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Sixth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition Results

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

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.

Inaka reflections

Reading Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japan
by Chad Kohalyk

In a small city in western Canada — which one might call inaka by dint of the high ratio of giant pickup trucks and the 95% white demographics — a group of immigrant moms from Japan, most married to Canadians, decided to band together. Their goal: expose their children to their heritage Japanese culture and language. My spouse is active in this group and I attended often with our children. Each month the group gathers to sing songs, practice writing hiragana, and celebrate the Japanese holiday of the season. At these gatherings one can appreciate the diversity of Japan.

Celebrating tradition is rooted in the local. Yet in faraway Canada, the Japanese community is made up of people from Hokkaido to Okinawa. What at first the moms thought would be simply showing their kids the culture of “Japan”, soon became a discussion of how to accommodate all the local variations in tradition.

Witnessing this diversity is one of the reasons we moved our family to the remote island of Ikijima for a year. We wanted our kids to experience a different Japan than Kyoto — which my family calls “home.” Living a rural island life has certainly been a learning experience for each of us. I never knew the crucial relationship between wind speed and the amount of bread on the shelves at the shop. Weather is a constant concern on a remote island. While Iki is a self-sufficient place, growing its own rice (as well as tobacco and barley for shōchū) it depends on the mainland for packaged foods, like the pastries on display in one of our two convenience stores. When the weather acts up, as it often does, ships and planes are cancelled and mainland sundries like the national daily newspapers are delayed. There is a sort of “bank run” on the shops as everyone rushes out to get the last bread products for the next couple of days.

Another surprise was how people in the countryside are trying to reverse the nation’s population decline. The elementary school my children attend has just 48 students (who share only about four surnames!). Most come from families of three to five children, and there is a remarkable number of twins on Ikijima. Considering there is no movie theatre here, and most shops are closed by six, I suppose it makes sense. The root of the depopulation problem is that once kids finish high school they must go to the mainland to continue their education. Over there they find work opportunities and they almost never come back.

Thus, I was curious to pick up the new anthology Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japan to see what other foreigners have learned living in “the sticks.” The book is a collection of eighteen essays from provincial areas of Japan. In the introduction editor John Grant Ross points out that 91% of the population of Japan live in urban areas. Thus, the stories are from a disappearing Japan. This makes them all the more valuable as records of the diversity of experience in Japan. Contributors vary from visitors, to JETs, to “lifers” in the countryside. Many of the essays are about discoveries made in the less-travelled areas of Japan, rather than the day-to-day experience of making a life there. However, some writers have married into local families and are raising kids in the inaka, which makes the book more than a travelogue.

Declining and aging populations, closing businesses and the loss of local traditions and knowledge are common themes across many of the essays. These are the realities of the inaka in Japan, a forewarning for other countries undergoing massive urbanization, centralization, and standardization as prescribed by influential cities.


Living on Ikijima I gravitated towards the chapters in Inaka featuring islands, especially those of Kyushu. Considering Japan is made up of 6,852 islands (though only 421 are inhabited), one could likely dedicate a whole series of books to island experiences. Remote island inaka is different from the countryside on mainland Japan — a simple fact of geography. In her chapter on Tanegashima, Silvia Lawrence writes about her experience of a tsunami warning:

No one seemed to be organizing an evacuation, which suggested we weren’t in any danger, but then again on a flat island reaching just ten kilometres across at its very widest point, where would we even go?

The remote islands closest to the Asian mainland have played an important role as ancient bridges to the archipelago, predating the cultural splendour of the “old capital” of Kyoto. Austin Gilkeson hikes through the wild nature of Tsushima, near Korea, that is also a hike through Japanese history, from the birth of the mythical first emperor to the country’s first defeat of a western power. Gilkeson describes Tsushima’s annual Arirang Festival, a testament to Kyushu’s long standing relationship with the Korean Peninsula, not all of which is antagonistic. 

Loneliness is a common theme. The two Kyushu chapters were written by ALTs, who by the nature of their jobs often struggle with integrating into local communities. Despite feelings of isolation both authors extended their stay, their essays expressing how much they value their time in the inaka.

Feelings of loneliness are not just the domain of isolated foreigners. Amy Chavez’s chapter features interviews from longtime residents of Shiraishi, a small island in the Seto Inland Sea with a population of 450. The island was home to 2300 at one time. Her essay is part of a larger project documenting the island’s oral history through interviews with elders. We learn about some innovative fishing methods, but also the painful feelings of being left behind, surrounded by empty houses. Chavez reflects:

I consider for a moment what it must be like to live alone in a house of memories but no one else to share them with.


These island chapters, as well as others in the book, show both the delights and difficulties of the Japanese countryside. It is an additional window into the “real” Japan beyond the oversaturated filters of Instagram, another modern weapon of uniformity.

Near the end of the book Mei Ling Chiam visits a tea plantation in Shizuoka where farmers are trying to build an appreciation for single-origin tea, a retaliation against the overwhelming modern corporate strategy of “blended teas” which standardizes flavours for “brand identity” and mitigates financial risks in production.

The cup of tea I was drinking now would not be the same as the next. Even with the same production method, the taste of a tea varies… To me, this variety makes every tea worth tasting, because you never know what you’ll discover about it. The distinctiveness is something to be cherished.

Similarly, each chapter of Inaka highlights the variety of experience in Japan. Even while addressing some common challenges of rural life, the essays are easy reading. Inaka is not a dour tome of political and economic analysis (although such a book would be very valuable at this juncture). Rather, you can feel free to skip around here and there, and enjoy each chapter’s unique flavour.

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

For the amazon page of Inaka, click here.

Writers in focus

Kaguya Himeko (Kimura)

An original story by Marianne Kimura

Mr. Nomura had a habit of taking his bicycle and visiting Buddhist temples around Kyoto on fine Sunday afternoons.

He had been to Shodenji before, a perfect little jewel of a Buddhist temple, famous for its simple charcoal brush painting of ten monks walking up and down an invisible crescent-shaped hill. Their black robes are ragged and wind-blown, their legs and feet bare and large straw hats covered their heads.

Shodenji was traditionally a monks’ training ground and it follows the Buddhist school of Rinzai Zen, with its emphasis on kensho, which is defined as “seeing one’s true nature”. Wisdom is to be gained within the activities of daily life.

So the walks and training grounds, up and down the hills around Shodenji, had been places for monks to spend their daily lives attaining wisdom as they went about their tasks.

But on that fateful day in the middle of September, he had decided to take a stroll around the temple’s bamboo forest, set slightly to the east of the main hall.

But when Mr. Nomura got to the top of the hill where the bamboo forest spread out unevenly off a dirt path, he froze in his tracks.

A tiny barefoot girl dressed in a red kimono as if for her 7-5-3 ceremony, was dancing in graceful, wheeling circles around the bamboo trees.

She was not nearly tall enough to be a three-year old.

She was the height, Mr. Nomura thought, of a one-year old, if that, and slender and graceful as a sasa leaf.

Mr. Nomura wondered if she was a robot being filmed for an ad. Her red kimono and the green trees in the dappled September sunshine made a stunning contrast, and Mr. Nomura looked around for a movie crew, but he saw only a few finches and sparrows fluttering about.

Suddenly, the girl spotted him. She stopped dancing and stared directly and gravely at him. Life flickered in the dark pupils of her eyes, not machinery at all.

She walked shyly up to him and stretched her tiny arms up.

“Watashi no otousan ni natte kudasai!” Please be my daddy!

She spoke perfect, elegant Japanese.

Mr. Nomura’s heart warmed to the idea. He and Mrs. Nomura had no children though they had wanted them long ago.

Now, although he and Junko were both nearing their sixties came the fleeting thought:

Finally, a baby! How pleased Junko will be!

Dutifully, he hushed his mind.

This is not your child.

He picked her up and carried her up the wide stone path that led to the main hall. She was as light as a young cat and nestled with perfect poise in the crook of his elbow.

At the entrance to the main hall, Mr. Nomura peered into the dark tatami-mat ante-room on the right.

An aged, bald monk in a dark brown robe slid open the glass window.

“Excuse me”, said Mr. Nomura, feeling odd as he held up the girl, “but is this your child?”

“No”, said the monk. Then after a short, uncomfortable pause he asked “Isn’t she yours?”

“Well, actually, no,” said Mr. Nomura, “I found her in your bamboo forest just now.”

“Well, in that case……”, the monk started to advise.

“I’m hungry, daddy! Let’s go home!” interrupted the little girl, tightly hugging Mr. Nomura around his neck and wailing, “Kukki tabetai!” I wanna eat some cookies.

“…maybe call the Child Welfare Department”, finished the monk looking confused, his voice trailing off as he slid the glass window shut.

Mr. Nomura carefully carried the child down the hill. When they reached his bicycle, he set her down, and took off his blue cotton twill jacket to make a cushion in the front bicycle basket. Then he lifted her in. It was a perfect fit. She sat with her legs slightly bent at the knees and smiled, looking happy and comfortable.

He reasoned that he ought to at least take her home and feed her before calling the Child Welfare Department.

Mr. Nomura rode slowly and carefully so as not to jolt his tiny and adorable passenger. When they got home, dusk had fallen and a large full moon was rising over Mt. Hiei to the east.

He opened the front door.

With Himeko still wrapped in his arms, he called out, “Tadaima”.

Junko Nomura, sitting at the kitchen table and working a kanji crossword puzzle, looked up in surprise. The girl stretched out her hands to the woman.

“Okaasan!” Mama. She spoke contentedly, as if recognizing Mrs. Nomura from somewhere else long ago and far away.

Mr. Nomura explained how he’d found her in the bamboo forest of Shodenji.

“We’ll have to call the Child Welfare Department tomorrow”, he said, “but it must be closed now on Sunday evening. Besides, she’s hungry.”

“Yes”, said Mrs. Nomura, smiling, “By the way, what is her name?”

“Himeko”, said the little girl primly.

“She is a princess, a hime!” exclaimed Mr. Nomura, a little giddily.

Soon the family was eating a lovely dinner of rice, miso soup and grilled tai, red snapper.

Omedetai. Congratulations.

Mrs. Nomura had bought the red snapper earlier that day.

She laughed. “It’s juugoya!”

The full moon of September, the Harvest Moon.

“How lucky!” exclaimed Mr. Nomura.

The next morning, Mr. Nomura phoned the Child Welfare Department and a middle-aged female caseworker arrived and moments later drove a bawling, sobbing Himeko away in a small white Kyoto city government-issue car.

That afternoon, there was a call.

“She keeps insisting that she is your daughter”, said the caseworker to Mr. Nomura, “also, we have no record of any missing child fitting her description anywhere in Kyoto or Japan. To tell you the truth, she refuses to eat or drink a thing and she does nothing but cry, so for her own safety, we would like you to keep her for a few weeks if you don’t mind.”

Overjoyed at this news, the Nomuras were told that they would be given, after six months, provisional permission to adopt Himeko, as long as no one came forward and claimed her.

The Nomuras adopted Himeko and on that day also she received a legal birth certificate. It was estimated that her age, based on her verbal and intellectual abilities, was around three or four. The Kyoto city government set her birthday as September 15, the date Mr. Nomura had found her in the bamboo forest. With this legal birth certificate, she was added to the family registry and thus allowed to start kindergarten.

She ate very well – muffins, chocolates, apple pie, potato chips and mochi rice cakes among many other food — and within three months reached a normal size for a girl of her age.

Years passed like the clap of a pair of hands, and it became time for elementary school.

Mr. Nomura was later to remember Himeko’s school years as the happiest years of his life. She made friends easily, got good grades and enjoyed writing calligraphy.

Himeko liked the pet rabbits, two lank males named Kuro and Poppo, kept in large wire cages outside the school buildings, and always volunteered to feed them.

“Why only the rabbits, dear?” asked Mrs. Nomura. The school also had several pet chickens and even an elderly little she-goat.

But Himeko only smiled mysteriously.

As the years passed and Himeko started high school, she became known for her beauty, her intelligence and her modesty. In her last year of high school, she took the entrance examination for Kyoto University and received the highest marks ever recorded since the school was founded in the Meiji era.

She chose astronomy as her major and proceeded to ace every class, startling the professors with her insights and capability.

She cut a graceful, almost ethereal figure on campus and seemed almost to glide down the paths, rather than walking in an ordinary human manner. Her skin glowed with the pale almost luminous light of starry skies.

Her lustrous long black hair she wore loose like a maiden in a Heian court.

Many students at Kyodai were captivated by her elegant bearing and shy yet somehow regal, almost antique manners.

There was something so watchable about her that she was even scouted as a model, but she rebuffed the agency.

Kousuke Kitamura was the young scion of a wealthy Osaka family which was a majority stock owner of one of the sogo shoshas, the massive, politically well-connected conglomerates with subsidiaries that handle banking, finance, oil, petrochemicals, real estate and construction.

One day, after their class on Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life, he summoned up his courage and hesitantly asked her out.

Himeko listened to his stammering plea with a strange impersonal half-smile. Kousuke had to fight with himself not to drown in the pellucid midnight depths of her dark eyes, turned on him without warmth but mesmerizing all the same.

Was she a snake woman? Was she a witch? Was she a yokai?

As well as admiration, these kinds of fantastic rumors followed Himeko around: little jokes and off-hand comments. Kousuke set no store by these. He imagined they were forged by those jealous of Himeko’s brilliant academic talent and haunting beauty.

In the end, she hesitantly nodded “yes” to the date and her lovely features even relaxed into a little prim and encouraging smile.

Kousuke, beaming, was over the moon.

They went to the Kyoto University Museum, which had an exhibit of prints by Hiroshige.

“Did you like it?” Kousuke asked Himeko afterwards.

“Yes”, she said, “did you?”

“Well, sort of. Nature in those days was beautiful, but it is unrealistic to live like that, in wooden shacks with no electricity. Walking everywhere on foot must have been exhausting too. And I doubt those straw cloaks kept people dry.”

“I think that lifestyle was perfect. I’d prefer it vastly”, said Himeko sadly, “as real, honest beauty is always to be preferred.”

“Really?” gasped Kousuke. He had to admit he was disappointed to hear it. She seemed to him to be a bit crazy.

Maybe she was a yokai after all?

“Truth is beauty and beauty, truth”, she intoned, a bit cryptically.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“….anyway, how do you know the straw cloaks don’t work unless you try them?” she asked.

Irritated, Kousuke contemplated not asking her out on another date, but it was her own beauty which proved irresistible to him, even when he set it against the convenience of the lifestyle provided by concrete, plastic and petroleum, the very products his family dealt in.

And so he did ask her out again, after their next Astrobiology class.

With a cold and remote look, she put him off with an obvious excuse: “I’m too busy”.

It was around this time that an incredible thing happened.

Simon Tusk, the famous IT entrepreneur, had sent a robot to Mars a few years back, in order to do preparatory exploration for purposes of human colonization of the Red Planet.

Now the space capsule containing the robot landed, flawlessly, at the Tusk Space Center in Arizona and its special titanium specimen collection boxes were retrieved from the capsule’s hull and opened.

In one box, Tusk’s scientists found a mysterious faintly rose-colored gauzy filmy ghostly swaying thing. It reminded everyone of seaweed, but more numinous, nearly transparent.

It almost seemed to be alive.

One scientist tried peering at the pink filmy thing through a special optical lens and cried out incredulously.

Others tried the lens as well and were equally amazed. The pink filmy ghostly thing had resolved into a tiny person, about 30 centimeters high. Tusk’s scientists had discovered the Earth’s first space alien.

Incredibly, seen through the lens, the alien (it seemed to be a “he”) was dressed like a ninja, in a dark indigo close-fitting outfit, and could communicate in perfect Japanese.

The space alien told them that his main colony was actually on the moon, but he had been sent on a solo mission to look for their lost princess. Only he had gotten lost, and ended up trapped in a deep Martian crater, until Tusk’s robot had collected him

The media was informed and sensational headlines on the space alien dominated the news for weeks.

Scholars of culture and history wrote learned papers speculating on the connection between Japan, a country with ninjas, and the moon. One revisionist historian was quoted as saying “it would be more accurate to say that the famous ‘Rising Sun’ flag is instead depicting the ‘Rising Full Moon’” and gave many convincing reasons for his thesis.

In Tokyo, a rascally reporter asked the Japanese Prime Minister, “Does the flag portray the sun or the moon, sir?” and the Prime Minister skillfully evaded the question by saying both were found in the sky.

On the Twittersphere, #SunorMoon trended for weeks.

Meanwhile, back in Kyoto, Himeko was becoming more and more lost to the world. She spent hours reading the news about the mysterious alien, stopped attending classes, and refused to talk to anyone except Mr. and Mrs. Nomura.

They were over 80 and quite frail. Still, they were worried about their daughter, who seemed, oddly, to be shrinking slightly every day.

“Do you suppose,” Mr. Nomura asked Junko, “that our Himeko is the famous lost space alien princess?”

“I’ll ask her tomorrow”, promised Mrs. Nomura.

But that night, it was the full moon. Mr. and Mrs. Nomura were lying on their futons and heard festive music, flutes and drums, outside in their small garden. Mrs. Nomura pushed aside the wooden shoji doors to look outside and saw Himeko, now doll-sized again, dressed in a luminous white kimono and gliding along in a somber procession of Heian courtiers on a magical and glittering road of rose-colored stars that seemed to stretch forever into the dark cloudless sky, all the way to the shining, perfect Pink April Moon.

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  • “Pink Moon” is a name for the full Moon around the time of April, when the moss pink, or wild ground phlox, is in blossom.

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.

Writers in focus

Hearn 7: Kimiko

This is the seventh and last in a series of Lafcadio Hearn stories set in Kyoto. ‘Kimiko’ first appeared in Kokoro (1896). For an introduction to Hearn’s Kyoto stories, please click here.

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Synopsis

The story is set in the ‘Street of the Geisha’, which at night ‘is one of the queerest in the world’. Narrow like a gangway, with tightly packed houses several storeys high and lit by paper-lanterns of differing shapes. On them are beautifully written Japanese characters giving the names of the geisha who live there. In one of the houses are Kimika and Kimiko No. 2.

Kimiko No. 1 was beautiful, clever and accomplished. Kimika acted as ‘older sister’ and took a protective role since the younger sister attracted men like moths to a flame. One tried to buy her out, another sought to get her drunk, and a foreign prince sent her diamonds. Such was Kimiko’s fame she became one of Kyoto’s sights, yet she managed to evade all amorous entanglements.

One day came the startling news that she had parted with Kimika and gone off with a suitor ‘willing to die for her ten times over’. According to Kimika, a fool had tried to kill himself, and Kimiko had taken pity and ‘nursed him back to foolishness’. However, things were more complicated.

As a child, Kimiko was known as Ai, which when written with different characters can mean ‘love’ or ‘grief’. She was well brought up and attended a school run by an old samurai, then went to one of the new elementary public schools with the first modern textbooks. However, the Meiji reforms meant that families of rank such as that of Ai were reduced to obscurity. Family misfortune followed, and she was left with just a destitute mother and younger sister.

The family sold off all their possessions, and in desperation even opened the grave of Ai’s grandfather to reclaim the sword with which he was buried. His features were still recognizable after his long entombment, and he seemed to nod assent to what they were doing. They took the sheaf and mountings made of gold, but left the sword.

When her mother became ill and weak, Ai asked to be sold to the ‘dancing girls’. She remembered a geisha named Kimika, who had appeared at banquets in her father’s house. An agreement was made whereby Kimika would support the mother in return for Ai staying with her till the age of twenty four, or until such time as she could pay back the debt.

[Flash forward] The man with whom Kimiko had run off was the only son in a well-to-do family, but happily they were willing to accept his choice of lover. He prepared a palace-like home for her, but she turned down his offer of marriage three times, confessing that she had been through hell and that ‘the scorch of the fire is upon me’. Ashamed of her past, she told him he would be better off with a true sweet lady.

Not long afterwards Kimiko vanished completely, leaving her clothes and possessions behind. No one could locate her. As the years passed by the young man ‘became wiser’ and found another woman, married and had a son.

One day a travelling nun came begging to the house. The young son went to the door and donated some rice. For her part she asked him to give his father a message. ‘Tell him that one whom he will never see again said that she was glad, because she had seen his son.’ With that, she disappeared.

[The following is the last paragraph in Hearn’s own words.]

‘… it were vain to ask in what remote city, in what fantastic riddle of narrow nameless streets, in what obscure little temple known only to the poorest poor, she waits for the darkness before the Dawn of the Immeasurable Light – when the Face of the Teacher will smile upon her – when the Voice of the Teacher will say to her, in tones of sweetness deeper than ever came from a human lover’s lips: “Oh my daughter in the Law, thou hast practiced the perfect way; thou hast believed and understood the highest truth; therefore come I now to meet and to welcome thee!”‘

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Commentary

Lafcadio Hearn’s interest in the macabre and the mysterious is clearly reflected in the story, as is his sentimental attitude to women. Like Charlie Chaplin, Hearn’s idealisation of the female sex was shaped by attachment to a mother who was vulnerable and frail. In both cases they were separated from the mother they adored while young. For Hearn self-sacrifice was the greatest of virtues (he advocated dying for the emperor to his Kumamoto students), and the florid language of the final paragraph justifies Kimiko’s choices in life in the most emphatic of terms.

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For Hearn’s other Kyoto stories, click here for ‘Common Sense’; here for ‘The Sympathy of Benten’; here for ‘Screen Maiden’; here for ‘The Ditty of O-Kichi and Seiza’; here for ‘Story of a Fly; and here for ‘The Reconciliation’.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Prologue to a War

From a Work in Progress, by Malcolm Ledger

Kyoto had seen very little of the war, though its truth had long struck bitter, painful blows. A world pregnant with unrealized hopes and dreams had now become wraith-like, tenuous, and contingent, its substance dim and opaque, melting away like warm breath on a cold, glistening mirror. People’s souls had grown dull and grey, and light—which might have inspired, if not encouraged, the weaker—failed. A faint, chill wind blew through an unhinged world, deadening warmth and love in what had been vibrantly alive and incorruptible.

Relentless and savage years had bred desperation and hopelessness. As ignorance and fear blossomed, so lies and rumours flourished like the tendrils of young plants, insinuating, twisting, and strangling ever tighter. Deprived of truth, people invented their own.

There were wounds, terrible and deep, but also tears, hot and wet; tears that at the end sealed life’s memories of what once had been with regrets for what would never be; nor would expectation or hope appease or comfort them. Whatever goodness had once flowered in the human heart, whatever compassion had once dissolved the stubborn boundaries of hate—these had been strangled and buried deep beneath the mounds of putrefying corpses that had known, and forgotten, love and the clear, bright voices of young children. The grey-white bones and ashes of husbands, fathers, and sons, never to return, were entombed in the breasts that solemnly received them. Death had cast off its secret shadow, let fall its decaying mask, and become life itself.

 With an arrogance born of manifest impunity, the faceless, impersonal enemy was bombing Tokyo relentlessly, night after night. With irony, (or was it kindness?), the majestic, snow-capped, peak of Mt. Fuji beckoned onwards wave upon wave of invisible planes, throbbing with all the malevolent and destructive beauty of the Machine Age, to reduce the capital to a palpitating, living mass of roaring orange flame and ashes.

But among the chaos and simple human wreckage, no voice was heard; just the silhouettes of naked, tortured figures, melting against the angry thunder and the screaming of the bombs, lovingly crafted and lovingly blessed. Soft hands alone sang softly. And afterwards, amid the blackened silence that neither blue flame nor child’s eye could vanquish or comprehend, the jellied sea of irrecoverable roasted faces accused only the past which had brought them the finality, irrevocability, and oblivion of death. The living they condemned, with silent, grinning, stares, to the horrors of the present. Not even the bonds that once had joined hand to hand, or lip to tender lip, could absolve or wipe away a murderous mass insanity, intent on a final vindication through fire and blood. Then, tears which had dried and clotted would no longer flow, words no longer comfort. Voice was given to liquid flame alone, and its golden speech was terrible and incontestable.

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To see some of Malcolm’s poetry, please take a look here or here. To see pictures of his house and a WiK event held there, please check out this link.

Writers in focus

World Book Day 2021

AMY CHAVEZ (non-fiction)

Amy’s Guide to Best Behavior in Japan (Stone Bridge, 2018)
Guide to Japanese customs & etiquette.

Running the Shikoku Pilgrimage: 900 Miles to Enlightenment (Volcano Press, 2012)
First-person account of circling Japan’s Buddhist 88-Temple Pilgrimage route.

Japan, Funny Side Up (e-book, 2010)
A selection of ‘Japan Lite’ columns that appeared in the Japan Times from 1997-2010. 

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JUDITH CLANCY (Kyoto) 

Exploring Kyoto (rev. edition, Stone Bridge Press, 2018)
Guided walks that explore the city’s cultural wealth as well as its by-ways.

Kyoto Gardens: Masterworks of the Japanese Gardener’s Art (Tuttle, 2015) 
A survey of the city’s best gardens richly illustrated by photographer Ben Simmons.

Kyoto Machiya Restaurant Guide (Stone Bridge Press, 2012, rev. ed. Kindle 2020)
An informed guide to dining in traditional townhouses illustrated by Ben Simmons.

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JOHN DOUGILL (non-fiction)

Kyoto: A Cultural History (Signal/OUP, 2006)
Overview of the city’s formative role in Japan’s cultural and artistic development.

Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto (Tuttle, 2017)
Guide and cultural background, with photographs by John Einarsen.

Japan’s World Heritage Sites (Tuttle, 2019)
An overview of the country’s diverse cultural and natural heritage, from Shiretoko to Okinawa.

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DAVID DUFF (non-fiction)

Ero-Samurai:  An Obsessed Man’s Loving Tribute To Japanese Women (iUniverse, 2005)
A personal and cultural exploration of the spell cast by Japanese women.

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JOHN EINARSEN (photography and book design) 

Kyoto: The Forest within the Gate (editions I and II)
Photographs by John Einarsen, poems by Edith Shiffert, calligraphy by Rona Conti, as well as essays.

Small Buildings of Kyoto I & II
Photographs by John Einarsen featuring Kyoto’s charming small buildings.

Upcoming: This Very Moment: The Experience of Seeing (2020)
To be published later this year, a collection of Miksang contemplative photographs.

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MICHAEL GRECO (comic fantasy)

Plum Rains on Happy House (independently published, 2018)
An absurdist take on communal living in a Tokyo guesthouse. 


Assunta (independently published, 2019)
A hurricane strikes a small island community off Texas with unforeseen consequences. 

Moon Dogg (independently published, 2018)
A small-time filmmaker’s plan to make an expose of a fundamentalist sect goes weirdly wrong.

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DAVID JOINER (fiction)

Lotusland (Guernica Editions, 2015)
A novel about expat life in contemporary Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

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ALEX KERR (Japanology)

Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan (Lonely Planet, 1996/ Penguin 2015)
A personal account of cultural aspects that are dying out, first written in Japanese.

Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan (Hill and Wang, 2002)
An unwavering look at the environmental and social cost of Japan’s economic miracle.

Another Kyoto (Penguin, 2018)
A unique look at Kyoto through the material with which its cultural heritage is shaped.

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REBECCA OTOWA (various)

At Home in Japan (Tuttle, 2010)
Illustrated essays about lessons learned from being wife to the heir of a farmhouse in rural Japan.

My Awesome Japan Adventure (Tuttle, 2013)
A children’s book illustrated by the author about a boy who lives with a homestay family in regional Japan. 

The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and other short stories (Tuttle, 2020)
Thirteen short stories, mostly fiction with a few historical or based-on-truth, about people in Japan. Illustrated.

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SIMON ROWE (fiction)

Good Night Papa: Short Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (Atlas Jones & Co., 2017)
Fifteen stories high, nine countries wide, and peopled with wily, dim-witted, hapless, strong and gentle characters.

Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (Atlas Jones & Co., 2020)
Short fiction for busy people who love to travel. The various themes are tied together by a single message: triumph over adversity.

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FERNANDO TORRES (fantasy and historical fiction)

A Habit of Resistance (Five Towers, 2015)
The humorous story of a quirky group of nuns who join the French Resistance.

The Shadow That Endures (Five Towers, 2013)
A curious globe found in an antique store in Scotland contains the key to the multiverse.

More Than Alive: Death of an Idol (Five Towers, 2020)
A paranormal/sci-fi coming of age novel set in near-future Japan.

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ALLEN S. WEISS (Aesthetics) 

The Grain of the Clay: Reflections on Ceramics and the Art of Collecting 
An autobiographical account of a passion for Japanese ceramics; photographs by the author.

Zen Landscapes: Perspectives on Japanese Gardens and Ceramics  (Reaktion, 2013)
The first study of the relations between landscape and ceramics; photographs by the author.

The Wind and the Source: In the Shadow of Mont Ventoux (State University of New York Press, 2005).
A literary and philosophical study of the famed Provençal mountain.

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JANN WILLIAMS (ed.) (environment / Anthology editor)

(ed with I.J. Yates) Encounters with Kyoto: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 3 (WiK, 2019)
A miscellany of writing by 22 WiK members, which includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

(ed with R.A. Bradstock and A.M. Gill) Flammable Australia: The Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
A synthesis of the current knowledge in this area and its application to contemporary land management.

WiK’s Sixth Anniversary

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Launch party with Amy Chavez on April 19, 2015

To celebrate WiK’s 6th Anniversary Celebration today, here is a list of all the activities and talks we have had over the past five years. There have been fun events like our bonenkai showcase of members’ talent, and there have been serious events such as the Heritage and Tourism symposium held together with the Agency of Cultural Affairs. In addition, we have run a website, published Anthologies and Facebook pages, as well as hosting best- selling and internationally famous authors. Speakers have included such luminaries as Karel van Wolferen, Robert Whiting, Alex Kerr and Richard Lloyd Parry.

Over the years there have also been a variety of events, talks and presentations, and our heartfelt thanks go to those who have participated, in particular to all the writers who contributed their expertise and time. A big thank you too to our committee of Paul Carty (finance/co-chair), Karen Lee Tawarayama (competition), Marianne Kimura (membership), Fernando Torres (social media), Mayumi Kawaharada (Japanese liaison), Lisa Wilcut (Zoom manager) and Rebecca Otowa (Anthology editor). From small beginnings WiK reached over 70 members in the past year. With such support behind us, we hope to weather the present Corona crisis and emerge in even better shape.

(NB The entries below were featured at the time on the WiK website, so by entering the name in the search box you will be able to locate a report.)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 
Launch with Amy Chavez on writing in Japan at Roar Pub on April 19, 2015

Robert Whiting on gangsters and culture at The Gael, April 24, 2016 

Robert Yellin on a life with ceramics, The Gael  April 23, 2017

Eric Johnston on Kyoto Matters, The Gnome April 22, 2018 

Richard Lloyd Parry about his books, Omiya Campus Ryudai May 12, 2019

(Online) Jeff Kingston on Japanese politics May 23, 2020

(Online) Eric Oey on Tuttle (May 8, 2021)

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Eric Johnston launches the first Writers In Kyoto Anthology

WEBSITE AND FACEBOOK
– interviews with members
– coverage of WiK talks and events 
– Kyoto-related writings
– members’ current projects
– new publications and book reviews

ANTHOLOGIES
* Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology  (ed. Eric Johnston, 2016)
* Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 2 (ed. John Dougill, Amy Chavez and Mark Richardson, 2017)
* Encounters: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 3 (ed. Jann Williams and Ian Yates), 2019
(* Coming soon, Anthology 4, ed Rebecca Otowa and Karen Lee Tawarayama)

ANNUAL COMPETITION (run by Karen Lee Tawarayama)
– prizes for winning entries
– publication on the website (use the search function for past winners)
– publication in the WiK Anthology

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Alex Kerr discussing Heritage and Tourism

EVENTS
Words and Music twice a year (June and December) featuring amongst others Mark Richardson, Mayumi Kawaharada, Rebecca Otowa, Ken Rodgers, James Woodham, Ted Taylor, Robert Yellin, Lisa Wilcut, Kevin Ramsden, with improv musicians Gary Tegler and Preston Houser

May, 2015 – meeting with Eric Oey, head of Tuttle
June 12, 2016 – launch of the first WiK Anthology, ed. Eric Johnston
July 25, 2016 – WW1 Readings to commemorate the Somme 
Oct 2, 2016 – Alex Kerr’s book launch of Another Kyoto
Oct 28, 2016 – Basho Colloquium with Robert Wittkamp, Jeff Robbins and Stephen Gill
Nov 13, 2016 – Book launch of Marianne Kimura’s The Hamlet Paradigm
Nov 18, 2017 – Book launch of Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto by John Dougill and John Einarsen
April 2018 and 2019 – Meetings with Eric Oey, head of Tuttle
June 22, 2019 –  Launch with Jann Williams of Encounters: Anthology 3 Umekoji Park, Midori Buil. 
Nov 8, 2019  – Heritage and Tourism Symposium with Alex Kerr, Amy Chavez, Murakami Kayo and John Dougill
Nov 24, 2019 – At Home with Chris Mosdell
Sept 26, 2020 – Visit to Netsuke Museum
Nov 15, 2020 – At Home with Malcolm Ledger (book launch for The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper, Kyoto 100 Sights, and Kyoto: A Literary Guide)
Dec 13, 2020 – ’25 Years in the Floating World’; geisha presentation with Peter Macintosh

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Dinner with Karel van Wolferen (middle right)

LUNCH / DINNER TALKS
Dinner with Karel van Wolferen (Nov. 8, 2015)
Drinks with Bernie MacMugen on book printing (Dec 11, 2016)
Dinner with Judith Clancy at Papa Jon’s (Feb 12, 2017)
Dinner with Mark Teeuwen at Cafe Maru (March 11, 2017)
Dinner with Norman Waddell (May 21, 2017)
Dinner with Juliet Winters Carpenter at Rigoletto (May 27, 2018)
Dinner with Micah Auerbach ‘Zen in the 1930s’ (March 3, 2018) 
Dinner with Jonathan Augustine (Oct 7, 2018)
Lunch with Jann Williams at Khajuraho Restaurant (Oct 28, 2018)
Lunch with Venetia Stanley-Smith at La Tour, Kyoto Uni (Nov 11, 2018)
Lunch with Yumiko Sato on music therapy, Mughal (Nov 24, 2018)
Dinner with Vahina Vara and Andrew Altschul at Kushikura (Dec 2, 2018)
Lunch with Stephen Mansfield at La Tour, Kyodai (Sept 28, 2019)
Dinner with Mark Schumacher at Ungetsu, (Oct 4, 2019) 
Lunch with Rebecca Otowa at Ume no Hana, (March 14, 2020)

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Mark Schumacher summing up his lifework over dinner

PRESENTATIONS
Poetry by Mark Richardson and Mark Scott at The Gael (June 21, 2015) 
David Duff and David Joiner gave readings at The Gael (Oct 11, 2015)
Allen Weiss reading at Robert Yellin’s gallery, shakuhachi by Preston Houser, (Dec 18, 2015)
Brian Victoria at the Gael on Zen terrorism in the 1930s (Feb 28, 2016)
Allen Weiss reading from The Grain of the Clay at Robert Yellin’s gallery (Dec 4, 2016)
Justin McCurry, Guardian correspondent, at Ryukoku Uni. (May 26, 2017) 
Amy Chavez on blogging at Omiya campus, Ryukoku (Oct 1, 2017)
Jeff Robbins lecture on Basho at Ryukoku University (Oct 28, 2017)
Mark Richardson on Robert Frost at Cafe Maru (Jan 21, 2018)
Reggie Pawle ‘Zen, Psychotherapy, and Psychology’ Ryudai (April 14, 2019)
Hans Brinckmann on Kyoto in the 1950s Ryukoku University (Feb 3, 2019))
Robert Wittkamp on Santoka at Ryukoku Uni. (Jan 25, 2020)
Catherine Pawasarat zoom session on Gion Festival (July 19, 2020)
Matthew Stavros zoom session on his translation of Hojoki (Nov 22, 2020)
Alex Kerr zoom interview about Finding the Heart Sutra (Nov 29, 2020)
Peter Goodman on zoom, Stone Bridge Press, (Feb 21, 2021)
Leza Lowitz on zoom, Fukushima 10th Anniversary (Mar 19, 2021)

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Judith Clancy dinner talk at Papa Jon’s
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Mark Richardson reads poetry at The Gnome
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David Duff holds up WiK’s first anthology (now out of print)
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Robert Whiting preparing to talk to a packed house at The Gael
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Allen Weiss presenting at Robert Yellin’s gallery
At Home with Malcolm Ledger

Writers in focus

Hearn 6: The Reconciliation

‘The Reconciliation’ first appeared in Shadowings (1900)

This is Part 6 of a series of seven stories by Hearn which are set in Kyoto. For an introduction to Hearn’s Kyoto stories, please click here.

Synopsis:

A young samurai of Kyoto, reduced to poverty by the ruin of his lord, had to take work in the provinces. Before leaving he divorced his wife and married another with better prospects. However, the second marriage proved unhappy, and he realised that he had in fact loved the first wife. She haunted his thoughts and he longed to see her again. So he sent his second wife back to her parents and returned to Kyoto. He went to visit the house where he and his first wife had lived, but it was overgrown and apparently abandoned – but in a small back room he found her and confessed all, begging for forgiveness. She replied to him gently, and said she understood that it was because of poverty that he had left. They spent the night catching up with each other’s news and making plans for the future, and as dawn broke they fell asleep exhausted. Later when the samurai awoke, he found a faceless figure next to him. It was her corpse, ‘so wasted that little remained save the bones and the long tangled hair’.

Sickened and shocked, the samurai learns from a neighbour that the wife had pined so much after the divorce that she became ill and had died some time ago with no one to care for her.

Commentary:

Lafcadio Hearn’s interest in ghost stories is well-known, and in Japan he is remembered above all for the collection in Kwaidan. As an admirer of Edgar Allen Poe, Hearn shared the Romantic fascination with death and the macabre, and as a child he was convinced that he had seen ghosts. The notion of a posthumous existence informs much of his work, not so much in terms of a human soul but in terms of individual atoms. He was also well-versed in Buddhism and the idea of karma, which resonates so strongly in the story. His interest in ghosts was an important part of his fondness for Japanese culture, for he greatly sympathised with the way Japanese talked to the deceased, practised ancestor worship, and cherished a rich folklore of otherworldly spirits. Kyoto too is very much a city of ghosts.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Bury My Bones in Toribeyama

by Cody Poulton

(All photos by Cody Poulton)

I thought I was a citizen of the world, but today borders matter more than ever, and I’ve come around to thinking, in spite of myself, that it’s a good thing we have them. We’ve all erected barriers to protect ourselves from Covid-19, but if we’ve learned anything during this pandemic, it is that the final border is our own skin, and even that is permeable. We share the air.

To avoid cancelling the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, Japan was slow to impose a shutdown, then moved rather quickly to restrict entrance for foreigners—something it’s been very good at when it wants to for more than a millennium. This is a story of how I managed to sneak back into the country during the pandemic and where that presently leaves me now.

I hold a resident card for Japan, and I risked losing that status had I remained in Canada. Some years ago, not long after 9/11, I’d made the mistake of overstaying my ninety-day tourist visa for Japan and had very nearly been deported. I was instructed to go to the Ibaraki Immigration Management Center, located halfway up a mountain somewhere between Kyoto and Osaka. The place was in fact a detention center. A guard waved us in at the gate. Inside, a friendly man in uniform pulled out a flow chart to show me where I was in the system and what hoops I had to jump through to avoid detention and deportation. I was told to return at a later date with the following four documents: an alien registration card; a copy of my Japanese wife’s family registry, a document certifying our marriage; and an essay explaining why I should be allowed to remain in Japan. As we left, I said to the cabbie, “I get the impression it’s a lot easier to enter that place than leave it,” and he said, “You got that right, brother. Most of the time I take couples up and they’re laughing on the way there, but only one on the ride back and she’d be looking pretty glum.” I replied, “You don’t know my wife. She’d be either laughing on the way back too, or cursing up a storm, depending on how she feels about me at the time. Shonbori (glum) isn’t her style.”

Eventually it took three trips up and down the mountain before I was let off probation. A revelation of this exercise was discovering that I’m listed as an adopted husband on my wife’s family registry. Without telling me, Mitsuko had entered me in the family registry under her own name. That is to say, in the name of her ex-husband, which, for her children’s sake, she had never changed. In any case, this may have saved my bacon. I got my alien registration card, though I failed to see the purpose of it if I was there illegally. In the little box describing my qualifications for being in the country was entered the word, “none.” I rather wish I could have kept that, but I had to surrender the card when I left Japan. In any case, this taught me the lesson that I was better off applying for a spousal visa, which gives me a residence card. I have to renew it every three years, but it lets me come and go as I please. My wife was declared a landed immigrant in Canada after we were married, but the regulations changed after 9/11, Who had the right to live in another country got tighter, she has had to reapply every five years for a new Permanent Resident Card. That is to say, she may be a permanent resident, but her card isn’t.

Two summers ago, our return to Kyoto in time for O-Bon (the annual feast of the dead) was inspired less by the need to mourn the dearly departed than to justify our right to live in each other’s countries. I had to renew my resident card and by a wicked synchronicity Mitsuko had to renew her permanent residence card too that year. Citizenship and Immigration Canada dragged their feet for months before sending notice that her application had been accepted, but we had no time to pick up her card in Vancouver before we had to return to Japan in order for me to renew my own card before it lapsed in September. That we left the country without her new card would cause us both untold trouble and a good deal of money. It was ironic that the process of my renewing my residence status in Japan was considerably easier and cheaper than it was for my wife to renew her permanent residence in Canada, supposedly a nation of immigrants. As for why it’s easier for me to renew my own resident status in Japan, perhaps the reason is that there are fewer of my kind here.

I filed my own application at the immigration office in Kyoto with a sheaf of documents from the ward office. As a reason for requesting the renewal I mentioned the three children and seven grandchildren here (one can’t go wrong pressing the Confucius button) and made up some blather about wanting to bury my bones in Toribeyama, Kyoto’s oldest graveyard. I thought I was covered, but was given further instructions to provide them with sufficient evidence that, should I retire to Kyoto, I would not present myself as a burden to the state. I realized I was asking Japan to import precisely what they have a surfeit of: yet another senior.

No sooner had we returned to the house than I caught the pungent odour of incense and knew that Michiko was praying to grandma that our paperwork would proceed smoothly. She was then on the phone to complain that trucks passing in front were making our house shake due to the potholes left by the city water people. “I swear to you, if another truck lumbers past our door, the place will collapse over our heads,” she said. Less than an hour later a truck arrived, loaded with asphalt and two young men, their faces and arms black as charcoal from working all day in the sun. Kyoto in August is a blast furnace, but there they were, with a blowtorch to soften the asphalt for shovelling. In what other country would the city send workmen to fill your potholes at an hour’s notice? And who but my wife could prevail on them to do so? She was outside, giving the boys directions, remarking that roadwork always fascinated her and that, hell, if they had a spare shovel she’d pitch in too. (Later, over dinner, the women embarked on a shinasadame of the masculine beauty of road workers, a female version of Genji and his buddies’ appraisal of girls on a rainy night.)

Many water basins have been turned into decorative objects in the current pandemic

By morning I had all the documents—god bless konbini, Japanese convenience stores, where you can print anything anytime off a USB stick—and we headed back across town to the immigration office. Documents duly submitted, we had time to pay our respects to granny at the Otani Mausoleum, over by said Toribeyama. When we got there, we found the parking lot closed for O-Bon. Mitchan, a take-charge sort of girl, told the parking attendant her daughter worked there. (The truth is that a neighbour works in the restaurant.) They called and quickly permission was granted to park there like we were VIPs. First, we went to see Ms. Ono, who runs the shop selling flowers and incense for the graves. From the ceiling of her shop hang tin buckets dating back to the Meiji era, used for washing the graves, and behind her there are cubbyholes in the wall for boxes of incense. Both buckets and boxes bear the names of old Kyoto families. The lady knows them all and is one of my favourite people here. I’ve been going there with Mitsuko at least a couple of times a year for the last twenty, and she always makes a point to chat with us. The whole family was out selling flowers and incense. Merchant Mitchan, always with an eye on the buck, remarked that O-Bon is big time for bonzes to rake in the cash and who could argue with that? “You must be busy too,” we say to Ms. Ono. “Yes, but you know, the population is getting smaller. Fewer and fewer are coming every year.” As Japan’s dead increase and fewer are being born, there are fewer left to mourn—now that is a sad thought.

Our prayers to granny completed, we went back for more flowers and incense for the grave of Mitsuko’s ex’s grandfather, somebody who was a big name in his time. At New Year’s, celebrities like the kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjirō would pay respects at his shop, and his wife, seated by his side at the entrance smoking her long pipe, would pass out packets of money to everyone. Washing the Ohara grave is a ritual at which I always feel superfluous, but maybe I should be thanking the patriarch for granting me the privilege of being able to stay in Japan? At least the grave is located just a few steps up the hill, because it was blistering hot. My wife commiserated with a couple of young women there to wash their family graves, wilting in formal kimono. Task accomplished, it was lunchtime. The prospect of death makes the living hungry, so we headed to our friend’s restaurant, located in the basement under the main reception area of the Otani Mausoleum, thus justifying the free parking with an excellent tempura lunch.

My wife was stranded in Japan until the Canadian embassy in Manila—Tokyo no longer has visa services—could issue her with a special re-entry visa and, some weeks later, we made a trip over to Citizenship and Immigration’s office in Vancouver to get a lecture about how my wife had been abusing her marital status by spending so much time in Japan. “Just being with a Canadian in Japan isn’t equivalent to living in Canada, you know,” she said. “If you become a Canadian citizen, that’s the end of your problem.” My wife is reluctant to do that because, so far, Japan doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.

She was due to return to Japan on St. Patrick’s Day last year, just after the WHO declared the global pandemic. I made sure she cancelled her plans because I didn’t relish the idea of our being separated for an indefinite amount of time. We rode out the pest for the following few months in British Columbia, where we live most of the time, but in September the Japanese government announced they were relaxing the regulations preventing people like me, spouses of Japanese nationals, from entering the country. For months, thousands of residents of Japan who are not Japanese citizens were stranded outside the country. It had become a human rights issue before the government buckled to pressure from foreign governments, chambers of commerce, media. The truth is, Japan needs its foreign workers. Since I was working remotely like many others, it made little difference where I was actually living, so I quickly made plans for the two of us to return to Japan. Domestic transfers were not permitted, and everyone coming back was obliged to quarantine for two weeks on arrival. As a non-Japanese, I was required to get a special re-entry permit from the Japanese consulate and also had to test negative for covid 72 hours prior to departure from Canada.

The journey over in a Boeing Dreamliner had more cabin crew than passengers. We arrived at Narita at 2:30 pm and quickly deplaned. There followed a scavenger hunt down long corridors and sundry waiting rooms as officials checked and double-checked, then triple-checked our forms and gave us more to fill or hold, but I received no snakes-and-ladders chart—I had heard that if you could not produce the right forms, you would Go Directly to Jail. We were given saliva tests in little cubicles posted with photos of juicy pickled plums and lemons to inspire Pavlovian salivation. My wife complained loudly in her inimitable Kyoto dialect that she couldn’t fill the test tube with enough spit, eliciting good-natured laughter from the quarantine folks. We were subsequently split up as my test results came in earlier than hers. Negative again, twice-blessed, I was told to proceed to Immigration, where my documents were checked, then double-checked by a second official, and I was officially let loose into the baggage check area, Mitsuko happily following on my heels. A friendly beagle sniffed our bags and gave us leave to take them to Customs.

It took us ninety minutes to clear everything. There followed the long ride into town on the “Corona taxi” with a chatty driver who’d lived many years in Seattle and still had one daughter there. (Another is a singer with her own TV program in Riga, Lithuania.) We passed the time comparing Naruse Mikio’s women to those in Mizoguchi’s films, Mishima’s decadence over Dazai Osamu’s, the pleasures of hiking in the mountains, the theory that the Japanese are one of the lost tribes of Israel.… At Hamadayama, we checked into the cellphone shop to activate our phones because, since Covid, the company has closed their kiosk at Narita.

We encountered a preponderance of lefties that first day: left-handed quarantine officer, another one at immigration, a southpaw girl in the cellphone store—encouraging signs of a growing non-conformity in this country. We finally reached our daughter’s place around seven pm, to a hot bath, cold beer, gyoza, and an early bed in the spare room upstairs. Yayoi’s study was to be taken over by the grandparents as in Ozu’s Tokyo Story, only the desk hadn’t been moved into the hallway. She had posted a sign on her door, written in crabby hiragana, tachiiri kinshi (no entry), and stamped it in red all over with the family chop to make it official, but she was gracious enough to lend her private space to us.

tachiiri kinshi (no entry)

The quarantine in Japan was a soft one. People are allowed out to go for walks and do their shopping. Only the Kyoto public health office contacted us, asking for an update on our health before we boarded the bullet train sixteen days later to return to Kyoto. One Sunday we walked into Kichijōji, a fashionable Tokyo neighbourhood. Inokashira Park was packed, as were the shops leading to the station, giving me a queasy sense of claustrophobia after the tranquility of Victoria.

One of our first orders of business when we got back to Kyoto last fall was going to the Otani Mausoleum to report our return to granny. The bus from Kawaramachi to the stop below Kiyomizu Temple is usually packed with tourists but this time was half empty. At the flower shop Ms. Ono told us a lot of places were going out of business, and we noticed on the walk back through Rokuhara the shutters down on a number of the guesthouses and restaurants catering to the tourist trade. That part of Kyoto indeed seemed like a ghost town, as if the dead were reclaiming the territory as their own. Gion was little better.


A deserted ‘happy Rokuhara’

But it was beautiful in Kyoto last fall. November here is always my favorite month, sunny and warm, and we spent whatever free time we had chasing maples, which is to say, on the hunt for autumn colours. The temple gardens were at their most photogenic and uncrowded. We almost felt we had the town to ourselves. The only tourists were the odd resident foreigner like myself (rare birds now) and other Japanese, taking advantage of the government’s Go To Travel campaign. This and the Go To Eat campaign have effectively served as super-spreaders of the virus. It would seem the government has valued economic stimulation over the lives of its citizens, but what’s new about that?

As I write this, it is spring in Kyoto and Japan has entered yet another wave of what seems like an endless pandemic. Covid cases and fatalities are higher than ever. Canada has made it even harder to return, our airline cancelling all flights from Tokyo to Vancouver for the foreseeable future. Everyone the world over is advising people to Stay Home, but I have to ask myself, where is that now? Since the New Year I have retired and in theory can live where I like, but I also find myself in a dubious battle with Service Canada to prove that I am in fact a Canadian resident in order to get my Old Age Security. Once again, a government seems to be forcing my hand. I have no plans of becoming a Japanese citizen. Donald Keene famously did, he said at the time, in solidarity with the Japanese people after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Disasters do have a way of making choices where we live, but I rather think Keene had just grown tired of those long flights between Tokyo and New York. Eventually we all have to choose what the Japanese call their tsui no sumika, or final resting place. Maybe I wasn’t being so glib about wanting to be buried here.

Ema at Ninna-ji with prayer for Corona to end

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For Cody’s piece on ‘Under Kiyomizu’, click here. For his runner-up prize winning piece for the WiK Competition in 2017, see here. To learn more about his work as professor of Japanese studies at University of Victoria, click here.

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