Writers In Kyoto

Page 24 of 64

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Portraits of Uji

June 13, 2021

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!

Photo by Yuki Yamauchi

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

Sources

Isabella Bird https://archive.org/details/unbeatentracksin02bird_0/page/262/mode/2up

Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore https://archive.org/details/jinrikishadaysin00scid/page/n321/mode/2up

Katharine Schuyler Baxter https://archive.org/details/inbamboolands00baxt/page/278/mode/2up (pp.278-280)

Second Prize – Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition

June 12, 2021

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.  

Third Prize – Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition

June 5, 2021

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

Local Prize – Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition

May 29, 2021

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. 

Writers in focus

Critic and professor, Tatsuo Kuriyagawa

May 25, 2021

by Yuki Yamauchi

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.]

USA Prize – Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition

May 22, 2021

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

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Shadow and Light

May 20, 2021

by Stephen Mansfield

(Photos by Stephen Mansfield)

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.     

    Shadows and light, like us, are sentient.

Zoom with Tuttle

May 16, 2021

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

Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition Results

May 15, 2021

Warm greetings to all from Writers in Kyoto. The middle of May has finally arrived! It gives me great pleasure, as WiK Competition Organiser, to announce the Winners of the Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition.

This year we received submissions from writers of various nationalities, based in twenty-one countries throughout the world. We would like to offer our heartfelt appreciation to all participants, and we are honored to be one thread connecting the globe to Japan’s ancient capital. It is touching to see that so many keep the spirit of Kyoto in their hearts and minds, despite the current circumstances which make travel difficult. Many submissions did touch on this point.

While it was very difficult for the judges to settle on their final decision, the winners of the Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition are as follows (with judges’ comments):

FIRST PRIZE:
“Kyoto Time” by Stephen Benfey
This piece is full of rich, dramatic imagery which depicts an older, quieter, slower Kyoto. The main character, Shizuka, embodies this aspect of the city herself: multilayered, silent yet containing music and laughter, and also untouchable by the time that speeds by. The author builds tension and pulls us into the scene with these visual details and subject matter that is both unusual and fresh, also containing an air of uncertainty about Shizuka’s true intentions on her daily walk to the nearby shrine.

SECOND PRIZE:
“Love on a Low Flame” by Amanda Huggins
The longing for a lover is expressed in this seasonal cycle, depicting the passage of time and days growing colder until their return. These thoughts might also occupy one during the Obon season, regarding the metaphysical presence of a cherished one visiting for a short time every year. The final phrase “tadaima” reverberates winningly in the poem, as if someone truly has come home. The poem has immediacy and apt phrase after apt phrase were noted.

THIRD PRIZE:
“Restaurant Boer” by Hans Brinckmann
This was a lovely and generous narrative, full of interesting details about the first Dutch restaurant in Kyoto, and told with humor and warmth. The judges felt that the author was right there, telling us his personal story. While there were cultural factors in the enterprise which caused confusion, it was a delight to see that there was a happy ending after all. It is the imagery of the bridge at the end that makes this brief tale so engaging. A restaurant may have gone by the wayside only to make way for a lifelong partnership.

LOCAL PRIZE:
“Just the Wind” by Lisa Twaronite Sone
The people of Kyoto have always been contemplative of the spirit world. This piece gives pause and makes us think of our mortality in general. The judges liked how this piece suddenly becomes a ghost story at the end. 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 – very appropriate for Kyoto.

USA PRIZE:
“Sound Travels” by Tina deBellegarde
The judges appreciated the timely quality of this piece, as it is now difficult to enter the country due to the pandemic. 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 very refreshing and lively, and the reader can imagine that they are also on the telephone, accompanying their loved one on a walk to the convenience store and other places around the city.


HONORABLE MENTIONS:
“Soul” by Nader Sammouri
“A Drop and a Temple Inside” by Tiziano Fratus
“A Pig Walks the Philosophers’ Road” by Edward Barnfield

Congratulations to all! I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to this year’s judges for their seamless cooperation and hard work.

For the official announcement and submission details of our next WiK Competition (#7), please be sure to check our website in the middle of November. Top prizes include a cash prize of 30,000JPY, local crafts, eligibility for inclusion in an upcoming WiK Anthology, and more! If you have not yet participated in our annual competition, we welcome you to do so in the future.

Warmly,
Karen Lee Tawarayama
WiK Competition Organiser



Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Calligraphing The Heart Sutra

May 10, 2021

by Rona Conti

Beginning to learn calligraphy

Tiny characters float within my vision as my fellow students are dedicatedly focused on writing the familiar to them but foreign to me. It is my first year of studying calligraphy. I love to watch Shimizu-san writing the most exquisite kana or onna-de (literally, woman’s hand), but know that I’ll never be able to emulate her elegant delicate work of haiku and poems.  Nor will I write tiny characters on sheets of handmade paper like the focused Japanese students. I ask Kobayashi Sensei what they are writing. “Hannya Shingyo, she says. Complicated.” I look it up and find the Heart Sutra.

Sensei tells me that if I wish to learn to write the Heart Sutra, I must begin with large Kanji so that I can learn the characters, then gradually write smaller and smaller characters, like a pebble in a pond, but in reverse. There are 260 of them. I begin with her o-tehon (study sample) and find the work beyond challenging. There is tension in my hand. The characters are complex. If I make one mistake, I must begin again from the very first character. I will not know whether or not I have made a mistake until she corrects it.  

Quite surprisingly, over time I am able to approach smaller and smaller versions. I realize that the smaller characters require the same amount of push and pull as the larger ones. One has to push down very gently, then harder to achieve a character of some distinction. The flow leads to characters not mechanical looking but with different thicknesses and tiny lines of connection. It is this push and pull with intricacy which must be present in order to have feeling and not tension show in the work. As it is said, “The Brush does not lie”.

The first time I write the entire Heart Sutra in its proper small size it takes me six hours. And all of this time I do not understand what I am writing. My legs fall asleep, no break until a full line is complete, I continue. I read in English what I am able to find about the meaning of what I am writing. Please know that this is in 2001. Alex Kerr has yet to write and publish The Heart Sutra.

Beginning to copy the full Heart Sutra from a sample by Kobayashi Sensei

A dear Japanese friend tells me that there is a temple where once a month devout Buddhists write the Heart Sutra, hear a lecture and finish with tea and sweets (my favorite). We go with my Sensei. Mihoko-san takes us early and introduces us to the Head Monk. I am embarrassed by my poor Japanese, but he is welcoming and smiling and says that he is very pleased to have a foreigner in his temple.

In the ornate room where the service takes place, we are given printed examples of three different sutras and paper upon which to write them. We bring our papers to our seats, and I am surprised that there are light boxes at each desk. Sensei is also surprised. She tells me that she has never gone to a temple to write the Heart Sutra. We both begin without tracing over the o-tehon as the other participants are doing. Far too soon a bell rings. Time is up. Everyone else has finished. Sensei is, of course, far ahead of me, but neither of us has come close to finishing.

Incense continues to fill the room as I listen to the prayers and see the son of the priest lead them. He is barefoot and moves with ease and precision. His body movements show the epitome of someone on the path to awakening. Then we all tuck our Heart Sutras beside the statue of Buddha with a donation. Afterwards we have tea and sweets.

The Head Priest disappears and returns with a book in English. It is about Soto Zen, the sect of Buddhism which the temple follows. It has a list of places in the United States where one can be a practitioner of Soto Zen. I keep the book as instructed. Two years later I return it with gratitude to the priest’s astonishment.

I continue to attend the once a month gathering at the temple. I am also invited by Sensei to join the monthly writing of the Heart Sutra in her studio. This is a surprise to me, both the invitation and the fact that the students do this once a month. The quiet, the incense, the concentration is all consuming, intense, and rewarding, except when Sensei checks our work. Each student worries about mistakes. Usually, I am the only person to have made one, yet I am enraptured with my studies and wish I had more time on my cultural visa. At the close of my studies I know that I must return at some point to Japan.

My friend, Mihoko-san, gives me a book with instructions for writing the Heart Sutra. At the back there is a list of temples where one can write it. They are in many places in Japan, some very distant. I am living in Gunma-machi, a very small town near Maebashi and Takasaki. Of the temples listed, some have regular monthly gatherings, others have made by appointment opportunities, and others require an introduction and recommendation by a Japanese in order to be permitted to write the sutra in the temple.

I plan my trip according to the temple calendars, ending with a visit to Koya-san, a place about which I have read with great anticipation. I bring my brush, sumi ink, paper for the Heart Sutra and a small suzuri inkstone, and, of course, a dictionary just in case it is needed. Though I have never studied the language formally, my Japanese has improved.

My first stop is easy, a large gathering of attendees who simultaneously work on the Heart Sutra. We pass our efforts together with a donation to the monk. I slip quietly out of the room so that I can explore the temple grounds.

Two more temple visits follow in much the same manner. Then, my next stop is one which requires an introduction and reservation. I arrive promptly and am ushered into a beautiful calming room with a Buddha altar and shoji (movable screens) which are open and give a view of an equally calming and exquisite garden. I am given not the Heart Sutra but rather a sutra written in that particular temple. I do my best but am unnerved when the Priest comes into the room to watch me, not once but repeatedly. When I have finished, he again comes into the room to tell me how pleased he is to see a foreigner making a special trip to write a sutra. I thank him and bow and know that it is my time to leave.

My next stop, the planned culmination, is Koya-san. I make a reservation to stay for three days at one of the subtemples. I am enthralled and surrounded by spirituality. Founded by Kukai in 816AD as the headquarters of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism, it is the last stop or the very first on the 88 Temple Tour of Shikoku. It will be the first and last stop for me. (Years later I will walk a small portion of the 88 Temple Tour where often pilgrims are chanting The Heart Sutra.)

I have made arrangements to stay in a temple. The monks could not be more gracious, telling me that I am welcome to join the morning Fire Ceremony at 6 am. Surrounded by calm and meditation, warmth and the company of just a few participants, I feel honored to be allowed to observe and participate.

Feeling relaxed, I am ready to begin my mission. There is a university at Koya-san, where I expect to find the place for writing the Heart Sutra. I am guided to the room and rather shocked to see that it is a classroom. On some tables there are copies of the Heart Sutra which one can trace with a brush pen. There is no Buddha present, and the atmosphere reminds me of grade school with desks to match. I am incredibly disappointed. The room is deserted. No room to write with ink, I trace as homage and feel adrift. I find the bookstore where I buy a CD, ‘Chants of Koya-san’, with, of course, the Heart Sutra.

Upon returning to my lodgings, I am asked about my experience. I want to say, very politely and humbly, that there was no altar and no place to offer one’s effort to Buddha, nor enough space to set out my suzuri and other materials. I show the monk my ‘Four Treasures’; paper, brush, inkstick and ink stone. The paper is specially made to write out The Heart Sutra. I show the CD I bought. The monk is very gracious and surprised. Once again, I am ruing my poor Japanese. There is so much I wish to say. He intuits my disappointment. He says that I can write the Heart Sutra in a room reserved for large gatherings but with space to write in front of an altar. It is the perfect setting. I am alone in a huge room with the altar at one end and a ping-pong table at the other, perhaps alluding to my see-sawing emotions.

Each day I attend the Fire Ceremony in the morning, explore Koya-san, and write the Heart Sutra. Not knowing that there is a limit of three days for staying, I ask if I may stay for four more days. I am granted permission. I am enthralled with Koya-san, and there is so much to see

On the fifth day I am suddenly thunderstruck and self-critical. I realize that I have been given such a special opportunity, and I am egotistical and full of myself.  Just because I write the Heart Sutra with brush and sumi ink instead of tracing with a brush pen gives me no more stature than others. If anything, I am lacking in spirituality. I am a foreigner and copying my Sensei’s guide. This realization does not take anything away from my sojourn, but it is a reminder that I am a student trying to learn and superiority is an incorrect path.

I have to return to Gunma-machi and, regrettably, end my year of calligraphy study.  I am filled with emotion at the conclusion of my time in Japan. I am already thinking about how I will be able to return. My fellow students, at my Sayonara Party, present a fan with their farewell words. I have written a poem to Sensei, and my dearest friend Mihoko-san translates it. I read it at the farewell party. Sensei and I are both teary eyed.

Sayonara fan given to Rona with each student’s thoughts

My time to say goodbye has come. In the future I will live in Japan for extended periods of time to continue my studies. The Heart Sutra is more than calligraphy. It is a spiritual practice.

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