Sound Travels” won the USA Prize in the 2021 WiK Kyoto Writing Competition.

Writers in focus

Memoirs of a Japanese Nurse

August 21, 2021

Paul Carty writes…

In 2016, Writers in Kyoto held an event to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of Somme. There were many participants, who read poems, newspaper articles and in one case the journal of a family member who had served in WWI. One of those who took part was Araki Eiko, Professor Emeritus of Osaka City University. She was invited to join because she was translating the diary of a nurse who had been sent to Paris with the Japanese Red Cross Relief Corps to help with the war effort. Takeda Hajimeko’s diary was published serially in a newspaper in Fukuoka six months after the war ended, and below is Professor Araki’s introduction to that diary.  (The article was first published in Stand To! and the editor’s permission was given to republish.)

The memoirs of a Japanese nurse on the Western Front

© In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, Belgium

Hajimeko Takeda’s Notes by a Japanese Nurse Sent to France or Women Soldiers Dispatched to Europe: the Japanese Red Cross Relief Corps and the First World War
By Eiko Araki

‘Notes by a Japanese Nurse Sent to France’ written by Hajimeko Takeda was published serially in the local newspaper Fukuoka Nichinichi Shimbun, forerunner of the current Nishi Nippon Shimbun. It was half a year after the First World War had ended that Takeda contributed her memoirs as a nurse in a Paris hospital to the paper.

First, let me explain why and how she came to work as a nurse tending sick and wounded soldiers during the war in a foreign country far away from home. Japan’s involvement in the First World War is not very well known. When Japanese people talk about the ‘war’, it always refers to the Second World War. Even in Japan, the fact that the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) had sent three detachments of a Relief Corps to Russia, France and England soon after the outbreak of the First World War is almost unknown. The foundation of the JRCS and its mission abroad brings to light a humanitarian aspect of imperial Japan, unfortunately ignored in the Second World War – an official denial triggered by the Senjinkun or the Japanese Military Code, issued in 1941, including the infamous rule ‘Never be taken alive. Never accept the humiliation of becoming a prisoner of war’. In 1854, after 200 years of maritime restricted trade, Japan was forced to open some ports and to end her isolationism. Twenty years later, during the civil war of Kagoshima also known as the Seinan War (1877), the JRCS was established under the name of ‘Hakuai-sha’. The staff of ‘Hakuai-sha’ helped rescuing both Imperial Army troops and insurgents, and thus observed neutrality, according to the spirit of the Red Cross. In 1898, when the Japanese Government became a signatory to the Geneva Convention, the organisation’s name was officially changed to ‘Nisseki’ or ‘the Japanese Red Cross Society’.

The JRCS provided relief in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, in the 1900-01 Boxer Rebellion and in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. On none of these three occasions were female nurses dispatched abroad. Women were only employed within the country in army and naval hospitals, and on hospital ships. Their work was successful, but the toll was great with the death of more than 40 nurses in 1904-05. The efficient medical services during the Russo-Japanese War greatly impressed many including Lieutenant-Colonel Sir W G Macpherson of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who admired the systematic relief work of the Japanese army, and the military-civilian cooperation during that war. His detailed reports to the War Office ultimately led to the establishment of Voluntary Aid Detachments or VADs in Britain in 1909. The VADs were modelled on the JRC nurses and were placed under the direction of the newly formed British Red Cross Society (founded in 1899). With a long Christian philanthropic tradition, Britain already had a number of charities who cared for the sick and wounded in wartime such as the Order of St John of Jerusalem or the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded. The comparatively young British Red Cross Society (BRCS) had no intention to incorporate these existing organisations, but at least the VADs came under its authority.

By mobilising patriotism, discipline and subordination Japan strengthened its position in the world. The Russo-Japanese War was sometimes referred to as a humanitarian war on the part of Japan, as those wounded by Japanese bullets, which were smaller than Russian ones, quickly recovered, and the Japanese took great care of Russian prisoners of war. The Japanese humanitarian efforts were motivated by a wish to be recognised as a legitimate member of the powerful nations of the world.

Let me point out some distinguishing aspects of the JRCS or Nisseki, as it is now called popularly. Firstly, it was closely connected to both the government and the army and navy medical departments at its inception, which is extraordinary from a contemporary perspective, as Nisseki was a private charity organisation, independent from governmental authority. Secondly, it was under the auspices of the Imperial Family; the Emperor and Empress were both patrons and financial supporters, as they are now. The Empress Shoken Fund established 100 years ago still makes donations worldwide. Thirdly, it was highly centralised and bureaucratic: Nisseki set up local branches in every prefecture appointing governors as their heads with other civil servants following in a hierarchical order, and by doing so the number of Nisseki members increased all over Japan. Contrary to the initial assumption of the International Committee of the Red Cross that the Christian idea of benevolence was not congenial to Japan, Nisseki developed rapidly and soon became the envy of the world and the model to be looked at for guidance. Behind this expansion of Nisseki was the association of the seemingly contradictory ideas of patriotism and humanitarianism, which, they said, were deeply rooted in the Japanese spirit of chivalry or Bushido. The organised charity thus became more acceptable to the Japanese, and under military authority it mobilised non-combatants behind the war effort. Women were expected to play a part in ‘patriotism and comfort for the soldiers’ (Hokoku Jyuppei 報国恤兵) by nursing.

As for nursing, what was unique about Nisseki was that it centred on military nursing. In peacetime Nisseki gave strict training of three years to candidates at its own hospital in Tokyo and then the trained nurses were allowed to work in hospitals or private homes, and in time of contingencies they took care of the sick and wounded. After the Sino-Japanese War Nisseki hospitals were established in almost every prefecture to educate excellent nurses. (That is why there are many Nisseki hospitals in Japan.) It should be noted that the aim of Nisseki hospitals was the training of relief personnel for wartime rather than the treatment of civilian patients. Before this time nursing was given into the hands of old rough types of women without any knowledge of nursing. In Victorian Britain, nursing was an unskilled job and was done by the worst sort of women – dirty, sometimes drunken and glad to take bribes from patients. Mrs Gamp in Charles Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit is a typical example of such nurses. Older Japanese and Victorian British ethics did not allow a woman to nurse a man who was not her family member or relative. Owing to Florence Nightingale’s efforts nursing became a respectable job in the latter half of the 19th century. (The distorted image of Florence Nightingale as obedient and self-sacrificing was used as a model for a Japanese nurse.)

In Japan, the ‘Ladies Voluntary Nursing Association’ was started in 1887 by imperial princesses and aristocratic ladies, and it contributed to improving the image of nurses overall. The purpose of the association was to show ‘that nursing is no mean, mercenary profession, but … a very honourable one… in which a woman can aspire to be of direct service to the state in time of war’ (Ariga Nagao, The Red Cross Society of Japan: The Organisation and Activity in Time of Peace and War, 1904, quoted in Hutchinson, p 209).

When the First World War broke out, Japan took part with the Allies in accordance with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance formed in 1902. It soon captured the German concession of Tsingtao in China, and there Japanese nurses looked after the sick and wounded of both Japanese soldiers and German prisoners of war. (The prisoners were later brought back to Bando prisoner of war camp on Shikoku Island, Japan, and received humanitarian treatment, mixing with local residents and performing classical concerts. Some preferred to remain in Japan after the war.) This was the first time female nurses were sent abroad. The dispatch of Nisseki nurses was a result of their strenuous effort to provide medical services which they had displayed in past wars.

The society took the utmost consideration in selecting nurses: they were chosen at the headquarters and at each branch of the prefecture. Notwithstanding excellent nursing skills, they had to have a little knowledge of a foreign language, good health and a steadfast mind. Nisseki Toyota College of Nursing has extensive files from the First World War. In one of them the details of the nurses selected are kept: they were 20-40 years old, some had experiences of nursing in previous conflicts, some were decorated (after the Sino-Japanese War nurses began to be decorated for distinguished services by the Emperor), some were shizoku, descendants of samurai (at this time, shizoku became less powerful), some had special mentions of their looks – ‘good’ or ‘ordinary’. Summons to later military service written on a red postcard are also filed: Nisseki had a reserve system, and nurses had to keep themselves ready for service for 20 years (later shortened to 15 and 12) in time of contingencies, whatever their situation when summoned. During their term of reserve, they did not receive any fees, but they could easily find good jobs as they had received outstanding, expensive training at the society’s hospitals. It should be noted that all personnel employed by Nisseki worked on a non-voluntary basis unlike voluntary British or French Red Cross nurses. Relief workers had military ranks in wartime: doctors and superintendents were treated as officers, head nurses as non-commissioned officers and nurses as privates.

Below is a list of groups dispatched to the three allied countries (based on Toshihiko Kawai’s paper).

Russia (Petrograd)
1 chief nurse + 6 nurses (later 6 nurses added twice)
(+ 1 chief doctor + 2 doctors + 1 pharmacist + others)
December 1914 – April 1916 (16 months)
France (Paris)
2 chief nurses + 20 nurses
(+ 1 chief doctor + 2 doctors + 1 pharmacist + others)
February 1915 – July 1916 (18 months)

England (Netley)
2 chief nurses + 20 nurses
(+ 1 chief doctor +1 doctor + others)
January 1915 – December 1915 (11 months)

In Petrograd and Paris, they opened up their own Red Cross hospital, but in England they were allotted to several huts attached to the BRC Hospital in Netley, Southampton. A certain number of nurses were placed under Japanese doctors, the rest under British medical officers together with the British nurses. All three contingents were welcomed and treated as guests of the nation. The British contingent, on its way to Britain, calling at New York for a short time, was invited to dinner by the American Red Cross. They were greatly applauded as a model of the Red Cross Society in the world, referring to their strenuous work in Tsingtao and their humanitarian treatment of German prisoners of war. An American newspaper reported their arrival with a photo. Each dispatch was originally intended to serve for five months, but in Russia and France it was twice prolonged, and in Britain once. In spite of a language barrier their skill and attention were highly valued, as is shown by the prolongation of the term in every country. Olive Checkland, in Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan, is rather sceptical about Japanese achievements, saying that ‘Were those Japanese units an embarrassment to the countries to which they were sent?’ or ‘Did the withdrawal of the JRC units – over two years before the end of the war – reflect the difficulties of the service?’ (p78). In spite of her sceptical opinion, it appears from reading the detailed history of Nisseki and other documentations from both home and abroad, their contributions were greatly appreciated. The main reason they had to withdraw before the end of the war was a financial one.

An interesting reference to Nisseki nurses in Netley is a memoir written by Morooka Sachimaro, a Japanese volunteer to the Canadian Expeditionary Force was. About 200 Japanese immigrants to Vancouver, who had been struggling for full citizen’s rights, eagerly volunteered to join the army and fought on the Western Front. About 50 Japanese were killed and the two names of the missing Japanese are inscribed on the Menin Gate along with the names of 55,000 other soldiers who died in Belgium and whose remains were never found. PHOTO Morooka was wounded after the battle of Vimy Ridge in Northern France and eventually sent to Netley. There he was surprised to hear British nurses speaking a little Japanese and found that Nisseki nurses had worked there some time ago.
The matron explained that those Japanese nurses were all very kind and conscientious and that many patients were attached to them as if they were their sisters. Morooka was a ‘blighty’ (wounded and not fit for fighting any more), so he went back to Japan via Canada and published, in 1934, On to the Arras Front, a memoir of his experience in the war, in Japanese. He wrote the book to record the chivalry of his comrades. In my research I have not come across any mention of this near encounter. However, this episode in the book testifies to how Japanese nurses were accepted and also how the world had become so small.

I‘ve been researching Japanese nurse memoirs for years and comparing them with the equivalent British and American ones. The First World War is sometimes called ‘a literary war’ because many educated young men volunteered to enter the British Army and wrote bitter war poems. Volunteer nurses, also well educated, wrote scathingly about their experiences. Some are comparable to modernist writings in their blunt, detached tone and fragmentary, collage-like style in depicting surreal hospital scenes and critical of the ‘war machine’. Up until now I could find only two articles written by two Nisseki nurses sent to France. One is Notes by a Japanese Nurse Sent to France written by Hajimeko Takeda, which is translated here. Another is by a chief nurse, Ume Yuasa, entitled Forty Years in White Uniform, an autobiography dictated by herself and written by the editor of a medical magazine at Nisseki Hospital in Houten or Mukden, (now called Shenyang) in Manchuria. It includes an episode on the dispatch to France.
Both referred to their motives in becoming a nurse. Takeda writes that she wanted to devote her life to humanitarian and charitable purposes in caring for the sick and the poor. Yuasa, devotional by nature, received baptism at the age of fifteen, and decided to remain single, devoting herself to God and the poor. She visited slums in Tokyo, as Victorian British ladies used to do. There she tried to care for the sick and gave her lunch box or what little money she had to old people. She was also impressed by the Nisseki nurses sympathetically taking care of the Chinese prisoners of war (with a pigtail), wounded in the Sino-Japanese War. These experiences motivated her to obtain qualifications as a relief nurse of the prestigious Nisseki. Takeda writes about how her family reacted when she was summoned to become a member of Nisseki Relief Corps.

She had already experienced relief work in the Russo-Japanese War. Her father said that this new mission would be a great honour not only for her but to the family for many generations to come. She felt honoured seeing the four ensigns of the Rising Sun, Tricolour and two Red Cross flags flying from the rooftop of the Nisseki Hospital near l’Arc de Triomphe. She, as well as Yuasa, was surprised to see many women from Paris society working at a pantry, comforting patients or washing their legs. The Japanese chief doctor, Shioda, an expert surgeon who was decorated by the French Government, had a different opinion about female volunteers who poked their noses into what they should not, and brought new women every day as if the hospital were a surrogate Paris society. Shioda’s story is told in the articles of Shimazaki Toson. He was a Japanese novelist living in France during the war, who sent reports to a newspaper in Japan. Takeda and Yuasa, on the other hand, greatly admired the philanthropic spirit of French Red Cross nurses working on a completely voluntary basis.

At first, the Nisseki hospital was unpopular because it was run by Japanese who did not know the French language and customs, but their devoted work and excellent skills soon changed this view: many French soldiers, especially seriously wounded ones, wanted to be admitted to the hospital. Takeda is reticent about their good reputation, but several of their heroic achievements are briefly recorded. For example, a corporal of the artillery shot deep in the chest at Verdun was kept alive as nurses continued pushing his heart for nine hours until his parents came to the hospital. He survived the operation, too. They were also reputed ‘dressers’ – the Italian Red Cross once inquired as to their skill in applying bandages. They also chided French soldiers who screamed with pain, telling them to behave like a man and a soldier. Comparing the wounds with those she saw in the Russo-Japanese War, she writes that she shuddered at the brutality of the wounds many times. Takeda also wrote, ‘As this hospital was only a two-hour drive from the battlefield, patients were brought in on stretchers. Nurses had to take off their bloodied clothes, wipe their bodies clean, and put Nisseki white kimonos on them’. It was the first time she ever took care of wounded brought in directly from the battlefront. Takeda also includes a terrifying experience of a German air raid in Paris in January 1915. Nurses were all prepared to die, some writing a farewell note, but they escaped a narrow death and were surprised to find the house next door completely destroyed.

These are just two examples of relief work experience given by the nurses themselves. Takeda’s notes provide vivid memories of her extraordinary experience. When I compare them with the writings of British and American nurses, Nisseki-trained nurses are more modest about their horrifying experiences. Vera Brittain and Enid Bagnold, both British VADs and novelists, wrote critically about hospitals and accused trained nurses of not being sympathetic enough to patients and of treating VADs as if they were inferiors. Bagnold, the more critical of the two about hospital staff, was dismissed after the publication of A Diary Without Dates (1917). Ellen la Motte, an American-trained nurse, is critical of the hospital, the army and the people on the home front. Her memoir The Backwash of War (1916) was immediately banned when America entered the war, as it would demoralise the troops. Another American woman, Mary Borden, a millionaire from Chicago, married to a Scottish clergyman living in Britain, volunteered for the French Red Cross soon after giving birth to her third daughter, though she had no experience of nursing. She proposed to General Joffre the setting up of a field hospital which she herself would fund. The general readily accepted. As the director of her own hospital, she employed la Motte. Borden was also downright critical about the war and exposed the miseries of wounded soldiers. They were all well-educated, intelligent and sensitive women in contact with intellectual circles. Japanese nurses, as exemplary women soldiers dispatched from the Empire, were obedient to their duties throughout. The reserve system imposed on them made it practically impossible to be married in spite of the encouragement from Nisseki that a woman’s place and womanly virtues are to be found at home. Nevertheless, they found satisfaction developing their own circles by being patriotic and being of service to the soldiers. European and American women were handed opportunities by the war, too, but the Japanese nurses, being a part of the Army and Empire, paradoxically gained more freedoms and played a part in the international world, a role which no Japanese women at that time could have dreamed of.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Poulton, In Transit

August 19, 2021

Lost Star

by Cody Poulton

The ridge up to Mt. Matchlee, overlooking Gold River, Vancouver Island (Photos by Cody Poulton)

In July my wife and I escaped Japan, its cursed Olympics, its damned pandemic, its incessant rains and constant heat, to spend a few refreshing weeks on the west coast of Canada. Even here, however, one can’t avoid extreme weather. It hasn’t rained in almost two months and the bone-dry conditions have led once again to another summer of forest fires. When the winds are off the ocean, the skies are clear, but when they turn, smoke from British Columbia’s interior turn the blue sky to grey or a menacing yellow when it’s bad.

Last week we made a road trip up-island. Living in Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Island—which is about the size of Taiwan though a good deal more sparcely populated—anywhere north is “up” for us. Our journey took us to Gold River, the island’s epicentre, a good five hour drive from Victoria. Gold River sits in the crotch of tall, snowy mountains, but it can be a furnace in the summer. During the recent “heat dome” that killed over five hundred people in this province, the temperature rose there to as high as forty-six Celcius. The day we drove up, however, we had our first rain in fifty days, intermittent squalls on the highway amid patches of sun.

The following day my cousin drove us in his 4X4 up a steep logging road pocked with washboard gutters to run off the winter rains, through clearcuts into the high country where we could see ranges of snow-capped peaks jutting out of the sweep of the long valleys of Strathcona Park. Mt. Matchlee, at 1,822 meters, was the closest; hiding behind it was the island’s highest mountain, the Golden Hinde, named after Sir Francis Drake’s ship, which sailed past the west coast of this island back in the 1500s, centuries before Cook stopped here. It was too stormy for Drake’s ship to make anchor, but the Nuu-chah-nulth paddled out in their canoes to meet them, hairy, smelly men. This coast is deeply serrated with long fjords and mostly accessible to this day only by sea. My cousin is an outdoorsman who had worked as park ranger in Alberta, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, but even for him, traversing the interior of Vancouver Island or scaling its mountains is a tough proposition, bushwacking up to the tree line until one can find an escarpment to walk along. The higher peaks involve technical climbing; practically none of them are accessible on a day-hike. Even the natives of Vancouver Island hugged the coast, moving by water from their winter villages at the end of deep inlets down in summer to beaches on the open coast. Only a few trails crossed the island from east to west, and hardly anyone tarried in the interior, which was covered in dark rainforest and sustained little other life than the big cedars, hemlocks, and Douglas fir. Elk and deer, and their predators the cougar and wolf, kept to the high country. Flying over the island these days on my trips to Japan, however, I am continually shocked at how the terrain has been scalped by industrial logging. What forest remains is often second or even third growth, and very few plots of virgin rainforest remain. Environmentalists have waged pitched battles with loggers and the RCMP (the Mounties) to protect the last standing groves. A blockade is up to save one of them at Fairy Creek, near Port Renfrew.

On Upper Campbell Lake that night the sun set amid clouds and patches of clear sky, mountains like staggered shelves disappearing into a vanishing point at the end of this long, three-pronged body of water. The lake had been a deep valley of first-growth forest, but it was logged out after the Second World War and, in the 1950s, when Campbell River was dammed, it became a vast reservoir that merged with neighbouring Buttle Lake. Hemmed in by steep slopes, the lakes snake together for some forty kilometers through Strathcona Park. The dam provides all the electricity for northern Vancouver Island.

For all the talk of heat waves here, nights on the coast and in the mountains are cool, and we slept under down duvets. Sometime in the middle of the night I awoke and went out onto the porch for a look at the lake. The sky had cleared and the Milky Way poured overhead and emptied itself into the distant mountains. Stars flowed into snow, pooling into cold, blue patches on the peaks.

On this side of the Pacific I take some comfort that the sky I see, here in the northern hemisphere, is still the sky my family in Japan may see a few hours from now. That is, if they are fortunate enough to be clear of city lights. Usually one sees more atmosphere than real sky in Japan, but that is true most everywhere people live these days. I remember one time being astounded by the starry sky deep in the mountains of Wakayama Prefecture, of having a hallucination akin to that of Shimamura’s in Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country, of the Milky Way—or its chilly Asian name, the River of Heaven (ama no kawa)—entering inside me with a roar. Some summer nights when I was young out in the country in southern Ontario I could see the Northern Lights, a silent, shimmering, silver curtain. Far north it has colours and they say you can even hear it, but I never have. Far from the roar that Shimamura swallows, the starry night sky most of us are familiar with is silent, still. The stars are true; Drake sailed this far by them. However varied life on this planet is, we all gaze on the same sky. So thinking my thoughts slowed, became fixed like the stars.

It is August, time for the Perseid shower, and I didn’t have to wait long to see errant meteors streak across the sky, brief flares bent on their annihilation. Some masqueraded as stars, then suddenly moved like furtive chess pieces, rearranging the complex order of constellations. But stars are constant, that’s why the Greeks called planets “wanderers,” for which the inspired Meiji Japanese translation is 惑星 (wakusei): lost stars. It took Copernicus and Gallileo to teach the church that it was not heaven that moved around the earth, but the other way around. Our courses are erratic. Were I to stay up longer, I could trace the stars’ slow setting over the mountains as the Earth inclined toward the sun—already the Big Dipper lay low over the northern horizon. Are they so constant? To be sure, we know now that everything in the universe is rapidly running away from everything else, an echo of the Big Bang. We are all in transit.

Upper Campbell Lake, Strathcona Park, Vancouver Island

Writers in focus

David Joiner rewrite

August 18, 2021

David Joiner has been a supportive member of Writers in Kyoto since we began almost seven years ago. We have followed his career with interest, and were delighted when his second novel Kanazawa was accepted by Stone Bridge Press. He is now working on his third novel.

David writes as follows….

The last time I contributed to the WiK website, I shared the first chapter of a new novel I’d started writing – The Heron Catchers. Since then, I’ve nearly finished the novel but for a short, final revision to be completed later this summer.

The original first chapter that perhaps some of you read last year is no more (maybe I’ll use it for a future novel). I’ve deleted several characters and completely changed its setting. The major problem with the original was that it took place too far back in time for what followed, particularly regarding the protagonist’s development after his wife ran off. The new chapter now takes place nine months after she left, greatly simplifying issues of backstory.

Before I realized that was necessary, however, I tried to fix things by overwriting, coming up with filler chapters to cover the time gap mentioned above. It took me several months to realize I needed to scrap most of the novel’s beginning and start instead from a later point. The novel is now 75,000 words. But I’ve easily written twice that much. I’m probably lucky to have thrown away so little at this point.

In any case, following is the new opening to The Heron Catchers, the second in what I hope will be a series of novels set in Ishikawa Prefecture. As I write this, I’m coming down from the high of finishing research for the next novel I want to write. Maybe tomorrow I’ll begin outlining it…

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

Chapter 1

Sedge stumbled up Mayumizaka Slope into Kenrokuen, Kanazawa’s famous landscape garden, yawning loudly enough to hasten the full blossoming of its cherry trees. For the last two weeks, since permanently closing the ceramics shop that he and his wife Nozomi had run for six years, he had started each day increasingly late, sometimes even past lunchtime. He was grateful for a reason to wake up early today, though it had been a trial to get here.

Taking his ticket and a map from the entrance booth worker, he was keen to walk off more of his anxiety. In fifteen minutes he would meet the wife of the man Nozomi had run away with.

The woman’s name was Mariko. She’d asked him to meet her on the west side of Kasumigaike Pond, with a view toward Mt. Utatsu. She had included directions on where to sit and described what she would be wearing. Sedge’s brother-in-law, Takahashi, at whose ryokan Mariko worked in Yamanaka Onsen, had forwarded him her email.

Sedge hadn’t expected her invitation. After all, nine months had passed since their spouses had disappeared. But he had welcomed her suggestion that they “compare notes” about what had happened and try to help each other through this difficult time. He hadn’t bothered himself with her situation – had hardly even considered it – but it made sense that she’d be struggling, too. He wasn’t hopeful that talking to her would change anything, however.

The tourist crowds were small that morning, and the mild, late-March weather was perfect for strolling. He hadn’t visited Kenrokuen since last May when he and Nozomi came to see the garden’s famous irises. Afterward they had wandered to Kanazawa Castle Park to birdwatch, which was a tradition they’d started after moving to Kanazawa.

He stood on a short wooden bridge admiring a newly blossoming cherry tree, and pines here and there recently shod of their winter yukitsuri ropes, when a snapping of branches made him spin around. To his astonishment, a wild boar burst from a bush, colliding with a heron upstream and sending a cloud of feathers into the air.

Unaffected by the collision, the boar charged into an open space before rushing toward the opposite end of the garden. The tourists there swept themselves into a tight, terrified circle and watched the animal dash past them. After several attempts, it clambered over a low wall.

Sedge edged toward the heron. It lay sprawled in the shallow water, long and grayish-white. The current swept into it, billowing its plumage, and where the stream soaked its body it appeared half-melted. Before he reached it, it stood unsteadily and shook itself dry.

He noted the gray body and wings; the black nuchal markings; the dark crests on either side of its crown, like long painted eyebrows; and the drooping black topknot – an Asian gray heron.

One wing hung awkwardly against its body, no doubt broken. When the boar had knocked it over, the heron was fishing in the tree-shaded stream.

Someone tugged his arm. A woman in perhaps her early thirties appeared beside him, removing her jacket and gesturing for him to do the same.

“You want my jacket?” he said.

Her eyes widened at his Japanese. He repeated himself more forcefully, earnest in wanting to know what she meant.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to wrap the heron with my jacket. It will only hurt itself more if it tries to fly.”

“What about mine?”

“That’s to drape over its head. If it can’t see, it won’t be as frightened.”

Although he worried this would delay his meeting, he removed his jacket and handed it to her. Behind them, a crowd of people had gathered.

“Surely the gardeners will come soon with a net,” he said, not keen on endangering either one of them.

“A net might make things worse, especially if the heron stabs at them with its beak. Trust me, please. I’ve done this before.”

Hurrying forward with her, he said, “When and where have you caught herons?”

“I grew up around them and I’ve had to do this after finding them injured. I just never dreamt I’d have to do it here. You’ll need to be careful. A heron’s beak is like a weapon. And because it’s injured and probably scared, it may lash out.”

They reached the stream at the same time a middle-aged man from the crowd crouched before the heron to videotape it with his phone. He was much closer to it than Sedge would have been.

The woman told Sedge where to place himself and what to do. She barked at the man with the cell phone to back away.

The heron had been squawking since it regained its footing, and it now shook its long beak at them and released what could only be described as a warning cry.

The woman moved toward the bird confidently, shielding herself from it with her and Sedge’s jackets pinched together. She jumped behind it before it could turn completely to face her. One of the jackets fell to the ground as she draped the other over the bird’s head. She had covered its eyes, but its beak peeked out.

“I need the other jacket,” she yelled at Sedge.

He ran over to hand it to her.

“You do it.” She looked down at the bird as it squirmed beneath her hands. “Wrap it around its body. Gently so as not to aggravate its broken wing, but firmly enough to immobilize it.”

Sedge kneeled beside her and wrapped the second jacket around the bird, encircling its thin body. Beneath the light pressure he applied, the heron resisted more than he expected. Its strength surprised him, and he lost his balance. The jacket he’d wrapped around it fell to the ground again, and the bird took advantage of its freedom to raise its one good wing and try to escape.

The man with them continued to videotape, and he came closer again only for the heron, which somehow sensed his presence, to stab at him with its beak. The bird aimed well, striking his thigh. Its beak ripped the man’s trousers, and from a gash in his flesh blood oozed out. He fell to the ground and, crying out in pain, rolled to where the heron couldn’t strike him a second time.

Sedge managed to wrap the jacket around the heron again. And though it thrashed beneath his arms, it soon stopped struggling.

“Now what?” he said.

The woman looked unsure of herself. “We wait for someone from the garden to take over.”

Sedge turned to look for the injured man. He had hobbled toward the watching crowd, which was now collectively trying to help him.

Two groundskeepers finally approached them, while two others set up a barrier around the bird with ropes and metal poles. Because the heron had stopped resisting, it was a simple task to transfer it to these men.

“Thank you for what you did,” one of the groundskeepers said. “We’re sorry to have put you to the trouble. Are either of you hurt?”

The woman assured him that they were fine. The groundskeeper apologized once more, this time about the boar, which he said had made its way into the garden several times in the last few months, though always after hours. This was the first time it had been in the garden when it was open to tourists.

He walked away, coming back a moment later holding the jackets they’d used on the heron. He asked the woman for her name and phone number, saying that the garden might need to contact her later about what had happened. When she said her name was Mariko, Sedge laughed to himself.

She was not the type of woman who would normally attract his attention. But with the time he had to observe her now – the over-large eyes and slightly aquiline nose, the dimples that emerged in her cheeks when she spoke, and the messy bob that swept her forehead – her attractiveness, once he noticed it, stayed with him.

A moment later the groundskeeper turned his attention to Sedge.

Sedge glanced at Mariko to see if she recognized him, but she was staring at the heron, not paying attention to their conversation.

He gave his name and phone number. The groundskeeper led him and Mariko past the barrier they had erected.

Rather than move off, Mariko continued to look toward the bird.

“Aren’t we supposed to be meeting each other by the pond?” Sedge said.

Finally looking at him, she laughed and said, “I thought it might be you when I first heard your Japanese. What a way to meet.”

They walked toward a refreshment stand. He ordered coffees and brought them to a bench under a cherry tree, whose pink blossoms were on the verge of escaping from their buds. In front of them, the pond’s black surface rippled where a family of spotbill ducks swam by.

“Thank you,” she said, pulling her coffee closer. She glanced at her watch and said, “We have a lot to talk about, but I’m afraid I don’t have much time left. That heron ate into our meeting quite a bit.”

“Do you have to get back to the ryokan already?”

She shook her head. “I have to prepare for an exhibition.”

“You’re an artist, too?”

“No. It’s my husband’s exhibition.”

“Will he be there?” Sedge said, confused.

“Only his work will be. It will make things easier on me in the long run if I represent him.”

“But he left you. Why are you still helping him?”

Her smile tightened. “His son and I could use the money. But this will be the last time.”

“Is he not required to support you?”

She laughed with the same tight smile. “We haven’t divorced.”

Sedge didn’t know why this surprised him. He and Nozomi hadn’t yet, either. A divorce was still too much to deal with. Once she disappeared, nobody she knew had been able to communicate with her. If she had left Japan and couldn’t be reached, he was unsure if the Japanese courts could legally issue a divorce. Similarly, he felt paralyzed about the money she had taken, leaving him with much less than he’d need to hire a lawyer.

“Why didn’t you want to meet like this at the ryokan?” he said. “I’ll be moving there in another week.”

She looked away for a moment, then turned back to him. “I didn’t know how awkward this would be, and I didn’t want either of us to have to endure that at the ryokan, where my colleagues often gossip and Takahashi and Yuki could interfere. Also, my preparation for the exhibition was a perfect excuse to meet you here.”

He appreciated her considerateness. It was unlikely that Nozomi would have given their circumstances so much thought.

“The exhibition’s over there,” she said. She pointed back toward Mayumizaka Gate, where Sedge had seen posters for an exhibition of kutaniyaki, local porcelain ware that he and Nozomi had sold in their shop. It was known for its colorful overglazes and named for the village where it had originated over 360 years ago. One of the garden’s teahouses, Shigure-tei, was holding the exhibition. “It doesn’t start until tomorrow. But the exhibiting artists are arranging their work today and have to sit in a meeting together.”

“What did you want us to talk about today?”

She looked toward the lake. “There’s no rule about what we discuss. I much prefer to know who you are than talk about our spouses’ infidelities.”

Sedge doubted that they could discuss what they’d come here for in only half an hour. Before he could suggest meeting again when she had more time, she went on.

“But I hate thinking that what they did – their selfishness – continues to drag us in their wake. I’m even worse off than I was when they ran away together.” She turned to him again. “Did it shock you when she left?”

“Of course. I had no idea they’d been having an affair. Maybe I was too wrapped up in work to notice anything but that she’d grown distant.”

“Yuki confided in me about the money she took. That must have been a shock, too.”

Sedge nodded, mildly surprised that Yuki had shared this. “She arranged for me to leave town on business, then withdrew most of what we had. She took everything from my personal account but left a bit in the one for our shop. I guess she thought she was being kind.” He tried to laugh.

“You could get the police involved, you know. Maybe that would help you find her. And my husband.”

“Takahashi made me promise not to involve the police. Anyway, I don’t care that much about the money. I would have given it to her if she’d asked.”

Mariko turned thoughtful for a moment. “How did your divorce lawyers deal with her if no one knew where she was?”

“We’re not divorced, either.”

“I see.” Mariko leaned back, her arms locked straight behind her, and stared into the crisscrossing branches overhead. “We’ve met before, you know. You look different now, though. Your hair, maybe, or it could be that you’re not wearing your work clothes.”

“Did we? I’m afraid I don’t remember.” It was true that his hair had been longer then, and he’d recently shaved off a beard.

“My husband and I came to your shop once. Looking back, I’m sure his interest had little to do with your business.”

On her phone, she showed him her husband’s photo. The face he hadn’t wanted to see stared up at him. It was a handsome face, if somewhat blocky like a boxer’s, and a bit aged and worn. He must have been nearly Nozomi’s age, since they’d been in high school at the same time – that much Sedge knew about him. But it was the very opposite sort of face he would have expected her to fall for. Her husband’s name, he remembered, was Kōichi.

“In his public photos,” she said, “he looks younger. Most people don’t recognize him in person. He preferred it that way. Do you remember him?”

Takahashi had apologized once for his role in Nozomi’s affair. He had introduced her to Kōichi. Because Kōichi was a well-known ceramicist, and the husband of one of his workers, Takahashi thought Nozomi and Sedge might sell his work at their shop. They had agreed to, but Kōichi never followed through with the arrangement.

“Yes, I remember.” He had entered their shop two-and-a-half years ago; that was the first time Sedge met him. He was highly esteemed by Kutani-ware artists and dealers. Though neither loud nor brash, he acted remarkably confident, and Sedge had failed in his attempts to engage him. He tried to recall Kōichi’s interaction that day with Nozomi, but nothing came to mind. Only that Kōichi had gravitated to her, talking to her for longer than their customers ever did. Because he was an artist, this wasn’t strange. “I don’t recall you coming in with him.”

“His presence overshadowed mine. For someone as successful as he was, maybe that was natural.”

Wanting to know who she was and hoping she might shine a light on why Nozomi was gone – and what he might yet do about it – he let her continue.

“He left me with his son, you know. His real mother doesn’t want him, and he doesn’t want to go back to her anyway. She lives in Osaka with another man. Her son’s no longer welcome in their flat or in the ramen shop they run. After his father left us, I sent him to Fukui to live with his grandparents. I just couldn’t deal with what had happened and with him, too. But now he’s back with me.”

“You mean you’ve recovered enough by now?”

She smiled to herself. “I don’t know about that. But it’s not the first time this has happened. I’ve built up a sort of endurance for it, I suppose.”

Takahashi had told Sedge about these previous times. “It must be traumatic for your stepson.”

“I’m sure it is. Like I said, it’s not the first time his father has run off. But this time it’s different. This time we know he doesn’t mean to come back.”

Sedge couldn’t tell who she blamed for the affair. Perhaps intentionally, she hadn’t said anything about Nozomi. He couldn’t avoid the idea that she wouldn’t come back, either, and Mariko’s words depressed him.

“Have you had any news about your husband?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t expecting to. Have you heard anything about your wife?”

“Nothing. I thought one of us would have by now.” He set his coffee down on the bench between them. “Why did you want to meet me?”

“How can I say this politely?”

Sedge attempted a smile. “You can be impolite with me.”

“I wanted to see if there was something wrong with you. Something that explained why your wife left you for a man like my husband. But all of it makes even less sense now. Why would she throw away a man like you?”

He could have told her about the arguments he and Nozomi had, the distance between them over their last few months together, and the financial problems they faced with their shop, but he didn’t see how it would help. He had a feeling Mariko wanted to know about the intimacies they shared, that she guessed this had been the driving force behind Nozomi leaving, but he wouldn’t volunteer it. His answer would have disappointed her, anyway.

“Maybe she left because there’s nothing wrong with you. There was so much wrong with my husband that she must have found that quality more attractive.” She looked at Sedge questioningly. “Maybe she had a lot wrong with her, too.”

“Sometimes I thought so. She became despondent about things in the end.”

“Despondent how?”

“I’m not sure how to explain. I think she was suffering from a kind of depression. But she also didn’t want to get better and seemed more satisfied being that way. I never understood it.” That he could state this so plainly surprised him.

“And that’s how it was in the end? With your wife, I mean.”

“It was like it always was between us, I suppose. Maybe a little strained at times, but isn’t that normal? I never guessed she had a lover. I have trouble explaining it even to myself.”

Mariko looked down as if contemplating her coffee, which, like Sedge, she hadn’t touched. “What would you do if she came back to you? Would you give her another chance?”

Sedge shook his head.

“I don’t feel sorry for her.” When he didn’t reply Mariko smiled half-apologetically. She looked at her watch and slowly stood up, giving him the impression that she didn’t want to leave. “What will you do with your shop?”

Sedge stood, too, and shrugged. “It’s closed now. I couldn’t keep it going.”

“You don’t make ceramics yourself?”

“No. I’m not an artist, either.”

She nodded a long time, a far-off look on her face. “I have to go. I’m sorry our meeting got off to such an inauspicious start.”

They bowed to each other.

“I’ll be moving to the ryokan soon,” Sedge reminded her.

“Then I suppose we’ll see each other there sometimes. By the way, what will you do in Yamanaka Onsen? Can’t you find work here in the city?”

“I can’t afford to stay.” To cover up his embarrassment he added quickly, “Takahashi promised to introduce me to some ceramics shops near the ryokan. Hopefully one or two will take me on.”

“You’ll hardly earn anything, you realize.”

“I can only worry about so much at one time.” Not wanting to make her late for the exhibition meeting he said, “Maybe we can talk again soon. I’m sure one of us will hear something.”

“Please let me know if you do.” She bowed again and walked away.

A moment later he called out to her. “You said you’d captured herons before.”

She turned around. “Every few years I find myself in a position to. Usually a car has hit them and I have to bring them to a rehabilitation center. This is the first one I’ve helped that was assaulted by a boar. I wish they were more grateful. You should see my scars.”

When Sedge glanced at her arms she laughed. “I keep them well hidden. They aren’t particularly disfiguring, but I’d rather not suffer those injuries again.”

After she left, a breeze lifted through the trees and cherry blossoms fell on the bench where she had sat. Aside from helping her catch the heron, he imagined he’d left a poor impression on her.

In another week the cherries would reach full bloom. He wanted to see them here before moving to Yamanaka Onsen, but he knew this was unlikely. As he stood to walk home, he felt that summer had eclipsed spring, that the seasons had advanced by some unnatural calamity. And that he was woefully unprepared for the days ahead.

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

For the first chapter of David’s novel, Kanazawa, see here. For David’s article on the Kanazawa author, Izumi Kyoka, see here. For David’s literary homepage, see here.

Writers in focus

Short Story (Kimura)

August 12, 2021

“Peace, the Charm’s Wound Up“
by Marianne Kimura

Sophia is a witch so she ought to be able to think of a spell to make all the plastic sheets vanish.

To that end, two small and stylish frosted glass goblets, filled with apple juice and ice, are on the kitchen table. One goblet has a golden sun embossed on it, the other has a silver moon surrounded by three stars. The goblets were left by a previous tenant.

Impromptu spells are not Sophia’s strong point. “We’ll link arms and drink”, she suggests. Tatsumi, her husband, laughs, “That’s what the Viking warriors did”, he says.

“I’ll have the cup with the moon”, continues Sophia smoothly ignoring him, “you get the one with the sun.” She places the sun one in front of him, the moon one in front of her.

Then she lays out three tarot cards on the table: The Moon, The Sun, The Stars. The tarot deck is based on Gustav Klimt’s romantic and sensuous paintings. The Sun depicts a slim naked couple embracing erotically in a spangled fireworks of gold; on The Stars two dozing women wearing golden bracelets and muumuus are posed on the background of a silvery night sky; The Moon has a blond nude woman curled up asleep against a sea of dark blue, a sparkling crescent moon unfolds behind her.

Tatsumi’s face lights up with amusement. Sophia ignores him again. “I’m not going to do a reading, they are just here for atmosphere and to lend cosmic power.”

She waves her arms over the table, the cups, the tarot cards, and intones, improvising, “Good-bye, plastic sheet! Good-bye! The plastic sheets will depart from our land!”

Tatsumi starts laughing and offers a stinging critique, “It sounds like a spell made up by a little child”.

“Never mind”, she retorts, now giggling a bit. “Drink!” she commands, unable to keep a straight face. She picks up the glass with the moon and Tatsumi obediently picks up the one with the sun. She snakes her arm through his and utters a quick toast. “To no more plastic sheets! To no more plastic!”

Tatsumi obediently repeats her words and they take a gulp of apple juice.

“Peace, the charm’s wound up!” she adds, remembering one of her favorite lines from Macbeth.

Spell done, Tatsumi gets up and starts to boil some water for soba noodles.

Sophia gets some cold leftover oatmeal out of the refrigerator, sits back down, and drizzles honey onto the oatmeal.

“It will sound crazy, maybe”, she says, watching the translucent honey spiral down in swirls, “but sometimes I wonder if maybe I am a nature spirit traveling through this world incognito”, she says, “I don’t feel like I really belong here.”

“Hmmmm…well, which particular nature spirit do you think you are?” her husband asks in his trademark teasing tone. He turns around, holding a handful of dried buckwheat noodles, “a centaur? A tengu? A fairy? An elf?”

“Well, don’t laugh”, she said, “but I think I’m one of the nymphs of the Goddess Diana. That’s why when we moved to this neighborhood I found the yomogi growing next to the path near the mountain behind our house. And the deer on the same mountain. Deer are sacred to Diana. Yomogi is called mugwort in English, but its Latin name is Artemisia, named after the goddess of the moon. Because the underside of the leaf has a whitish cast, as though moonlight is shining on it. And you know, the first thing I ever ate in Japan was a yomogi daifuku.”

Climbing up a large stairwell in Shinjuku Station, after taking the train from Narita, that day 29 years ago, they had come across a man standing behind a table with rows of mochi rice cakes, some green and some white. Sophia had stopped and pointed at the green ones and Tatsumi had bought her one. Crushed yomogi leaves had been intriguingly blended into the mochi rice. Thus, her first impression of Japan had been an old fashioned one, the sort of thing she had never ever seen in the States: a vendor selling homemade simple food not wrapped in plastic, from a little table. Tatsumi had been amused at the way an ordinary traditional food of his homeland had charmed her utterly.

“That was a key moment. I think I was being tested. I just didn’t recognize it at the time.” She takes a sip of the magical apple juice then starts talking again, like the professor she is.

“Years later, I started interpreting literature from the standpoint of a witch and, please remember, that it is all the references to the goddess Diana in Shakespeare’s plays written which support my ideas that the plays hide the Divine Feminine. It’s like one of those computer adventure games I played as a kid: get key, pick up box. Don’t you see? You do it and later it’s clear why it all happened that way. It’s a message. It’s magic!”
Eat mugwort daifuku.
Get key.
Investigate the Bard.
Find Diana.
Become a witch.

Tatsumi has heard her theory how the yomogi daifuku in Shinjuku Station was some sort of message from the spirit world, but he realizes now Sophia is taking the whole far-out theory further by actually suggesting that she is working for the goddess Diana and now incarnated as an ordinary mortal, a humble scholar of Shakespeare. It had been a turning point in Sophia’s life when Macbeth revealed itself to her as a guide to magic and witchcraft.
Peace, the charm’s wound up.

“Well, of course, I have no proof, of course, except, well, I was born in July, under Cancer the crab―that’s the sign of the moon”, she says, stirring the golden yellow honey, one of her favorite things in the world, into the thick oatmeal with satisfaction.

Tatsumi is distracted by his noodles now boiling over. He turns down the heat, and the foaming bubbles sink peacefully. He is hoping Sophia that will similarly just calm down and forget all about her agitation, her unprovable theories, her airy nothing ideas.

Sophia, perhaps getting the hint, quietly sprinkles spices, cardamom, cinnamon, allspice on top of the oatmeal.

A comfortable and peaceful silence ensues. Tatsumi drains the noodles and chops some negi onions to put on top of the noodles. But as soon as he sits down to eat, Sophia starts talking again with more updates of witchy and supernatural news from her life.

“Another thing. Last week I went to that store near Yasaka Jinja on Shijo, I was thinking I ought to buy moonstones, if I really am to be a witch serving the goddess of the moon, but I just didn’t feel like they suited me and bought these amethyst earrings instead…”

Sophia tugs at the purple hexagonal stones dangling from her ears. Tatsumi politely looks up from his smartphone to glance at them.

“….But then, amazingly, just out of curiosity, when I got home I looked up the Greek myth of how amethysts were created. A young Greek woman named Amethyst was on her way to Diana’s temple and was chased by Dionysus who wanted her to go to one of his parties. Dionysus almost caught her but Diana changed her into a clear crystal. Then Dionysus caught up to her, and poured his purple wine on her, changing the crystals forever to purple. My favorite color, by the way. So no matter what I do, I seem to be surrounded by things related to Diana.”

Sophia gets up and puts organic cocoa powder in a cup, adds a little water and some soymilk and two large spoons of honey, “I know I’m obviously an ordinary mortal person. That’s clear. The question is if I’m also some sort of spirit. It would make sense. It would explain everything, actually.”

But Tatsumi, now scrolling through Yahoo news on his phone, is only half listening.

He wasn’t a bad person, not unkind, Sophia knew. He just wasn’t a radical activist witch like she was. He wanted peace and safety and stability. But she had to trust him and ask him to help her. She had no one else she could ask.

And she had so much to do. The worst, most awful, soul-crushing thing now was the huge heavy dark green plastic sheet covering a piece of land near a river three or four houses away from them. She wanted it gone.

No one but her husband could help her write and also sign letters in his name. Writing letters was one of her activist activities on behalf of the bugs, the birds, the animals. She didn’t just need his Japanese language writing skills: she was also afraid of being noticed by the government.

Japan was a lovely country, with many really kind people, but the government was basically run by the construction and chemical industries. It was radical collective capitalism. She didn’t think she’d be deported for speaking her mind but who could be sure? Some Americans who had staged demonstrations against the cruel dolphin hunts in Taiji had been deported.

The land near the river had started out as a large field, but the rapacious Japanese construction industry had turned that into twelve plastic houses and a long apartment complex, though there were empty and abandoned houses scattered everywhere in every neighborhood.

Building on green land was cheaper of course. The government provided free money to any construction company that wanted to build anywhere. Construction companies were the preferred route to stimulate economic activity.

Sophia had speculated on why that was. Why couldn’t the government send money to ordinary people to buy rice, clothes, land to grow food on, books?

Sophia guessed it was to do with power. The construction companies had a lot of political power, and they used a lot of heavy equipment, so they could promise that they’d spend the government’s money on new bulldozers, trucks, cranes, drills, concrete and such. The politicians were friends with all the people running the companies involved. It was a cozy world of favors, back-scratching, familiarity, paternalism and patriarchy. Factories, cars and machines were to be privileged above all else.

And the whole scene was also probably dictated by global financial markets beyond the shores of Japan. Sophia didn’t know the particulars, but she thought it was very likely that the people working on Wall Street and Washington and Europe and other financial and policy centers all over the world had their elegant fingers in this particular pie.

The toxic result was that all over Japan there were millions and millions of empty houses, shops and apartments. The country was immensely overbuilt. Green land was precious and beautiful, but the construction companies had all the power, so nothing ever changed and new houses were built on green places while millions of old houses were vacant. All the vacant houses and their land totalled a land area equal to the whole of the island of Kyushu.

And as for the little piece of land near her, after all the houses and apartments had been built on that little parcel of land, there had been one little odd strip of green land left, too small to be built on. Actually, it was quite big. It was maybe 300 meters long and 15 meters wide and it stretched down along the little river. You could hardly say it was a riverbank, because the river had steep artificial concrete sides, and the land was not sloping down naturally to meet the sides, but perched perpendicularly on top of the concrete, on the south bank of the river.

But with grasses and flowers, this narrow strip of land could have easily supported many, many ants, worms, grubs, grasshoppers, butterflies, crickets and be a home and larder for quite a few birds. It would be able to filter water, to cool the land, and to be a beautiful little piece of nature, spiritually encouraging to anyone who happened to see it. It was easily visible from the small bridge that spanned the river.

But it was covered with heavy green plastic, so it could do none of its magical natural functions. It was, for all purposes, a dead zone. Every time Sophia crossed the bridge, she had to avert her eyes from the plastic sheet zone. She felt so guilty, so upset, by this cruelty humans were perpetrating on nature just out of greed and laziness. She could hear the bugs and the worms moaning and screaming, buried under the thick green swathe of plastic. She could hear the plants shrieking, a mournful vibrating cry of many small voices, trying to seek the light and finding only heavy malignant plastic blocking the beautiful sun and the soft rain.

Sophia shuddered to think of the seeds carried on wind eddies and dropped from the sky onto the cold plastic, instead of soil. They all withered and died.

In truth, there were three or four other similar sheets of plastic, almost as large as this one, near their house and all of them troubled her and bothered her. One was on a slope reaching down to the drainage gutter next to the narrow asphalt path that circled the base of the small mountain near their house. One was on a strip of land next to a fence that enclosed land that belonged to the emperor. One was near another river. All of them were affronts to nature, symbols of human’s cruelty and lack of care for the other-than-human beings of the planet.

These creatures were already suffering major die-offs. Bugs had declined by 30% or 40% in some places in the country over the past few years, and it showed. Honeybees, ladybugs, butterflies, moths, praying mantises, and even mosquitoes, were rare now. Sparrows, common just seven or eight years ago, were no longer spotted hopping on pathways. The din of frogs that one used to hear during the rainy season was gone. The sound of cicadas was no longer a roar but just a little dim whirring sound. Nature was dying everywhere.

She felt this decline acutely and almost personally. Her sense of loss, injury and dread was almost personal. And it was this feeling of being wounded and suffering that made her think that logically, though she had no real proof, she might be a reincarnated nature spirit. Surely she could not truly be one of the humans.

Tatsumi had sent her letter complaining about the plastic sheet (which he’d translated into Japanese) to the City Office and received just a phone call from a city office bureaucrat explaining that it was now city policy to provide the sheets to prevent weeds.

She had tried bringing around a petition for neighbors to sign, and though people had been polite and generally signed it, it was clear that they didn’t care about the disappearing nature at all.

So she had given up, but she was still plotting, vaguely, against the plastic sheet.

She can’t say that she is a failure as a neighborhood activist. The truth is that she seems to be the only one who cares. For these sheets are popping up in all sorts of other places too: outside apartment buildings, on the perimeters of farmer’s fields.

She decides to make a cup of cocoa. While she is stirring the tiny black chia seeds into the cocoa, a totally irrational image pops into her head.
Black-clad figures covered from head to toe in material that swallows up their shapes race from one spot to another. They carry some small scissors and they cut the plastic away, freeing the soil, the plants, the tiny animals, the insects.

“I know what we can do”, she exclaims in excitement. Tatsumi looks up from his phone. “We’ll be like ninjas. We’ll dress in black and in the middle of the night, we’ll take the plastic away with scissors or shears”.

“But we’ve written a letter with your name on it, you’ve taken a petition around. The Shiyakusho people will guess who did it. It won’t be seen as a joke or as a light matter.”

She wants to cry. “Well, we can’t just give up!”

She feels the weight of all the innocent sweet natural beings who can’t have a home thanks to her inability to solve the problem and lift the tons of horrible plastic off of them.

Oh, when will the economy just go ahead and collapse so her agony can end? Then the stupid people who don’t care about nature won’t have any money for plastic. Then the plastic can’t be manufactured because the factories will all be shut down.

She knows objectively that is an antisocial thought, but at the same time, it’s not crazy at all. (That’s what is so crazy, really. This is the weird and schizophrenic era they are living in. Headlines scream “Collapse!” “Climate change disaster!” and “Apocalyptic forest fires!” but then people, including her, just go on about their ordinary lives, while sadly shaking their heads.)

“Look, Sophia”, Tatsumi says, “I agree with you about the awfulness of the plastic sheet. I do. I hate it as much as you do. But the people who want that sheet are in control of this situation and they have the power.”

She knows he is right. The plastic is all over Japan, behind apartment buildings, along the sides of roads. Like a successful monster which ate everything, and still eats it every day, slothfully reclining yet motionless as a lumpy carpet.

No one can stop it. It will go on just as long as it can and then it, too, will die, if a substance such as plastic can be said to die.

In her mind’s eye she sees, decades from now, a future landscape where the plastic is thin, ragged and tattered, the houses and apartments mostly empty. Then all empty.

Already many houses in her neighborhood are vacant. And there are more each year. Vines cling to the front doors, grasses sway in the small gardens that were so neatly tended just a few years ago. One house near her has a gigantic black mould spot, the thumb print of a greasy giant, on the outer wall on the second floor.

Another has, inexplicably, a heap of old broken gilt wooden picture frames and a battered plastic broom near its faded wooden front door.
For years, a frail but cheerful old woman with thinning permed and dyed red hair and a diligent yet absent-minded air, called out greetings to everyone passing by. Now her mailbox has a long strip of plastic tape covering its slot to prevent the delivery of junk mail. Her house stands empty, curtains permanently drawn.

Sophia has no idea if the woman died or if her relatives moved her into a nursing home. But somehow, that strip of fading green plastic on the mailbox she now realizes can surely be taken, along with everything else, as a sign from the gods.

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

For more by Marianne Kimura, please see her story of Last Snow,; an account of how her second novel, The Hamlet Paradigm, was taken up by an independent publisher; her double life as academic and fiction writer; her third prize winning entry for the Writers in Kyoto Competition; an extract from a work in progress, Seven Forms of Infiltration; an interview with her about goddesses and ninjas; or an extract from her first novel, The Hamlet Paradigm. For her original story, Kaguya Himeko, please see here.

artwork by Gustav Klimt

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Short Story by Peter Macintosh

August 7, 2021

Ichi-go Ichi-e – A Serendipitous Encounter

(Photos by Peter Macintosh)

I read the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha many years ago. The book was so popular it even made it onto Carmela’s bedside table in an episode of The Sopranos. The story describes the struggles of a poor young girl in the early 1900’s, sold into a life of misery and servitude in which her perseverance pays off when she becomes a geisha and can finally be together with her Prince Charming. A Japanese Cinderella story of sorts, which is probably why it appealed to me (and millions of others) when I read it as a teenager. Who would have thought that years later I would actually be on a plane heading to Kyoto, Japan, the setting of this tale in which the little girl Chiyo, the protagonist of the story, develops into the beautiful geisha Sayuri? Maybe a little naively, I hoped that perhaps I would be lucky enough to see, snap a photo, or even meet a real geisha during my short visit. Of course, I had thoroughly researched this on the internet and Wikipedia. Still, I knew in my heart that it would be unlikely. So, I would just have to be satisfied with images or serendipitous encounters. And, I promised myself that I would not be fooled by the hordes of tourists who audaciously run around in cheap, brightly coloured rent-for-the-day ‘kimonos,’ and take selfies that are often mistaken for geisha that you see plastered all over Instagram and people’s blogs.

While I was wandering aimlessly around some back streets with my 35mm camera dangling around my neck, a stylishly dressed young woman who appeared to be in her late 20’s approached me and asked what I was looking for or if I needed directions. Feeling a little foolish and a bit shy but full of conviction, I told her what I was doing. ‘I’m looking for geisha.’ She politely told me that they were called maiko and geiko in Kyoto. I was a little embarrassed that I hadn’t remembered that. Looking a little surprised, she then mentioned, without telling me what she did for a living, that she was on her day off and that she had spent some time abroad and spoke a bit of English. She then kindly offered to show me around the geisha districts or hanamachi (flower districts) as they are known in Japan. She introduced herself as Hinako, and our adventure began.

We moved through narrow alleyways lined with red paper lanterns. She pointed out the teahouses where the geisha entertained and even where they lived and went to school. She was very knowledgeable. I wanted to ask her why, but I didn’t want to be rude and interrupt, so I kept silent and listened to her explanations.

While we walked, I felt there was something special about Hinako. She was constantly greeting and being greeted by people who at first glance appeared to be just random elderly shopkeepers; some were even dressed in beautiful silk kimono, but all had their hair in immaculate coiffures. ‘Were the women in kimono geiko?’ I asked, deliberately emphasizing the word ‘geiko’ she had taught me minutes before. ‘Yes, they all are, and still are. All are senior geiko,’ she replied, shooting me a look of approval for remembering the correct term. 

This puzzled me. How could they be? There was no white makeup. They just looked like ordinary Japanese shopkeepers. And, only a few of them were in kimono. I mentioned that I was a little disappointed that they were not the porcelain-faced dolls always trying to break through the walls of tourists I saw online. She politely explained that the senior geiko were usually musicians, shamisen players or singers who didn’t wear the white makeup anymore except for special or formal occasions. She continued by pointing out that it was still a bit early to see maiko en route to their engagements because evening entertainment starts around 6:00 pm. I guess she noticed my disappointment and felt sorry for me because she took out her phone and began showing photos of maiko and geiko – this time in their white makeup, of course. There were dozens of photos. So, I took my iPad out of my bag and began showing my collection of geisha maiko and geiko images that I’d downloaded from the internet. She was pretending to be just as captivated with them as I was. Suddenly Hinako giggled as I came across one particular image and commented on how beautiful they were. I didn’t even know if they were ‘real’ geisha. I had heard that many tourists dressed up and walked through the streets getting portraits done. She then asked me which one I thought was the prettiest. I replied, ‘All of them.’ For the first time, she looked a little disappointed. However, she soon regained her smile, and we quietly continued walking in the hot sun. After a few minutes of trying to absorb and make sense of what was going on, I asked her why she knew everybody. She casually brushed it off as Kyoto being a sort of village where everybody knows everybody else, and their private matters as well. Especially in Gion.

Patting her brow with a light-coloured handkerchief, she then asked me if I would like to take a rest at one of her favourite cafés. Understanding fully that she was getting tired of acting as my personal tour guide and probably needed a break herself, I had no objection to her suggestion and said, ‘That would be great. It’s quite hot, and I’m a little jetlagged, too.’

We went down another side street to a little wooden house. She opened the latticed sliding door and said, ‘Tadaima‘ (I’m back) and was welcomed by a little old lady in kimono with a cheerful ‘Okaeriyasu‘ (Welcome back, in the Kyoto dialect). The shop was slightly air-conditioned but wasn’t the refreshing oasis I would have preferred.

Hinako grabbed my hand and took me to the wooden booth in the back of the shop. On our way, we passed a wall with dozens of white rounded fans with beautiful writing on them. There must have been close to a hundred, all arranged in perfectly straight rows. It was almost like there was a specific order to the arrangement. Before we sat down, she pulled out a light blue handkerchief and gave it to me without saying a word. I guess I was sweating a little more than I thought. Putting her phone on the table, she called out to the old woman, ‘Matcha aisu o futastsu kudasai‘ (Two matcha iced teas, please). ‘Ookini‘ (Thank you) came the reply from somewhere inside the shop.

Hinako then took out her fan, unfolded it and began fanning the both of us. ‘Atsu-osu ne!’ then corrected herself, ‘I mean, it’s hot, isn’t it?’ Still fanning herself with one hand, she picked up her phone decorated with sparkling sequins in the shape of an owl, ‘I’m sorry, but I have to check my messages.’ ‘No problem. Me too.’ I pretended to do the same, knowing full well that I had no messages because I forgot to buy a new SIM card. The proprietress brought over two largish, round ceramic bowls and set them down in front of us. 

Hinako looked up from her phone for a second and said, ‘Ookini, okaasan,’ and went back to checking her messages. There was one large ice cube in what looked like a frothy pond. I had had matcha green tea many times but only hot up until then. But this was Kyoto, and Kyoto was famous for its green tea. I’m sure it would be tasty, I thought. Realising she was being a little rude, she said ‘Sorry,’ cupped the tea bowl with both hands, took a sip, and with a big smile said ‘Oishii‘ (Delicious).

Following her lead, I picked up my bowl, brought it to my lips, and took in the fresh smell of the matcha. I had tasted it many times before, but Kyoto matcha green tea was much more enjoyable. ‘Oishii,’ I said, mimicking her intonation, and we both looked at each other, nodded in agreement and giggled.

Suddenly the table began to vibrate, and her phone started humming. Looking a bit embarrassed, she stood up, politely excused herself, and went outside. After a few moments, I saw her motioning the proprietress to come out. They talked briefly, and with a glance towards me and an apologetic bow to both myself and the proprietress, she disappeared down the alleyway. I was a bit confused and began to feel a little uncomfortable. I didn’t have very much money on me and didn’t know whether I would be able to pay the bill, so I slowly sipped my iced matcha tea in a cold sweat.

Noticing my discomfort, the proprietress came over as if apologetically, motioned me to slide around and sat next to me. She then handed me a charming little chirimen silk crepe case with some Japanese characters embroidered on it. ‘Beautiful,’ I said. 

Nodding her head and smiling in agreement, she said, ‘Dozo, naka o mite okureyasu‘ (Please look inside) while gesturing to do so with her hands. I unfolded the crepe case and carefully slid out a piece of meticulously folded notepaper. It had little round white fans on it. As I began to open it, a small rectangular piece of paper fell out and floated down to the floor. ‘Gomen nasai‘ (I’m sorry), I apologized in my well-practiced but broken Japanese. 

Rolling her eyes but still smiling, she bent over, picked up the sticker and told me it was a Senjafuda. She then pointed to the beautiful calligraphy and said, ‘Neemu karudo,’ which I took to be some form of business card. It had the same kanji characters as on the case. 

The note said. ‘Sorry I have to leave. My teacher called me. I paid for the tea. Please watch Mamehina on YouTube. Please Take Care.’ This was accompanied by a tiny heart drawn at the bottom.

I couldn’t wait to see what she meant by watching YouTube. Obviously, there was no Wi-Fi in the small café. I didn’t even see a TV like you do in most mom-and-pop shops. So, with no possible way of getting online in my current situation and my curiosity piqued, I decided to head back to my Airbnb rental. The geisha safari would have to be put off until after dinner. And, if truth be told, I genuinely felt jetlag coming on, so I decided to take a taxi. To avoid any possible communication problems, I had prepared a printout of the lodgings I would be staying at with the address written in Japanese, and handed this to the taxi driver. I arrived safely at my newly renovated machiya townhouse, and entered the security code. Then, as I slid open the door, I said ‘Tadaima‘ (I’m home) even though I knew that nobody would answer back. But, it did make me feel like I was in Japan. I went to the living room, knelt at the small, low traditional dinner table, and flipped open my laptop. Then I carefully typed in ‘M-a-m-e-hi-na’. I still hadn’t figured out exactly what or who Mamehina was. Surprisingly, a video came up. So, I clicked on it and then clicked the skip ads tab.

Suddenly traditional Japanese music began. I think it was the shamisen. A large curtain began to rise, and there was a woman elegantly dressed in emerald green, standing center stage between two others equally impressive looking. I assumed they were geiko. They glided effortlessly across the stage with the weighted hem of their kimonos trailing behind them. The woman who started in the center began weaving between the other two dancers, with precisely choreographed movements slightly touching the other on the shoulder, signalling them to follow behind her. This continued until the music gradually faded away. The camera then zoomed in individually on the dancers as they kneeled and prepared to bow. It wasn’t until just before the curtain fell that I noticed that the one in the middle looked familiar. I went back and replayed the ending. ‘Yes!’ I said out loud to myself. I knew I recognised the middle dancer. It was Hinako, and Mamehina must be her geiko name, I thought. The whole day started to make sense now.

Kyoto Journal 100

August 2, 2021

KJ 100 / ‘100 Views of Kyoto’
By Ken Rodgers

A very special celebratory print issue of Kyoto Journal

No one on the Kyoto Journal production team has been watching the virtual Olympics. We’ve been too busy wrestling our next issue into shape, for a strict print deadline.

 (Yes, print!)

Since it also happens to be our one hundredth issue—a milestone we never foresaw reaching—we set out to compile a kaleidoscopic compendium in the tradition of ­the many “100 Views” woodblock series, presenting a diversity of perspectives on a specific theme. In this case, a fresh assemblage of views, voices, reminiscences, personal observations and descriptions (many written or adapted especially for KJ100), sketches, photographs, historical and literary quotes (including brief excerpts from KJ back issues and other relevant sources), all intended to evoke by their juxtaposition the unique spirit of Kyoto. (While also intentionally avoiding the all-too-familiar tropes of ‘ancient capital,’ and ‘cultural heart of Japan’…)

Kyoto is of course both Kyoto Journal’s hometown and its overall defining influence. Since our first issue, published in 1987, KJ has explored and depicted innumerable aspects of Kyoto, honoring the city’s rich heritage while also attempting to envisage Kyoto both within its historical context in Japan, and within the bigger picture of life in Asia.

One of the most difficult parts of presenting KJ100 to our mostly intensely Kyotophile readership has been the search for a cover image that represents the essence of this entire city, an entity that remains almost indefinable in its diversity. We’ll be posting our final choice on KJ’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/kyoto.journal/), in advance of release.

We expect the magazine to be published in September, in bookstores and through our website, www.kyotojournal.org. (A page for pre-orders is under construction.)

Did I mention that this will be a limited edition, of over 140 pages? Or that it will be printed by Kyoto’s pre-eminent art printer, SunM, meaning the image quality of this very visual issue will be phenomenal? Or that with Japan currently closed indefinitely to visitors, this may be one of the best ways for anyone residing elsewhere to encounter and experience present-day Kyoto? (Great value as a present, too!)

You’ll find at least a hundred (and probably more) different reasons to enjoy this issue. We like to think it will be more tangible, and lasting, than the Olympics. We think you’ll like the cover, too.

—Ken Rodgers, KJ managing editor

Black Dragonfly

August 1, 2021

Book review by Jann Williams of Black Dragonfly by Jean Pasley (Balestier Press, 2021)

Black Dragonfly is a book of rich imagination, inspired by and incorporating the work of Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (1850 – 1904). Hearn, of Greek-Irish heritage, spent the last 14 years of his life in Japan, recording aspects of Japanese life that he found beguiling and at times bewildering. The 14 books, and numerous newspaper articles and lectures he produced, captured a period of rapid change and have been a source of influence, delight and debate ever since. Jean Pasley draws on Hearn’s time in Japan to offer insights into his character and inner thoughts. In doing so she weaves in earlier, at times traumatic, experiences in Europe, the USA and the Caribbean that helped shape him as a person. A masterful blend of fact, fiction and feelings, Black Dragonfly takes storytelling to another level.

The nature of the man who was Hearn has intrigued writers almost as much as his writing, perhaps more. Black Dragonfly joins two recent novels where the authors explore Hearn’s complex and enigmatic character from differing angles. Roger Pulvers (2011), in The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn, tries to answer the question of why Hearn found solace for his imagination and respect for himself only in Japan, as well as what it means to be a foreigner in any land, in any era. The story is written from a first-person perspective. In contrast Monique Truong (2020), in her book The Sweetest Fruits, envisions Hearn’s storied life from the viewpoint of his Greek mother and American and Japanese wives. Jean’s novel takes readers on a different and distinctive journey. It is a love story at heart, bringing to the fore Hearn’s relationship with Koizumi Setsuko whom he married in Matsue, Japan in 1891. This partnership changed his life immeasurably.

Poetic references to singing insects and dragonflies appear throughout Jean’s novel. Her evocative language is captivating. For example, on page 96, “The spectrally slender Emperor dragonfly was the most beautiful. It gleamed with indescribable metallic colours”. Hearn was intrigued by the beauty, sound and symbolism of insects; they were one of the many unfamiliar aspects of Japanese culture he observed and wrote of. The black dragonfly of the novel’s title is associated with both life and death, a reminder to make the most of each day. It is also used as a metaphor for the importance of having children in a land where ancestor-worship is deeply embedded. Family is central to the novel, with Lafcadio – who formally changed his name to Koizumi Yakumo – and Setsuko having four children before his death aged 54. Their descendants have been instrumental in keeping the Hearn/Koizumi legacy alive.

Hearn’s stories and impressions of the numerous countries he lived in makes him identifiable to, and scrutinised by, many people. His unique depictions of traditional Japanese culture continue to be of great appeal, especially the spiritual and supernatural elements. Collaborations between Japan, Greece, Ireland and the USA have flourished in the last decade through the creation of museums, memorials (including a biographical garden), exhibitions, symposiums, publications and artistic/philosophical ventures. Black Dragonfly adds a new and compelling perspective to the resurgent interest in Hearn’s life and works. Jean’s portrayal captures his nuanced and multi-layered character, that of an outsider, through engaging, elegant prose and immersive historical fiction.

Jann Williams
July 27, 2021

Writers in focus

Clouds of Illusion

July 30, 2021

Poems and Images by James Woodham

clouds of illusion
changing slowly as the sky
sculptures of the wind

insubstantial moon
on a canvas of pure blue
the faintest brushwork

try painting rainbows!                        
for a moment it was there              
now just a memory
                           
the stillness profound –
mountains under the blue sky
moving deep within

mountains range
the staggering blue expanse
brocading autumn

weather sensory –
flowers bend along the breeze
the bees follow

butterfly flutters
a tangled path through bamboo
alights on a leaf

the bent old lady
talks to the crows and feeds them
with her wisdom

black cat sitting
in the middle of the road
wonders who I am

travelers of the sky
wisps of beard that drift and flow
letting it all go

bass gleaming green                                                   
pulled from the lake – I with my eye                         
fish the image     

moon hangs in the blue
tobi glides the empty sky
the lake levelling                                                                                        

dragonfly hovers 
at the edge of evening
grey waves glide in

cool evening breeze
the lake rolling siver-grey
pine trees wait for rain

lake a bolt of blue
water hardly audible 
waves barely there

through the pine trees
sunbeams and smoke drifting
a bird takes flight

grey sky, grey water
heron unfurls long grey wings
flaps away lazy

royal messenger –
kingfisher streaks turquoise
across the water

crow tracking me down
through pine tree territory
caws his discontent

this stand of pine trees – 
sentinels of the long shore
waiting for all time

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

For previous posts by James Woodham, please see the striking poems and stunning photography here.  Or here. Or here. Or here. For his previous posting, A Single Thread, see here, and for The Wind’s Word click here.

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