The judges of this year’s competition offer their heartfelt congratulations to Stephen Benfey for his masterful piece “Kyoto Time”, which is full of rich and dramatic imagery depicting an older and quieter Kyoto. The main character seems to embody this aspect of the city herself — multilayered and untouchable by the time that speeds by. The author builds tension and pulls us into the scene with visual details and subject matter that is unusual and fresh.
* * *
Kyoto Time
First light rouses
Shizuka from her futon. She dons an indigo kimono. Skirts and blouses are not
for her. Maybe, if she had been an actress … Silly thought! Barefoot, she
descends the ladder-steep staircase to her speck of a bar just off Pontocho.
Before breakfast every morning, she walks to Nishiki Tenmangu Shrine at the east end of Nishiki-Ichiba — the old market street north of Shijo Dori. There she prays to the god of business acumen. The shrine gates are locked at this hour but Shizuka has a key to the service entrance. The priest’s wife is a friend from childhood.
Her rounded zori
sandals tick an adagio tempo on the pavement. Ahead lies Kawaramachi Dori, one
of Kyoto’s main north-south thoroughfares. Later in the day, it will be jammed.
But now, it is empty, silent.
Shizuka cherishes
silence. She loves the hush of the tea ceremony. Silence nourishes her after
the nights of music, talk, and laughter.
She steps out onto Kawaramachi — two lanes going south, then two more going north. No lights here, no crosswalk, no traffic. She reaches the first lane marker when an engine’s whine rends the silence. She looks to her right. Two taxis are bearing down on her at full speed. Shizuka turns to face them. She bows deeply in apology — for being a nuisance, the nuisance of an older, quieter, slower Kyoto.
Shizuka relaxes,
ready for the “other world.” The cars roar past, their wheels a blur to either
side. Shizuka stays bowed in their wake, her kimono still rustling as the
exhaust clears.
Is this heaven?
But nothing has changed! She rises, slowly. She can see all the way to the
mountains.
The taxis have left her alive. Untouched, like the soul of the city itself, by time.
Stephen Benfey, fiction writer, copywriter, and father, lived in Kyoto during the 70s, attending college, helping a Japanese gardener, producing videos, and listening to Osaka blues bands. There, he met his future wife and began writing copy. After raising their children in Tokyo, the couple moved to their current home in a coastal hamlet on the Boso peninsula.
* * * Congratulations, again, to all winners of the Sixth Annual Writing Competition. Details about the next competition will be posted to the Writers in Kyoto website this autumn. We look forward to receiving many entries in 2022 and having the opportunity to award more wonderful prizes, as well as to sharing the winning submissions within the WiK community and beyond.
Ginny Tapley Takemori making a point during the Zoom session (photos by John Dougill)
Few people manage to make a career out of literary translation, so those who do must be special indeed. One of them is Ginny Tapley Takemori, the award-winning freelance translator of Sayaka Murata’s worldwide sensation, Convenience Store Woman.
WiK’s Zoom manager and fellow translator, Lisa Wilcut, provided the questions for Ginny, who was open and fulsome in her answers, with an obvious concern to give the best advice she could. The incisive questions ranged over tricky translation problems as well as what Lisa called ‘the meta aspect’ to do with building a career and getting published.
In terms of translation, the speaker discussed such matters as how to convey the author’s voice, and what to do with loaded cultural words like kotatsu. In one example she cited a Sayaka Murata short story that began with the pronoun boku – seemingly simple enough, except that in Japanese it is gender specific and that mattered to the meaning of the story.
As it happens, Ginny started her career translating in a completely different language – Spanish. Study of Japanese followed at London’s prestigious SOAS and a distance learning MA with leading Japan specialists, Sheffield University, in-between which she took a job with Kodansha. This enabled her to get an understanding of the publishing industry as well as making useful contacts in the book world. It was a career path she thoroughly recommended for budding translators.
Following further questions by Lisa, Ginny went on to cover two important subjects, namely how to get permission from authors to translate works, and the separate but equally vital matter of how to get a publishing contract. As stepping stones along the way, Ginny recommended translating short stories for literary magazines.
Socialising before the talk begins
Other topics that Ginny covered included the issue of social media and how best to use them. In terms of finding material, she suggested book reviews, browsing book shops, keeping up with prize winners and reading some of the many literary magazines in Japan. She stressed too the importance of having a personal connection to the material.
The recent boom in Japanese translated works, Ginny pointed out, is not a country specific phenomenon but part of a worldwide trend to greater acceptance of translated works. The trend has been furthered by a concerted campaign by translators, and as a result worldwide translations have increased from 3% of total sales to around 7%.
Lisa Wilcut, who managed the Zoom session and put the questions to Ginny
And to what did Ginny ascribe the global success of Convenience Store Woman? A top quality writer in Sayaka Murata. The appeal of social alienation as a theme to a generation of contract workers. Good PR from the publisher in Japan, followed by US marketing that created a buzz before the translation came out. Also in the UK a great design team at Granta, who even created promotion goods like T-shirts. There was one more factor in the book’s success which Ginny was too modest to mention – a great translation by a great translator.
Many thanks to Ginny for sacrificing her Sunday morning to give WiK a most informative and instructive talk. Earthlings is her latest translation of a Sayaka Murata novel, and we look forward to seeing where her translating skills will take her next.
****************
To see Ginny’s career record and 32 publications, take a look at her LinkedIn page and scroll down to Accomplishments.
Uji as seen by three ladies from the West by Yuki Yamauchi
(picture sourced from Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore’s Jinrikisha Days in Japan)
Uji has been a favourite destination of mine since I noticed my favorite author Lord Dunsany had written about the bodhisattvas on clouds in the Hoo-do hall of Byodo-in. (You can see the details here.)
Though there is no telling exactly how he came to know them, researching the possible source of his imagination helped me find three Western women who had visited Uji before 1933.
First, the renowned British traveler Isabella Bird (1831-1904) wrote how she entered the area in Volume Two of Unbeaten Tracks of Japan (1880). Her letter LV goes:
We crossed the broad Ujikawa, which runs out of Lake Biwa, by a long and handsome bridge, and went as far as the pretty little town of Uji, which has some of the loveliest tea-houses in Japan, hanging over the broad swift river, with gardens and balconies, fountains, stone lanterns, and all the quaint conventionalities which are so harmonious here. These tea-houses are ceaselessly represented by Japanese art, and if you see a photograph of an ideal tea-house, you may be sure it is at Uji.
The persevering explorer also recalls her experience with Orramel
Hinckley Gulick (1830-1923), a member of the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions, at a tea-house in the town:
I had not before seen a European man in one of these fairy-like rooms, and Mr. Gulick being exceptionally tall, seemed to fill the whole room, and to have any number of arms and legs! I knew that the tea-house people looked at us with disgust.
Afterwards, the writer explains the history of tea in Uji in detail:
Uji is one of the most famous of the Japan tea-districts, and its people told us that two crops a year have been taken from the same shrubs for 300 years. The Japanese say that tea was drunk in the Empire in the ninth century, when a Buddhist priest brought the teaseed from China; but it seems that its culture died out, and that it was naturalised a second time in the twelfth century, when a Buddhist priest again brought seed from China, shortly after which tea was planted at Uji.
Next, a similar theme with a focus on tea gardens is taken up by the American geographer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore (1856-1928), one of the proponents of planting Japanese cherry trees in Washington, D.C. In her book Jinrikisha Days in Japan (1891), the Iowan writes of “the finest tea district of Japan” together with a photo entitled “Picking Tea”:
Groups of bobbing hats beside the tea-bushes, carts loaded with sacks and baskets of tea-leaves; trays of toasting tea-leaves within every door-way, a delicate rose-like fragrance in the air; women and children sorting the crop in every village; and this was the tea season in its height. Here were bushes two and three hundred years old yielding every year their certain harvest, and whole hill-sides covered with matted awnings to keep from scorching or toughening in the hot sun those delicate young leaves, which are destined to become the costly and exquisite teas chosen by the sovereign and his richest subjects.
Following this, Uji is featured in the book In Bamboo Lands (1895) by the American writer, Katharine Schuyler Baxter (1845-?). In a way reminiscent of Bird, she points out, “The tea-houses of Uji are ideal and are ceaselessly represented by Japanese art.” However, she also refers to how good Japanese tea tastes and the reason why:
The tea was delicious and brewed to perfection, as the Japanese are tea epicures. The water for making the beverage is heated but never allowed to boil, and after remaining on the leaves for a moment, until it becomes a greenish straw color, the infusion is poured off, or the result would be bitter.
In addition, Baxter mentions another attraction of Uji – Byodo-in temple.
Our inefficient guide, anxious to redeem his reputation, induced us to visit an old Buddhist temple founded in 1052, and noted for its kakemonos, scrolls, and relics of Yorimasa – a warrior of the twelfth century, who, after “prodigies of valor,” hard pressed by his enemies, committed harakiri at the age of seventy-five. Phoenix Hall, in the same grounds, is an ancient building, reproduced at the World’s Fair in 1893.
Not everything in Uji was pleasant to the traveler, though. She bought bamboo shoots to decorate the carriages that she and her companion boarded, but her purchases proved a source of trouble:
Then, as a bolt out of the blue, and without knowing the cause, we were stopped by an official, who demanded our passports, opened them, and pointed angrily to a certain line. We glanced at the translation and learned that we were accused of “injuring plants,” and were answerable for a breach of the law. I can imagine what a forlorn appearance we must have presented at that moment, as, surrounded by an excited crowd, we waited for our stupid guide to explain to the not less stupid official that the bamboo had been paid for with good, honest silver. Another five minutes was consumed in appeasing the villagers, who could not comprehend why foreigners should be allowed to destroy shrubs to adorn kurumas. Peace was restored at last, and we were allowed to proceed after the offending branches had been torn away and hidden under the seats.
Unfortunately, the lingering pandemic has made tourism in Japan more sluggish than ever, and Uji is no exception. The city is one of the places which I am eager to visit when the state of emergency is lifted and we are completely free from pathological threats. Ah, how I miss the days when I could take an occasional look at the Uji River while walking across the bridge, see a stone statue of Lady Murasaki close to the entrance of Byodoin Omotesando, stroll along the stone-paved approach, and imprint on my mind the beauty of the Amida Buddha statue surrounded by bodhisattvas on clouds inside the Hoo-do hall!
The judges were unanimous in their deep appreciation of “Love on a Low Flame” by Amanda Huggins. While the longing for a lover is expressed amidst the passing of seasons, the final line reverberates winningly, as if someone truly has come home. Apt phrase after apt phrase were also noted elsewhere in the piece, which prompted the judges to choose it as the winner of Second Prize.
* * *
Love on a Low Flame
The house feels hollow now you’ve gone and there’s no one to call out to when the DJ plays our favourite song.
I long for the familiar sound of your key in the lock, your voice in the hallway at the same time each day.
Tadaima!
I listen for your footsteps in the street below, hear the tinkle of laughter, sweet as temple bells, as girls hurry by, kimonos bright with peonies.
When summer wanes, the breeze spins restless leaves, tangles wind chimes, rattles paper screens, watches lanterns dance in empty doorways.
Sparrows take their roll call on the wire and a lone heron flies low along the Kamo with all Kyoto’s quiet beauty stowed beneath his wings.
So now I will wait out winter, warm our love on a low flame, fashion its wings from fallen feathers, anchor it with stones.
I whisper to you in the dark, breathe my greeting into cupped hands, hold it close to my ribs in readiness for your return.
Okaeri!
Amanda Huggins is the author of the novellas All Our Squandered Beauty and Crossing the Lines, as well as four collections of stories and poetry. She has received numerous awards for her travel writing and short fiction, and her debut poetry collection, The Collective Nouns for Birds, won a Saboteur Award in 2020.
The judges of the WiK Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition once again extend their heartfelt congratulations to Hans Brinckmann, who was awarded Third Prize for his piece “Restaurant Boer”. This is a lovely and generous narrative, full of interesting details about the first Dutch restaurant in Kyoto, and told with humor and warmth. The author seems to be right before us, telling his personal story. While there were cultural factors in the business enterprise which caused confusion, the happy ending brings delight.
* * *
Restaurant Boer
In the spring of 1958, I assisted a close friend, Shoko Fujii, in setting up a small Kyoto eatery in Kiyamachi, Shijo-sagaru, in a rented space owned by a gynecologist, right on the narrow Takasegawa. From the options I offered, she chose the name Restaurant Boer (meaning Farmer), the first Dutch restaurant in Kyoto, if not in Japan. It featured smoked eels, hearty soups, and – as the house specialty – very tasty veal-and-bacon rolls known in Holland as ‘blinde vinken’, blind finches. The approximate translation, mekura-no-suzume, blind sparrows, sounded so intriguing that we were sure this would guarantee the success of this start-up.
Besides fresh vegetables, they were served with potatoes, jaga-imo in Japanese, introduced by 17th century Dutch traders from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, jagatara in old-Japanese, thus named jaga-imo, imo meaning tuber. Other meals were also served, such as cheese dishes and Jachtschotel, a hunter’s stew.
But after a brief spell of bookings, customer numbers declined fast, perhaps in part because of the shock caused by the mekura-no-suzume, not the taste, but its appetite-destroying name. And the term Boer didn’t help either: what was a “farmer restaurant” doing in Japan’s sophisticated, ancient capital? The restaurant closed its doors within a year.
But at least there was a happy ending: it was in front of Boer that in October 1958 I was introduced in mi-ai style to my future wife, Toyoko Yoshida. Why “in front”? Because although we had planned to meet at Boer, a funeral procession had just crossed the bridge to Boer. “Bad omen!”, she called out. “I avoid that bridge!” Instead, I crossed to her side, and from then on, everything went well. We clicked, found common interests, and married four months later. We had a happy marriage.
Born in Holland in 1932, Hans Brinckmann – though keen on writing – joined an international bank. Assigned to Japan in 1950, he stayed 24 years. He returned to Japan intermittently and since 2003 as a permanent resident and writer of seven works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, including Showa Japan (Tuttle) and The Call of Japan (Renaissance Books). See his website https://habri.jp
This year’s Local Prize was awarded to Lisa Twaronite Sone for her piece “Just the Wind”. The people of Kyoto have always been contemplative of the spirit world. This piece also gives pause and makes us think of our mortality. The judges were intrigued by the “ghost story ending”. The concept of benign, yet mischievous spirits being carried on a ghostly gust or being carried by a prevailing wind, looking down at the goings on of the city is atmospheric, spiritual, and mysterious – and very appropriate for Kyoto.
＊ ＊ ＊
Just the Wind
No one can see the wind, but it goes everywhere.
A boy laughs as the wind snatches his father’s hat and tosses it among the mossy gravestones, and together they chase it. Further up the hillside, the trees framing Kiyomizdera’s pillars dance and swirl.
The wind rustles the wrapper of a manju that a woman is about to bite, and she gets a mouthful of paper instead. She tries to spit it into her handkerchief but the wind plucks everything out of her hands, so she has to collect her belongings from the cobblestone street. She should know better than to eat in public like that!
A chubby baby in a stroller wails, until the wind ruffles his hair and puffs up his sleeves like billowing sails. It jangles his rattle until a smile appears between his apple cheeks.
Young tourist girls snap their parasols shut and giggle as they clutch each other for support, swaying as the wind strokes their hair and tweaks their braids. It tugs at the folds of their obi, and lifts the hems of their kimono to tickle them underneath. It whispers in their ears, and caresses the soft curves of their bare necks.
Like the wind, no one can see us, either — and we go everywhere, too. Our bodies are dust under the gravestones, so now we float above the earth we once walked. On glorious gusty days like these, we can touch the living people to our hearts’ content, and they all think it’s just the wind.
We tease them and play with them, we kiss them and embrace their warmth, for they bring back so many precious memories of our own lives long ago.
What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.
Lisa Twaronite Sone grew up in the United States and first came to Kyoto as a student in 1985. She has lived most of her adult life in Tokyo, where she worked as a journalist for several decades. She now divides her time between Tokyo and Kyoto.
Critic and Professor Tatsuo Kuriyagawa around 1920 (pen name Hakuson Kuriyagawa) Photo public domain
A native of Kyoto city, Tatsuo Kuriyagawa (1880-1923) honed his knowledge on Western literature, studying under Lafcadio Hearn and then Soseki Natsume at Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo). In 1904, when he graduated as the top student, Kuriyagawa began his writing career by contributing an article on W. B. Yeats, which is deemed Japan’s earliest formal theory on the poet and his works.
While he introduced Western literature systematically to readers in Japan, Kuriyagawa kept focused on what was going on in the world of Irish letters. For example, the themes of his writings in the 1910s ranged from the Irish Literary Revival to authors including G. B. Shaw. In fact, he was so conscious of the literary trend that he wrote in 1917 about Lord Dunsany, whose dramas had started to gain popularity in the U.S. in parallel with the Little Theatre Movement.
In addition, Kuriyagawa was also intrigued by love marriage – his curiosity was piqued by Soseki Natsume – though the practice of miai-kekkon (arranged marriage) was prevalent throughout Japan in his days. Kuriyagawa contributed his views on romance to the Asahi Shimbun, and the serial was turned in 1922 into a best-selling book Kindai no Ren’ai-kan (Modern Views on Love).
The Kyoto native wasn’t just a critic, however. He started to teach at the Fifth High Middle School (now Kumamoto Prefecture) in 1904 and then in the Third High Middle School (predecessor of Okayama and Kyoto universities) in 1907. His teachership culminated with the English literature department of Kyoto Imperial University in 1917, when he was appointed as an assistant professor – he was promoted to professor two years later. He delivered lectures to many students, among whom was drama director and filmmaker Akira Nobuchi. According to another of his students, Kuriyagawa often said in a persuasive manner, “The young are just eager to read new books, but they must pore over old ones, too.”
The well-read educator put out more than five books, and would have certainly released more publications and shared a portion of his vast expertise with a larger number of students at Kyoto Imperial University or somewhere else had it not been for the Great Kanto Earthquake, which struck Tokyo and its surrounding areas hard on Sept. 1 in 1923. The 43-year-old professor was staying with his wife Choko at his vacation home in Kamakura, but his physical disability – he had had his left leg amputated in 1915 – made it so hard to avoid the tsunami that he was washed away despite her help and breathed his last the following day.
His unexpected passing was mourned by many, including his academic colleagues and former students. Several books were posthumously published, not to mention his complete works. In 1929, when the six-volume collection was issued, there took place a ceremony of nanakaiki (a traditional Buddhist ritual to celebrate the sixth anniversary of someone’s death) at the Rakuyu Kaikan hall of Kyoto Imperial University. The deceased was commemorated by his wife (she miraculously survived the violent sea wave) as well as several Kyoto Imperial University scholars including Izuru Shinmura, author and editor of Japanese dictionary Kojien.
Kuriyagawa’s fame and achievements have slipped out of the public memory, particularly as his former students pass away, some of whom had written about him after the end of World War II. That said, Kyoto remembers Tatsuo Kuriyagawa in the form of one of his former residences which remains near Okazaki Park – the building is now used as the main store for traditional Japanese novelty retailer, Ayanokoji. Moreover, he rests in peace together with his wife in one of the graveyards of Kurodani Temple.
First page of Tatsuo Kuriyagawa’s handwritten manuscript Saikin Eishi Gairon (Introduction to Recent English Poetry). Here he referred to poets such as Robert Burns, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Gordon Byron and John Keats. [This is one of the cards that was probably passed to attendees at his nanakaiki in 1929. Set bought privately via an auction website.]
The USA Prize for this year’s Writing Competition was awarded to Tina deBellegarde for her poem “Sound Travels”. The judges appreciated the timely quality of this piece. For many, the telephone is now the only way to visit with friends and family members. There is a genuinely heartfelt, wistful longing to this writing. Kyoto’s sounds are portrayed in a refreshing and lively way, and the reader can imagine that they are also on the telephone, accompanying their loved one on a walk around the city.
Sound Travels
7,000 miles. Unbridgeable this year. I content myself with his phone calls.
His morning. My evening. We share a yawn as my ears follow him out his front door.
Ohayou gozaimasu. I overhear my son say through the line. His landlady swooshes her broom in response.
He stops at his favorite café. Jazz competes with muffled chatter and the squeal of steamed milk.
The wind rustles the trees. It’s snowing sakura petals, he says. I close my eyes to see.
A bicycle bell trills at the intersection. Now empty of tourists. The chirp accompanies his crossing.
Through the temple grounds. A clang. Then two claps. I imagine a bowed head.
He coos to a cat in a narrow alley. It turns, then scoots ahead. Paws on pavement silent to us both.
The kamo rushes past him. An egret lands. It waits, watching for its dinner. My son narrates in the silence.
Two girls walk by, Chatting. The high note of a giggle.
Are they flirting with him? They press together in a whisper, Their voices lost to the current.
My morning. His evening. It begins to rain. He opens his umbrella. The patter louder now as it hits the dome above his head.
I wish you could see this, he whispers. A Maiko slips out of a building, a package cupped in her hands.
Doors swoosh. He enters the combini. The sing song Irasshaimase. He pays with the drop of coins.
Konbanwa. to his landlady once again. I envision his silent bow.
The elevator door slides shut. Halfway across the planet I briefly lose the connection. Silence.
His keys jangle, his front door squeaks. With the clang of the closing door, We leave behind the sounds of Kyoto.
Slip, slip. His shoes are off. Tadaima.
Tina deBellegarde’s debut novel, Winter Witness, is nominated for the 2020 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her story “Tokyo Stranger” appears alongside stories by celebrated authors in the Mystery Writers of America anthology When a Stranger Comes to Town. Tina lives in New York and travels to Kyoto regularly to visit her son Alessandro. Please visit www.tinadebellegarde.com
In striking contrast to their ancestors, contemporary Japanese adore an excess of light, their great cities electromagnetic centers of brilliance, their nighttime living rooms flood-lit like sports stadiums.
The rallying call of those who survived the
“dark valley,” as the thirties and war years were dubbed, was akarui seikatsu, a “bright life.” Shadows, side
lighting, and intermediate tones were banished, memories of the war subjected
to collective amnesia and the eviscerating rays from new forms of illumination. The appreciation of muted
light, as the writer Tanizaki Junichiro infers in his long 1933 essay on
aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows, had
already begun to lapse into a cult of quaintness.
The compass of Tanizaki’s interests
included interior design, and the treasures that are concealed or obscured in
the shadows and dim recesses of temples. The author celebrates the merits of
meager light and perishable, organic materials, noting in the case of the zashiki, the Japanese tatami mat room,
that walls are made from soil and sand, in order to, “let the frail,
melancholic, ephemeral light saturate the solemn composure of their earthy
tones.” The writer holds that, for a true appreciation of the beauty of
lacquerware, it must be observed in the dimness of half-light.
Tanizaki pays
keen attention to the shadows that lurk in lintels, beneath temple eaves and in
alcoves, and is sensitive to minute details like the solemn, trance-like beauty
of gold leaf covered doors and screens, caught in morsels of light entering a
room.
There are a number of instances in Japan,
where the use and perception of light starkly differs from the West. We recall
that, where Western paper reflects light, traditional Japanese paper absorbs
it. This older sensibility places the brittle and functional against the soft
and pliant. Author Donald Richie, posited that the study of aesthetics in the
West was, “mainly concerned with theories of art, that of Japan has always been
concerned with theories of taste.”
One would have to go to considerable
lengths today to experience the aesthetic sensations advocated by Tanizaki.
Such exquisite moments, far removed from everyday life, might include viewing
lacquerware in the glow from a votive candle, listening to the scratching of
small metal particles placed at the bottom of an iron tea pot, an effect said
to evoke the souring of wind in pine trees, or contemplating a Japanese garden,
where the darker, more subdued spaces decelerate time, the absence of light
heightening our appreciation of what little exists. One recalls that in the
ghostlier scenes of Edo era Kabuki, young children were employed to follow
actors on stage, illuminating their faces from below with candles, an effect
that must have magnified the eerie intensity of the performance.
The Japanese have always revered the
qualities of the moon, the ability of its sylvan light to transform landscape.
A millennium ago, Heian era courtiers enjoyed boating trips, drifting across
garden ponds on clear, lunar nights when the constellations were crisp and
visible. Floating on a sheet of reflective water would have created the
pleasantly liminal illusion of existing between two dark, subtly illuminated
zones. In the manner of Chinese gardens, Katsura Rikyu, a prototypical Kyoto
design, has a Moon-Viewing Platform, from which the silvered planet can be seen
on the surface of its pond.
Clusters of rock islands and the sound of rustling trees and shrubbery would, under
the effect of natural, theatrical forms of lighting devised within the boundary
of the garden, have created the sensation of being out at sea on a mild, breezy
night. If large enough, the surface of a pond will reflect overhead clouds and
surrounding scenery, serving as a horizontal screen for a series of perpetually
changing borrowed views. Water lavers and basins, placed in the darker recesses
of a garden, introduce light and, in connecting the garden with the sky,
provide micro glimpses of expanded space and distance.
In Europe, one comes across indoor gardens engorged
with tropical plants and trees within conservatoires and orangeries, but a defining
requirement of landscape design is that it is open to sky and air. Available
sunlight is skillfully manipulated by Japanese gardeners so that, even on an
overcast day, its greenery is presented to best advantage. Traditionally graduated
greenery, with countless, intermittent tones and hues, was preferred to
brilliant flowerbeds and over-assertive blooms. The raked lines inscribed in
the sand or gravel of stone gardens, patterns known as samon, create interplay between light and shadow. Purportedly
representing waves and currents, shadows form in the furrows between the raised
lines, adding depth and emphasizing the organic unevenness of the surface. Gravel
provides a non-distractive surface for meditation, but also acts as a light
reflector.
If there is a contemporary tendency to try and improve on nature, to tinkle and tweak, this also applies to the appropriation of shadow and light. Is it really necessary, we wonder, to illuminate cherry blossoms and bracts of wisteria with cumbersome, intrusive lamps? Where stars and moonlight once sufficed, we now have batteries of light, supposedly intensifying the experience. In the past, the moon, oil lamps and candles placed in the chambers of stone lanterns, were enough. For largely commercial reasons rather than aesthetic ones, many gardens today are equipped with artificial lights, including clusters of LED lamps and bulbs, which replicate day light rather than the natural, infinitely more nuanced illumination of nocturnal gardens lit by a shifting interplay of moon and cloud. The misconception here is that brilliant lighting reveals gardens in their entirety, when in fact, its effect is to eviscerate their essence. Although some gardens use portable luminaires in the manner of old roji andon, the washi paper lamps once used to subtlely illuminate the stepping stones of tea gardens, artificial lighting all too often results in the unsightly daytime presence of lamp fixtures and electric cords proximate with gravel borders and rocks. When the opaque fills with light, the exquisite inscrutability of shadows becoming transparent, mystery and depth vaporize. Conversely, too much natural sunlight can harden and burn the features of a garden, exposing unsightly aspects, such as scorched moss, weeds, and poorly maintained groundcover. Across this over-exposed planar grid, inky blocks of shadow are banished to the rear or edges of gardens. In such instances, only intermediary, dappled light will moderate the polarization of darkness and light.
Whether as supplicants at sacred sites, modern
pilgrims on spiritual quests, or in the simple role of nature lovers, we instinctively
return to shadows, to graduated light. Stress and
anxiety levels are known to drop, our spirits soothed and calmed by the sight
of striated light passing through foliage, or filtering through shrubbery and
greenery just after rainfall, an effect known as komorebi in Japanese.
Another word, komyo, refers to light emerging from the Buddha, which in turn
symbolizes wisdom and compassion. In Shigemori Mirei’s design for his Kyoto
landscape, Hashin-tei (Garden of the Moonlight on Waves), three rock
compositions, known as a sanzon-seki,
represent Gautama Buddha, Amida Buddha, and Yakushi-nyorai, the Buddha of
Healing. These are geometrically yoked with stones placed throughout the
garden, each representing rays of light emanating from the three deities.
Like the Buddha stones, light and shadow in
the unmediated Japanese garden, settle into their allotted spaces. It’s almost
as if the garden is designed in equal measure to trap and liberate light, to
bring us into emotional and spiritual alignment with their diurnal gyrations.
Insights into Tuttle Publishing with Eric Oey by Felicity Tillack
A convivial Zoom session with the head of Tuttle, following on from a previous session earlier in the year with the head of Stone Bridge Press
On Saturday, the 8th of May, WiK presented a special Zoom event with Eric Oey, head of the publishing company Tuttle.
Eric Oey in pre-Covid times
Oey gave WiK members an insight into the history of this company, and his family’s long-time connection to the book and antiquarian world. Tuttle, from its origins in post war Japan, buying books for Western university libraries, is now a well-established company with a back catalogue of books chosen for the long-term. Their English translation of This is a Cat by Natsumi Soseki was first published in 1972, and is still one of their best sellers.
Tuttle is very open to proposals for new work and translation, and Oey went through the categories of popular genres so that WiK members could better understand which book pitches would have a higher chance of success. Language texts, origami, gardens, self-help (ikigai), illustrated folk tales and ‘cool Japan’ were among current best sellers.
Along the way Oey gave some fascinating statistics. During the pandemic printed books have seen a 30% increase, while ebooks have peaked and are now in decline in terms of their market share. Roughly 50% of book sales are through amazon, making it a necessary evil. Altogether there are 5000 books published each week, and Tuttle itself is producing 150-200 books a year.
At the end of the session, members were left with a much clearer idea of the publishing world, particularly in their niche of Japanese based writing and translations.
Thank you Eric Oey for an informative and hopefully fruitful session with Writers in Kyoto.
Presenter Eric Oey second row, second from the left
Recent Comments