Zoom session with Peter Goodman, founder of Stone Bridge Press (2/15/2021)
Peter Goodman, founder and publisher of Stone Bridge Press which has brought out nearly 200 books over the past 30 years. At one point he sold the company to Yohan, shortly before the distributor went bankrupt. A few years later he was able to buy it back.
On Sunday Writers in Kyoto hosted a presentation by Peter Goodman, with about 15 members participating. It provided a great opportunity to bring our scattered community together, with the speaker and three members in North America, one person in Australia, and others scattered around Japan from Yokohama to Shiraishi Island. Some were actually in Kyoto!
Peter described how he had set up Stone Bridge after working for Tuttle and Kodansha. He mentioned some of the successes the Press has had, such as being the first publisher to bring out a book on ‘wabi-sabi’, thereby. Stone Bridge worked with Donald Richie too, bringing out a new edition of The Inland Sea.
As for the present, Peter talked of the negative effect of the Olympics cancellation, the merits and demerits of amazon, and a tie up with the magazine Monkey. He also addressed the question of what every writer wants to know – how best to catch the attention of a publisher. Writers and publishers are often at odds, but thanks to Peter’s warm input this session demonstrated how they can work together to mutual benefit.
While the virus continues to linger around, WiK is looking to a spring season of Zoom events, and we couldn’t have had a better example of how fruitful these online sessions can be. Peter was also good enough to guide us through the submission process and provided the procedure for putting in proposals. His generosity of spirit was evident in his willingness to reach out to WiK, to help with publicity and in the planning of further development. We are very grateful to him for sparing the time and will certainly be keeping in touch..
Jann Williams in Tasmania listening to Peter Goodman in America, under Zoom management from Lisa Wilcut in Yokohama. Some of the other participants are visible along the top.
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The Stone Bridge Press website is strongly recommended, and its list of authors is a model of how these things should be laid out. Two WiK members are included, David Joiner and Amy Chavez. The background information about the authors makes for interesting reading in itself, quite apart from their books. Please see…https://www.stonebridge.com/authors.
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Following his Zoom talk, Peter Goodman those attending to send him brief proposals to see if there is preliminary interest. Should the answer be in the affirmative, then there are a standard set of requirements (see below).
Proposals for publication should include items from the following checklist:
___1 A one-page cover letter summarizing what the book is, who it's for, and why it's useful, important, necessary, or unique.
___2 An expanded table of contents, chapter by chapter with summaries. Indicate what will be included in the front- and backmatter (introduction, preface, bibliography, glossary, index, etc.).
___3 For fiction or translation, at least two sample chapters. For non-fiction, an introduction and one sample chapter, or two sample chapters. If a translation, what is the rights situation with the original author or publisher? Do you have permission to translate the work and seek a publisher for it?
___4 Estimated manuscript length and completion date (if it's still incomplete).
___5 Number of illustrations and what kind (line drawings, black and white photographs, maps, color, etc.). Are there any special production or handling requirements? You can attach or zip-archive low-resolution jpegs or tif files. Do NOT send original art or high-resolution (that is, large) files unless we ask you to.
___6 Information about you. Include a c.v. if you have one, and indicate your qualifications to write on your subject.
___7 A discussion of the size of the market for your book and how your book compares to its competition. What makes it different/better? What are you prepared to do to promote the book (very important!)? Do you know others in your field who will provide reviews or testimonials?
___8 Your financial and scheduling requirements, if any.
___9. Are you active in social media? Blogging?
Email your submission to:sbpedit@stonebridge.com
Send all materials to:Stone Bridge Press 1393, Solano, Avenue Suite C, Albany CA 94706, USA
Please note that we are primarily interested in books with a Japan/China/Asia connection (however tenuous). If you write genre fiction, like science fiction, war stories, mysteries, and romances, or commercial fiction, you probably shouldn't be talking to us at all. Please also do not send poetry or children's illustrated book submissions. No materials can be returned to you unless you provide us with sufficient return postage. We generally reply by email. We look forward to hearing from you.
THE EDITORS, Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley, California
For the past three years Peter has been running a podcast for the Independent Publishing Association in the USA.
Japanese Wood and Carpentry – Rustic and Refined – By Mechtild Mertz
A book review by Judith Clancy ___________________________
Japan is a country whose primary building material is wood, ranging from delicate alcove posts to some of the largest wooden structures in the world all employing exquisitely selected wood species.
Walking the old streets of Kyoto or entering a temple reveals the legacy of Japan’s forests: the soothing symmetry of wood lattice-fronted homes, temples with lustrous pillars and wide planked flooring glowing with centuries of use.
Wood is the chosen medium for structures, ornamentation and religious images in a country that supports its craftsmen and appreciates the inherent sensuousness of wood, its color variation, grain, and sustainability.
Mertz’s book is a slim volume with an immense amount of information, full of color photographs that identify the characteristics of each wood type. It also includes photos of fourteenth century woodblock prints that show tools that carpenters used to wield their ancient craft with references known even centuries earlier. Japanese Wood and Carpentry contains an impressive amount of information regarding the grain rendered by cutting direction and the four designated roles of carpenters that judge the aesthetic, ecological and economics that determine wood selection. Mertz also has delved into the timber species presented at the Vienna World Exhibition held in 1873 that listed 133 wood species, and then in a catalog, edited by the Meiji government, listing Japan’s one hundred most important timber tree species for the World exhibitions of Philadelphia in 1876, and of Paris in 1878.
Capably edited by John Hart Benson Jr., the clearly written text makes its well-researched subject a pleasure to read and accessible to laypersons and specialists alike.
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As an ethnobotanist and researcher specializing in Asian wooden sculpture and author of Wood and Traditional Woodworking in Japan, Mertz draws upon her great knowledge of Japanese culture and society to explain terms, history, and sources of timber, domestic and abroad. She is presently a researcher at the East Asian Civilizations Research Centre of the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris.
(Note by JD: ‘The author has close ties with Kyoto, having carried out research on traditional Japanese woodworking at Kyoto University’s Wood Research Institute for two years. She also did post-doctorate research at the Kyoto University Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere. She has participated in cooperative study programs on Japanese and Chinese Buddhist sculpture, Tibetan temples and archeological wooden remains. One of her projects investigated the remains of Kublai Khan’s sunken fleet.’ See this link for more.)
(Photo by Everett Kennedy Brown, from Kyoto Journal 2014)
On Jan 20, 2021, notice of the obituary of Mary Smith (1930-2020), former wife of Donald Richie, was posted on the Writers in Kyoto Facebook public page. This prompted discussion of the renowned Japanologist, which led to personal reminiscences by Alex Kerr and Everett Kennedy Brown.
John Dougill initiated the discussion: Donald Richie once recommended me to read his former wife’s portrait of him in a novel called A Romantic Education. I only got round to reading it last autumn, and was surprised by the unflattering characterisation. Brutally honest is how I would describe it, and you could say there are one or two passages in The Inland Sea too that hint at awkward truths. Now comes word that Richie’s former wife has died, apparently on Christmas Day last year. She had an obituary in the NY Times on Jan 10.
There followed comments about Richie’s sexuality, to which Alex Kerr responded as follows:
Donald Richie was a complex character. He was a scholar and intellectual who played harpsichord, read widely in all the literature of east and west, and devoted himself to the craft of writing, publishing dozens of books as well as a book review column in the Japan Times for years. At the same time, he was indeed sex obsessed, and his kinks included not only voyeurism, but a kind of exhibitionism, in which he delighted in showing people the grungy side of his own nature – which is why he wouldn’t have been offended by his wife’s book. He loved to shock, and was amused when proper people found his comments offensive. He reveled in the contrast between his Dr Jekyll literary self, and his Mr Hyde sexual adventurer. As a gay man with a curious bisexual side, his adventures were as complicated as he was.
Donald followed in the footsteps of French intellectuals such as Proust and Genet, who loved the “nostalgie de la boue” (nostalgia of the mud). In Japan, he was fascinated not by “high culture” like Noh, Kabuki, tea ceremony etc, but the low life, the soft underbelly of society, which he described like no other. He used to take me and other friends on his personal “Tokyo tour” of slums near Ueno, Shinjuku, and other places, where he was fascinated by gangsters, homeless, sex workers, foreign laborers from Iran, and so on. Nobody has written more eloquently about this seamy, usually well-hidden, side of Japanese life.
Finally, there’s another aspect to Donald Richie, which was his love of the Japanese avant garde of the 1950s through the 1970s. That led him to champion Japanese film, become a close friend of Mishima, a supporter of Butoh’s Hijikata, and many others. Few foreigners – nay no other foreigner in the 21st century achieved the kind of friendships that Donald had with the leaders of what was at the time, “counter-culture.” The Japanese avant-garde of those days was sexually liberated but also truly bizarre and kinky (see the writings of Ian Buruma, who was one of Richie’s disciples). Donald was fascinated by the way Japan ran against all the accepted life-trueisms of the West, with sex especially, but with everything else. He remained a Western intellectual to the end of his days, but he was also a product of Japan.
Everett Kennedy Brown then wrote….
I found Donald Richie very forthcoming with his stories of his experiences with gay culture in Japan. It was particularly interesting how he would describe the qualities of young men from different regions of Japan in epicurean detail. I asked him to write these stories down, maybe not to be published while he was alive, but for posterity. I don’t know if he ever did that. We first met at his apartment overlooking Ueno. He wanted to show me photos he had of Yukio Mishima standing in the snow, nude and beautiful with a samurai sword in his hand. The photos were taken by Tomotsu Yato, a talented photographer and former flamenco dancer who lived with Donald Richie and Meredith Weatherby in a fine old house near Roppongi crossing. The house and garden became the setting for many of the nude male photos Yato took during his short career.
Alex Kerr: That house belonged to Meredith Weatherby, founder of Weatherhill Books, which published some of the great books about Japan. Urasenke’s Tankosha bought out Weatherhill and also the house which was later torn down. I used to stay there some times.
Everett Kennedy Brown: Donald and I worked on a project to make Yato’s work known. He entrusted me with Yato’s negatives to make prints that we published in the 44th edition of Kyoto Journal. Donald wrote a fine essay that I recommend anyone interested in this subject to read.
I printed the photographs in the days before negative scanners were available and I deeply regret that I did not refuse to give those negatives back to Donald. Those negatives are now gone. Nobody knows of their whereabouts. A fascinating chapter of Japanese history is again being forgotten.
Alex Kerr What a pity! Donald talked a lot about those negatives, and I was wondering where they had gone.
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In respect of the above, John Einarsen, managing editor of Kyoto Journal, was kind enough to provide a link to a conversation with Donald Richie from the April 2014 edition, in which Richie describes himself as a self-revelatory writer. There is a strong sense of Lost Japan about the interview.
Quote: “Japanese have many times told me that they consider Tokyo to be a very cold city, compared to, say, Osaka. Of course, the coldest city is Kyoto. It’s like Boston unless you are well-connected there. This is true, not particularly of foreigners, but of the Japanese themselves. Unless they’re born there, they simply don’t want to live in Kyoto. So if Kyoto is zero degrees, we get up to a sort of livable heat in Osaka, then someplace in between is frigid Tokyo.”
Also thanks to John Einarsen for drawing our attention to Notes on Tamotsu Yato, pictured below, the photographer mentioned by Everett Kennedy Brown. The feature appeared in Kyoto Journal, no. 44.
Photo taken in 1935 (public domain) (From the March issue that year of Shinko Cinema, published by Eikosha)
Kyoto Stage and Film Director Akira Nobuchi by Yuki Yamauchi
“Yes, it
has been a bad dream… but a beautiful one will begin.’ So ends Monna Vanna, a 1902 drama by Belgian
playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. The phrase influenced Akira Nobuchi (1896-1968)
so strongly that he contributed a short essay to his graduation yearbook, which
ends as follows:
“Real life will begin.” As Vanna cries out at the end, this is nothing less than my voice.
A high
school student from Nara Prefecture, Nobuchi began his real life in Kyoto, after he was admitted to Doshisha University
for theology studies. In 1916 he stopped studying there, however, and entered
Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University) to deepen his knowledge of
English literature, in particular Irish dramatist John Millington Synge whose
play The Shadow of the Glen (1903)
the undergraduate chose for his graduation thesis.
Nobuchi started his stage management career from around the time of his graduation in 1919. During the next fourteen years, he helped shingeki (Western-style drama) thrive in Kyoto Prefecture and neighboring areas while Tokyo experienced a similar theatrical change led by influential figures such as literary critic Hogetsu Shimamura, actress Sumako Matsui and authors Shoyo Tsubouchi and Kaoru Osanai. Nobuchi headed his own drama troupe Elan Vital Shogekijo, and they performed mainly at theaters in Kyoto, not only plays by Japanese dramatists but also Western counterparts including Arthur Schnitzler, Lady Gregory and Lord Dunsany.
Photo from May 1942 issue of Shin Eiga (public domain)
Among the
presentations was Juno and the Paycock
(1924) by Irish playwright Sean O’Casey, which was performed at the Okazaki
Kokaido hall (predecessor of the Kyoto City Museum of Art Annex). This was the
earliest show of the play in Japan. Nobuchi also performed the drama at the Pontocho
Kaburenjo theater, which was completed in 1927.
The year
1927 also brought him a meeting with future actress: Takako Irie (1911-95). She
was introduced by her brother to Nobuchi, who cast her in such plays as Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov and The Living Corpse by Leo Tolstoy. Some
of her performances were seen by film director Tomu Uchida, who enabled her debut as a
movie star in 1928.
However, Nobuchi suffered from various problems, ranging from poverty to censorship. There was also the rise of proletarian dramas from 1929. Nobuchi chose to leave the Elan Vital in 1933 and went on to make a foray into filmdom the following year by joining the Shinko Cinema. One of its studios was based in Kyoto, and Nobuchi’s first film was a talkie released in Nagasaki Ryugakusei.
At this
time Kyoto was a centre of film making and known as “Japan’s Hollywood”.
Nobuchi contributed 32 films, from his maiden work to his swan song Kaidan Botan Doro (Peony Lantern Kaidan)
in 1955. At least 22 pieces were shot at studios in Kyoto. Many of the motion
pictures put an emphasis on actresses and their
beauty, as well as meiji-mono, or
films that re-enact the atmosphere of the Meiji Period. He succeeded in both
genres, notably Yoshida Goten in 1937
and Fufu Nise in 1940. The former,
giving prominence to the flamboyant ambiance and the magnetism of femmes
fatale, became particularly popular, as filmmaker Kaneto Shindo recalls in a
1993 book Shinko Cinema Senzen Goraku
Eiga no Okoku (Shinko Cinema: The Kingdom of Entertainment Films).
Among the
large number of actresses to become famous was People’s Honor Award-winning actress Mitsuko Mori (1920-2012). About half a
century later, she recalls the experience:
Since it’s natural that male actors play a leading role, few taught acting to female actors except for one person – film director Akira Nobuchi who kindly told me, ‘Acting is learnt through form.’ (Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 8, 2007)
It goes without saying that Nobuchi suffered from the growing censorship just before and during World War II. At least two of his films fell victim – the 2,000mm film of Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki, 1939) was cut by 40 percent, and he was forced to add changes to his 1943 work Hozutsu no Hibiki (Vibrancy of Artillery).
Photo thought to have been taken in 1919 of the Elan Vital theater group
Japan’s
defeat in the Allies-Axis war was followed by the loss of Nobuchi’s mother in
September of the same year (his father had died in June 1934, a few months
before his son’s debut as a filmmaker). In 1946, however, he resumed shooting films, directing stage plays, writing for magazines and creating
his own original works. The years 1949 and 1950 were marked by revival of the
Elan Vital at some of Kyoto’s theaters, and he also worked with the Shochiku Shinkigeki comedy troupe,
which performed a dozen plays of his at theaters including
Minamiza. In addition, he worked with Gion Higashi, one of Kyoto’s five geisha
quarters, in the autumn of 1952.
On
February 1, 1968, pneumonia took the life of Akira Nobuchi. He still lives on
in the memory of shingeki researchers
and fans of early Showa Period movies (also I hope of those who kindly read
this article). If this write-up interests you, I humbly recommend you to visit
Kyoto Prefectural Library and watch video editions of his post-WWII films Koi Jamisen (1946), starring actor
Kanjuro Arashi, and Taki no Shiraito
(1952), which features Machiko Kyo and actor Masayuki Mori.
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For Nobuchi’s IMDb page, please click here. For details of six of his films, see here.
Kyoto: A Literary Guide which came out last year with Camphor Press was a collaborative effort by six different people, who collectively made the selection and agreed on the translation and editing.
Now one of them, Michael Lambe of the Deep Kyoto blog, has made a short five minute video with the help of his wife which showcases the content and gives an overview of the format. It’s a model of how these things should be done.
The book has received favourable reviews in The Japan Times and Kyoto Journal. It has also been lauded on amazon, including this enthusiastic response : “I really enjoyed the Kyoto Lit Guide. It’s a beautiful selection of poems and I like how it’s entirely a collaborative work and one can’t tell who translated which poem. The cover is great too. It would be so nice to use it as a tourist guide. It’s what I would do.”
Please take time out for a moment, and settle down for this five minute guided tour through a selection of Kyoto’s remarkable literary heritage.
John Dougill writes: This synopsis of a story from Shadowings (1900) is Part Four of a series covering Lafcadio Hearn’s stories set in Kyoto. (For the introduction to the series, mentioning Hearn’s visit to the city, please click here.) The title, ‘O-Kichi-Seiza Kudoki’, was taken by Hearn from a ballad that was sung by wandering biwa players. It features the very Japanese theme of a love suicide.
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‘Now hear the pitiful story of two that died for love,’ begins Hearn. The tale starts in the thread shop of Yoemon, a wealthy Kyoto merchant. One of his daughters, O-Kichi, is a sixteen year old beauty with whom a twenty two year old clerk called Seiza falls in love. Though the mother tries to stop the relationship, O-Kichi is consumed with love, ‘like ink on paper’. So the girl’s father sacks Seiza, who returns to his home in Osaka where he pines for his lost loved one.
One night O-Kichi had a vivid dream of Seiza that was so real she believed he had actually come back to her, but when she woke there was no sign of him. So she went to Osaka in search of his house, where she found his mother weeping copiously. It turned out that he had died just a week before of an illness brought on by his longing for her.
The distraught O-Kichi went to the cemetery where Seiza was buried, and so strong was his desire to be with her that his spirit rose from an opening in the grave and asked her to put flowers before the grave and to arrange Buddhist services on his anniversary days. But she could not stand to be parted from him, and so she filled her sleeves with stones and drowned herself in a moat.
In telling the story Hearn interspersed the brief incidents with the repeated Yanrei!, a chorus taken from the biwa recitals. He annotated the brief tale with explanations and parallels from English literature, making it more of a literary exercise than a simple ghost story. (His encyclopedic knowledge and academic leaning led to a successful spell teaching English Literature at Tokyo University.)
The story reflects Hearn’s fascination with spirits of the dead, as is well-known from the collection in Kwaidan. This has been attributed to his childhood in Dublin, when he claimed to have seen real ghosts. He clung to the belief in adulthood, and adapted it to the evolutionary theories of Herbert Spencer, whom he admired as the greatest man of the age. From Spencer, Hearn got the idea that after death cells dispersed randomly but carried within them memory of their previous existence. It explained for Hearn such mysteries as deja vu and falling in love. In claiming a scientific basis for this, Hearn was thus able to reconcile the romantic and scientific sides of his character.
************* If you’d like to read the full story, please see this link and scroll down till you reach the title. For previous stories by Hearn set in Kyoto, please see ‘Common Sense‘, ‘Sympathy of Benten‘, or ‘Screen Maiden’.
Sydney and husband at a Writers in Kyoto seminar led by Jeff Robbins
While living and traveling in Japan for
nearly four years, I indulged myself full-steam in Japanese culture and arts.
At midlife, I was looking to shift my writing focus away from the Storytime Yoga
work I created, so I spent my days exploring rakugo,
shodo,
kamishibai,
kimono
dressing, chado,
and attending zazen.
I obsessively filled five goshuinchos
with goshuins, sampled sake and tofu,
marveled at sakura
and more, before dutifully reporting on my adventures in my blog, SydneyinOsaka.
For some reason, however, I initially
was a bit reluctant to study haiku, that epitome of Japanese culture to the
West.
Perhaps my insular, American-centric
mind thought it cliche to study haiku. Everybody does it! It’s the first go-to
for Japanese culture. I also thought of haiku as something taught beginning
writers and youth, recalling memories of a 7th grade English class assignment
to write a poem with the three-lined 5-7-5 syllable structure. I still remember it:
hungry fisherman clubs a crab over the head guts everywhere
Well, shut my mouth. It was when I attended a Writers in Kyoto event in 2017 that hosted a talk by Basho Translator and Enthusiast Jeff Robbins who runs the website Basho4Humanity, that I realized there was so much more to haiku than I ever knew. It was the beginning of going down a very long rabbit hole of discovering the depth, power, beauty, complexity, simplicity and most of all, enjoyment of reading and writing haiku. I was hooked.
Reading The Haiku Apprentice by Abigail Friedman made
me realize that writing haiku was for
everybody, from average citizens to samurai to monks to the Emperor. It was an enjoyable and sustaining
art for everyday life to express one’s depth and unity with nature and being
alive, rather than something that celebrates only famous authors.
It was also spiritually connected to
Zen. As a Buddhist, it offered me a poem written in response from an intuitive
flash in relationship to nature rather than from the observing intellect. It
was a meditative relief for my busy mind that tends to overthink everything. It
was also intertwined with more of my favorite Japanese culture and interests – washi paper, ikebana,
zazen. Synchronized with shodo lessons, haiku also introduced me to Kanji and the fun of
reading and translating haiku to learn Japanese via short lines and bilingual
text.
Enter the Hailstone Haiku Circle. Now in its 20th year, the group founded by Stephen Henry Gill, consists mostly of Kansai-residing Japanese and foreign writers who meet regularly to write and study Eigo no Haiku, English Haiku. Living in Osaka I attended many of Gill’s monthly classes at Senri-Chuo Cultural Center, forcing me out of my 35th-floor Shinmachi abode where I could easily become agoraphobic. I enjoyed the monthly Midosuji subway ride, even if I got lost more times than my 50-year-old brain cared to admit, navigating Senri-Chuo’s convoluted complex to find the classroom. I also lamented missing them and other events when I could not be coaxed out of the apartment during summer heat to brave the sweltering, packed subway. I did make it once to the Kyoto class, but the three-hour round trip, because of my penchant for getting on wrong trains, prevented any more sessions in that beautiful city and wonderful group. (That goes for WIK events too!)
In October 2017, I bravely forged ahead on a cold, wet day, after
two typhoons to make it to a kukai,
poetry gathering, for the Hailstone
Haiku Circle’s publication of Persimmon,
an anthology collecting 60 poets’ haiku and more. Held in Kyoto at Rakushisha,
or House of the Fallen Persimmons, formerly owned by Basho’s disciple Mukai
Kyorai, it was then that I was introduced to such a marvelous camaraderie of
language lovers. I wrote a haiku of the experience I posted in the comments of The Icebox, The Hailstone Haiku Circle’s blog.
at Rakushisha lots of rain, one persimmon — a book of haiku
From then on it has been an endless and
exciting discovery of new vocabulary, terms and rules for writing haiku and
other forms of Japanese literature, of which I had never before heard of in my
life. I will not dare go into detail about them here as my brain is still
digesting and learning about them, along with the Japanese culture and history
intertwined with them all.
The few I can list with confidence are: * Senryū – a short poem that tends to be about human foibles, whereas haiku is about nature. * Renku – a popular collaborative linked verse poetry. * Kigo – a seasonal word that must be included in traditional Japanese haiku. * Kireji – which, depending on its location in the poem, can provide structure; closure; or a cut from a stream of thought, a pause.
Another important aspect I learned
about haiku was that English haiku did not have to follow the 5-7-5 syllable
constraint that traditional Japanese language haiku must. On my first visit to
Japan in 2016, I was inspired to write haiku in the three-lined 5-7-5 to go
with my photographs, which I made into a series of Film Haiku
without knowing anything else about haiku, (and never having made a film before
either. Thank you YouTube editor!)
In one of Gill’s classes, I learned
that the 5-7-5 syllable constraint makes it difficult for English writers to
express themselves adequately. In later classes, I learned that haiku can be on
one line, or even four, a haiqua. It
took me a long time to get away from three lines of 5-7-5, which I still tend
to prefer as it gives my busy mind restraint! Yet, most Westerners don’t
understand that and tend to think that more or fewer syllables or four lines
are not haiku. I learned that Jack Kerouac wrote haiku, and
insisted that English Haiku should NOT be in 5-7-5. Surprisingly, I had never
read Kerouac before. Maybe it was his haiku spirit that finally led me to his
books, as his Winter Park, Florida home is not far from my house, nor is Tampa
where he died.
Then I learned about Hai-Pho, or Photo
Haiku, that combines a photographic image with haiku. As a photographer, I
loved the discovery of a new form for me to combine text and image. Photo Haiku
was tricky for me at first, as it’s not ekphrastic. The poem must be “not too
far but not too close” relating to the image, according to the submission
guidelines for the NHK Haiku Masters Photo Haiku Contest in Kyoto,
and as Gill explained during a class.
If the photograph is of snow, you can’t just include snow in the haiku, which amounted to more frustration and confundity for my mind, but another opportunity to practice Zen to free it. Several Hailstone Haiku Circle participants formed a team and created some fine Photo Haiku for the contest, that can be seen here, here and here. I helped by offering photos and voting for the best photos to use in the competition, but unfortunately I couldn’t be on the team nor at the event because I was in Tokyo at the time.
Despite an early start when I first
moved to Japan involving myself in group activities, such as being the MC for WIK’s 2018 Poetry and Improv,
I succumbed to many health challenges that impeded my ability to participate in
more. I lamented being unable to attend hikes and composition strolls that Gill
organizes, as well as the haiku composition strolls he coordinates after
volunteering to do conservation work in the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest with the
non-profit People Together for Mt. Oguru.
I was finally able to get it together
to attend one in late 2019 which I got down and dirty helping replace bamboo
fencing in the forest, earning entrance to the splendid grounds of Ōkōchi Sansō, the former home and
garden of Japanese film star Denjirō Ōkōchi to stroll and write haiku. A few
haiku I wrote there are published in the Hailstone Haiku Circle’s brand new
book,I Wish.
One red maple leaf in the chozubachi Mt. Ogura
Retirement for a samurai actor contemplating persimmons
In 2020 I also entered the Genjuan
International Haibun Contest and received an honorable mention. I had never
even heard of haibun until I came to Japan, which is the non-fiction combining
of prose and haiku, as exemplified in Matuso Bashō’s classic The Narrow Road to the
Deep North.
Haibun became my favorite writing form and introduced me to the term haikai. Haikai can mean many things, but a haibun is to ideally contain, according to The 2021 Genjian International Haibun Contest submission guidelines, “…such features as the subtle linking of haiku with prose, omission prompting the reader’s imagination, humour and self-deprecation.” Got that? There is still time to submit to the 2021 contest before the January 31 deadline. Join me!
Some people like hitting golf balls; I love tapping my fingers to count syllables and find the perfect rhythm, combination of images and use of craft when composing haiku. Some people watch their wedding videos over and over and over again; I remember fondly my time in Eigo no Haiku classes with its wonderful members.
Especially because those memories and
writing haiku and haibun served as medicine for me to cope with a difficult
repatriation to the United States in December 2019, which was perfectly timed
to coincide with a year ahead of Covid-19 quarantines, mask revolts and an
insurrection of domestic terrorists. My haiku was published in the 2019 Luz Del Mes Tri-Anthology, which features haiku
written by 33 authors from around the world in Greek, English and Spanish, and
my Quarantine Haibun published in The Luz Del Mes
Tri-Anthology 2020.
There was a great sense of loss when I
was unable to return to Japan for a three-month visit again in 2020. But Zen
and writing haiku and haibun helped me remember that all things are impermanent
and help me let go of my depression. Truly a domain perdu, I reflect on Japan and the haiku classes and events I
participated in there with joy and await a time that I may return once again.
Until then, I read haiku on The Haiku Foundation
website, which has many superb haiku writers
featured, as well as resources for beginning haiku writers. I also read many
other haibun publications, such as The Haibun Journal, where I also intend to submit. (YOU
CAN TOO!!!) I read and reread Daisetz T. Suzuki’sZen and Japanese Culture, which has a long, fascinating chapter on Zen and Haiku.
And I write, opening myself up to each
moment of awareness to catch a beautiful flash of intuition that comes from
viewing nature or any other instant in my life and emblaze its memory with the
timeless beauty of haiku poetry.
While working on a screenplay project in 2019, I discovered the artwork of Tokyo-based Canadian illustrator, Jeremy Hannigan. He had been commissioned to create the visual references for yokai (spirits, monsters and goblins) which appear in the script. At the time, I was looking for a unique hand-drawn design to grace the cover of my second collection of short fiction, Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2020). Jeremy’s linework and rendering techniques were exactly what I was after — so I got in touch and pitched my project. He agreed to take on the job, and over the course of two months, we exchanged a swarm of ideas, sketches, and weblinks, all from which, and under his steady pen, the Pearl City cover image materialised.
Himeji-based author Simon Rowe commissioned an illustration for the cover of his book Pearl City: Stories from Japan and Elsewhere, a collection of short stories set in Japan, Hong Kong, East Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, France, Austria and Cambodia. Driven by characters who are tough, gritty, charming and witty, each of the sixteen tales takes the reader on a trip that ends with a twist. The stories, which carry themes of freedom, family, redemption, justice, courage, corruption, and girl power, are tied together by a single message: triumph over adversity.
Simon wanted the cover to depict the titular story’s protagonists and setting of Kobe Port and Chinatown with a vintage nighttime ‘noir’ mood. Dominating the design would be Mami Suzuki—working mother by day, private sleuth by night, who pursues a suspected pearl thief through the alleys and port precinct of Kobe in western Japan. She needed to be smouldering and sassy, but respectable and businesslike, waist-up only to maximize her presence.
In the background is Kobe Port Tower, the Rokko Mountains, a Chinatown sign, the kanji for ‘Kobe’ and ‘Pearl,’ and Mami’s friend Teizo drinking sake. Various visual references were used, from Kurosawa movies to old noir posters and James Bond stills. For consistency, the typography was laid out in a similar fashion to his previous publication, Good Night Papa, with an embossed title and byline.
Making friends in a new town can be tough, but it’s even harder in an old one. I was at a Japanese cultural workshop in Osaka recently when the instructor asked me where I live.
“Kyoto,” I said. And because I’ve
lived there long enough to know that that answer carries some weight,
with Kyoto’s nearby mountains and rivers in mind, I added, “It’s an easy
place to live.”
She let a couple of seconds pass before responding. “For Japanese people, it’s not an easy place to live.”
I knew what she was talking about. “You mean the interpersonal relationships, right?”
She nodded.
Japan and its ningen kankei.
As I’ve watched Japanese friends around me, I’ve seen how navigating
human relations in Japan is often a kind of endless shadowboxing fraught
with frustration and over examination. Although, as a foreigner, I have
generally received an exemption from the complicated rules that are
often applied to relationships here, my family’s move to Kyoto about a
year ago threw me into the thick of it. What I had learned from 20 years of living and making friends in Tokyo didn’t seem to work so well here.
Getting to know each other
photo by Kirsty Kawano
The apartment building we moved into
housed two other families with first graders, like my younger daughter.
When we met them, both mothers smiled and chatted to us about where we
had moved from and how the kids would be at the same local school.
Everything seemed great. But, as I met the mothers again, I noticed that
while one was always smiley and animated, conversation with the other
mom seemed forced. She was animated when she spoke, but as soon as she
stopped, her face froze. Maybe she was concentrating as she listened to
what I said, but this up-close-and-personal, resting bitch face was
disturbing. Had I offended her, but she felt that she had to talk to me
anyway?
What I had learned from 20 years of living and making friends in Tokyo didn’t seem to work so well here.
Eventually, I noticed other women do
this same stony-faced one-on-one and realized that it was not a personal
issue, but just a “thing” that Kyoto-bred women do. It extended a bit
further, too. On the odd occasion that I encountered another mother from
one of my daughters’ classes out and about the town, while I gave a
cheery konnichiwa, in return all I got was a nod.
I consider myself to be a kind and
friendly person, and I have trouble understanding why other people can’t
be the same. Since I was the newbie in town it was my job to make the
effort to get to know other people—I understood that—but I was
frustrated and sometimes angry that my attempts were so summarily
smacked down.
Making friends
Still, within about a month of our arrival, I made a friend. She was a school mom who grew up in Kyushu. One friend—it was as much as I had dared to hope for.
Luckily, my daughters seemed to fare
better. My sixth grader had joined a cozy class of sweet kids. It felt
so good being among them that I could barely tear myself away from the
classroom on observation days. But, near the end of the school year, my
daughter briefly told me that all the other kids have known each other
since they were tiny, suggesting that therefore there wasn’t much room
available for her to squeeze into within their chain of friendships.
[W]hile I gave a cheery konnichiwa, in return all I got was a nod.
My younger daughter quickly made two
friends (she was off to a better start than her mom), and then, a few
months later, two besties. Decisions made in haste are often not the
best choices, and it seems that that applies to friendships, too.
When difficulties involving the first
two “friends” came to a head, I asked the school to arrange for my
daughter to talk to the school counselor. By the time the counseling
session came around, my daughter had decided that she didn’t need it.
Although I largely agreed with her, I persuaded her to at least go in
and say hello to the counselor. We chatted for a while and the counselor
told us that he had spent about half of his life in the Tokyo area and
the other half in Kyoto.
“It’s different here,” he said. “Although I can’t say exactly how, it is different here.”
Not only that, within the entire
Kyoto city, our neighborhood was apparantly a particularly “difficult
area” in terms of human relations, he said.
I felt like I had walked into an ambush.
“The local junior high is not far
away, but it’s much easier to navigate,” he said. And he was right. My
older daughter is attending that school now, and she has probably never
felt so popular. The junior high, located near the edge of town, brings
together kids from three different elementary schools and, in doing so,
makes relationships there more open, the counselor explained.
Meanwhile, he agreed with my younger
daughter that there wasn’t much to worry about in the difficulties she
was having with the “friends” and that, although he would check in with
her every now and again, that counseling sessions weren’t needed.
As we said our goodbyes, I asked a
question, which, in hindsight, I can see was the reason I had asked for
the session in the first place.
“So, we just have to go along with how people are here?”
It was the question, not the answer,
that hit me. I had always thought of myself as a good traveler—as
someone who accepts a new town or country as it is, rather than how I
think it should be. I wondered how I had managed to forget such a
fundamental principle.
The counselor’s answer was, “Yes. And create a little space between you and them.”
Stepping out
It’s only now, as I write this, that
I’ve realized that my version of “going along with” the way many women
in my neighborhood act, is to leave them to it. I now hold no
expectations toward the stony-faced moms around me. I’ve stepped out of
those “inhuman relationships.”
Once a week, I go down to the Kamo
River and I watch my younger daughter’s soccer lesson at the sports
ground beside the river. Beyond the grassy riverbanks, the mountains
line the horizon. It’s Kyoto, just being itself—without the pomp and
ceremony—and it’s beautiful. About four other soccer moms usually also
come to watch. They are beautiful, too. Only two of them are Kyoto-bred,
and none of them is from our immediate neighborhood.
Photo by Kirsty Kawano
I’ve redefined my “here.” My Kyoto is this beautiful place all around me—all except for the thatch of bristles that is my immediate neighborhood. If I never fit in there, that will be fine. It’s just a short walk to the river.
************* For Part 1 please see here. For Kirsty’s self-introduction, please click here.
Learning the ropes of living in Japan’s cultural capital can be tough.
Two years ago my family relocated from Tokyo to Kyoto in line with my husband’s shift to a new job. My two daughters and I didn’t want to go — we had a great network of friends in Tokyo that we didn’t want to leave. But how can one say ‘no’ to Kyoto – Japan’s beautiful, cultural capital? Besides, if we could fit in in Tokyo, surely we could fit in in Kyoto – how different could it be?
There was never any doubt that we would like Kyoto. It’s the type of city that people fall in love with – rich in history, culture and nature. There’s a devoted expat community here. The city sits in a mountain basin, making it cold in winter and terribly humid in summer, but unlike the concrete jungle of inner-Yamanote line Tokyo, summer nights in Kyoto cool down.
If we could fit in in Tokyo, surely we could fit in in Kyoto – how different could it be?
Just a few days after we arrived, we
introduced ourselves at what would be our daughters’ new elementary
school. The teachers were attentive, kind and friendly. We spent the
rest of the summer break settling into our new apartment, exploring the
neighborhood and frolicking in the nearby Kamo River. It was far too hot
for sightseeing.
The beautiful Kamo River (photo by Kirsty Kawano)
Our discoveries in those early days were simple and amusing. Instead of the ubiquitous state of vending machines in Tokyo, in Kyoto, they were far enough apart that you could actually work up a thirst while walking from one to another. Convenience stores were rare enough that to school friends we were able to describe our apartment building as the one behind the conbini. Supermarkets stipulated carrots not just as ninjin, but as yo-ninjin – Western ones – to distinguish them from Kyoto’s own kyo-ninjin. There was tasty, deep-fried hamo conger eel (a Kyoto delicacy) available hot and creamy at summer festivals. We were getting off to a good start.
Back to school
Our children’s school in Kyoto (photo by Kirsty Kawano)
My daughters and I were enthusiastic about the start of school. There lay our best chance to make friends. The school had a happy, friendly atmosphere. The curriculum and structure of the school day were basically the same as in Tokyo, so the transition was relatively smooth.
There were a few superficial
differences. Whereas in Tokyo all the students were required to wear a
uniform hat to and from school, here only the first graders needed one.
The most popular choice of school bag here is not the hard and heavy randoseru backpack, but a lighter, more flexible one called a ranrikku (seen below).
It was created by a Kyoto company in 1968 after a local school
principal asked whether a cheaper bag could be made to help ease the
problem of bullying of kids from families who could only afford the
less-sturdy pig-leather version of the old randoseru.
When in Kyoto…
The time I was most struck by a
cultural difference here compared with Tokyo was when I was riding my
bicycle into the underground parking area at the local shopping center. I
assumed that we were supposed to dismount our bicycles and wheel them
down the ramp, because that was my Tokyo expectation. When I read the
nearby sign, however, it just said to be careful when it’s wet or snowy.
So, just like everyone else around me, I rode in, and rode out again –
something I could not imagine doing in Tokyo. Tokyoites like rules and
like to follow them. But in Kyoto, things were different.
Convenience stores were
rare enough that to school friends we were able to describe our
apartment building as the one behind the conbini.
One day, I was speaking with a mother
at the school who happens to live directly below us in our apartment
building. Her fifth-grade daughter practices piano every day. The mother
pre-apologized for this the first day we met. Fascinated by the
daughter’s discipline and how the mother has managed to get her
practicing daily, I brought the topic up as we talked.
“Your daughter plays the piano so well,” I said. “I’m sorry that you can hear it,” said the mother. “No, no. No problem – we like hearing it. Do you have to tell her to practice, or does she just do it herself?” “She does it herself. But, really, I am sorry.” “No, no problem. We like it. What got her started learning the piano?” “I play, too, so I think that made her want to try. But, you know, I am sorry.” “No, it’s fine. Does your son play too?” “He does a little, yes. But, I am sorry.”
It was silly enough to continue the conversation even further…
Some time later, a Japanese friend in Tokyo told me that telling a Kyotoite that they play the piano well amounts to complaining that their music is too loud. It finally made sense.
She continued: If a Kyotoite invites you to come off the doorstep and up into their home, the appropriate response is to decline.
Telling a Kyotoite that they play the piano well amounts to complaining that their music is too loud.
“How are you supposed to know?” pondered another Japanese friend in our group. And that’s exactly what I though too.
Making friends (and other traumas)
When we had told our Tokyo friends
about our planned move, many of them had said, “Kyotoites aren’t very
friendly. They treat non-Kyoto people as outsiders.”
I’d been in Japan long enough to know that Tokyoites themselves didn’t
have a particularly good reputation among other Japanese regarding
friendliness: Tokyoites are “cold.” Indeed, busy as they are shuffling
themselves to and from work on overcrowded trains, it’s probably a fair
impression. My experience has been that Tokyo residents are generally
rather actively friendly. So I decided to keep an open mind about Kyoto
dwellers.
The Kyoto-bred moms were a different story. It feels like maybe they just don’t know how to be friendly.
Many of the people we first met weren’t originally from Kyoto. That included many school moms and many residents in our apartment building. I didn’t have much opportunity to meet school dads, but the few I talked to chatted with me enthusiastically, and they were Kyoto born and bred.
The Kyoto-bred moms were a different
story. It’s not that they’re unfriendly… It feels like maybe they just
don’t know how to be friendly. Kyoto-raised women tend to use a poker
face: even in the middle of a one-on-one conversation, their faces can
be devoid of expression. The only recognition I would get from some
mothers whose kids were in the same class as one of my daughters was a
cold-faced nod.
The journey continues …
The grandmother of my younger daughter’s friend told me about when she moved to Kyoto to attend university many years ago. “I was treated like an outsider at first, but once I was accepted into the group, it was very warm and friendly,” she told me.
My older daughter recently graduated from elementary school and entered the local junior high school. At the entrance ceremony, I spotted some of the poker-faced moms from the old school waving and smiling at each other. They were warm and friendly. A new school meant a fresh chance to make friends. So I struck up a conversation here, and threw a greeting over there and…received the same in return! The new atmosphere at the school had reminded me to determine my social behavior myself, and not fall in line with the poker faces around me.
After living in Tokyo for 20 years, I
had forgotten that Japan is more than just its capital city. Moving out
reminded me how much more there is to experience – how many more
fascinating differences await discovery. New encounters are seldom easy,
but they are inevitably worth the effort. And for now, my journey in
Kyoto continues.
For Part 2 please see here. For Kirsty’s self-introduction, please click here.
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