Writers In Kyoto

Page 31 of 65

Writers in focus

After Act (Stephen Mansfield)

September 9, 2020

After Act
by Stephen Mansfield

I’m reading a short story by Michael Moorcock, in which the narrator describes his time in Hamburg, among friends who believed they were “descendants of those who had perished when Atlantis was destroyed by atom bombs dropped from flying saucers.”
At any other time, in normal circumstances, that is, I would be suitably incredulous, the mechanisms that operate suspension of disbelief, kicking in. In this Year of the Great Pestilence, 2020, little surprises me. I owe the improbable events of this annus horribilis, unforeseen by oracles or clairvoyants, to an expansion of credibility, a greater capacity to venture into new dimensions of truth, actuality, and untested probability.
Even the specifications of this modest Japanese home my wife and I share, are changing. Our casual scorn for the prefabricated poverty of the building has mellowed into something like affection and gratitude for a structure that has become a shelter. A home that protects us, its diminutive quadrangle of garden, a cordon sanitaire.
This pandemic must surely be the most exactingly documented event in human history. Future generations will be able to pick over the calamity in fastidious detail, with the morbid curiosity enjoyed by people standing at a distance, the safe remove of history. In these most existential of times, disasters are nothing if not associative. Watching the streams of masked pedestrians passing in front of the house, I think of Kamon Rider. Donald Trump talks of Zorro. A more literate friend asks me if the title of Mishima Yukio’s Confessions of a Mask has any bearing on the subject, or would he be better off consulting Albert Camus’s The Plague? In an effort to sound learned, I recommend the closing passages of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 1353 masterpiece, The Decameron, in which ten Florentines flee their death city for the hills, where they distract themselves by recounting a series of tales. A reading of the work is instructive. “What was particularly virulent about this plague,” he wrote, “was that it would leap from the sick to the healthy whenever they were together, much as fire catches hold of dry or oily material that’s brought close to it.”
Writers and scribes have left harrowing accounts of other catastrophes. The storms, crop failures and famines of 1315, for example, are remarkably well-documented. In Poland, the desperately poor, we read, fed off hanging bodies removed from gibbets. With bubonic plague, the Black Death, the end came within days. A third of the world’s population are said to have perished, the pestilence leading to profound economic, social and political change, the disease undermining those in authority, or at least, those perceived to have been wanting in their response or compassion. Before Constantinople was established as the source, many believed the infections came from China.
Perhaps there is something perverse about reading virus related literature, but, as chance would have it, I was half way through Daniel Defoe’s 1722, A Journal of the Plague Year, in mid-January, when the first intimations of the pandemic were sensed. Defoe wrote, “Many families, foreseeing the approach of the distemper laid up stores of provisions sufficient for their whole families, and shut themselves up, and that so entirely, that they were neither seen or heard of till the infection was quite ceased.” In cities like Florence, the wealthy, quarantining themselves until the worst was over, withdrew to spacious villas, sending out servants for food, wine and delicacies. Defoe’s plague, like Boccaccio’s, is an avatar of death, of history going up in flames, but also of enlightenment. Sifting even further back through my bookshelves, I find that Thucydides has a thing or two to say about plagues in fifth-century Athens, confiding, “There was especially high mortality among doctors.”
If there are disarming parallels with today, these writers would have no difficulty in recognizing many of our behavioral responses to a crisis of this magnitude: the selfishness, hoarding, official prevarication, finger-pointing, conspiracy theories, complacency, random acts of kindness and incidents of genuine heroism, the invoking of divine forces, the almost superstitious faith in new prophylactics. The fog of lassitude. Strange lapses into ennui. We believed in progress as a panacea for ill fortune, that the natural forces of history, in their darkness and malevolence, were safely behind us, consigned to an age when doctors bled patients with leeches, witches were drowned in village ponds, and peasant hovels, feebly lit with lumps of tallow.
It’s feasible that, if the virus doesn’t destroy us, our minds will. In this struggle for health and sanity, the beachheads will be research clinics and the insides of our skulls. Providence seldom conspires to bring about happy outcomes, but I am now of the inspiring conviction that, life being mutable, we possess the power to radically change, without precipitating fresh crisis. Camus’s narrative, we recall, demonstrated the possibility of human solidarity in the face of an absurd and hollow universe. For the time being, the planets are still in alignment.
It will be some time, though, before euphoria of the kind that follows the extermination of deadly diseases or vermin, is felt. Before temple bells are rung, hosannas sung in churches, ululations made in mosques, the stanchions and steel cables of Rainbow Bridge illuminated in lurid strokes of cellophane-red, green and blue. The cognitive effects of overlong confinement are still sinking in. In a prolonged miasma of patience and forbearance, I’m experiencing that kind of fidgety energy people feel before the airplane doors are opened.
To steady our nerves and refresh the senses, my wife is burning incense in the next room. The fragrance of camphor reminds me of the moxa Basho applied to his legs in order to fortify them before setting off on his great haiku journey to the deep north. We will soon be making our own journey, back into the world, into a newly shriven, disinfected multiverse we may not recognize at first, but will be grateful that it exists at all.

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The above was written for an anthology of sci-fi and fantasy to be publshed by Excalibur, an independent publisher based in Tokyo. It will be published in three parts, as an incomplete e-book in October (Part 1), then with additions in the spring. The paperback edition, along with another e-book, with all entries, will be published next July. The title is to be Dimensions Unknown Volume 3: The Phantom Games. 

For an account of Stephen’s lunchtime talk for WiK, please see here.

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Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

The Gluck Kingdom (M.R. Louis)

September 6, 2020

The Gluck Kingdom
by Michaël R. Louis
Copyright © 2020 Michaël R. Louis
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13 : 979-8-6573-2631-4

Extract from Chapter 3

HOPES AND WANDERINGS

Mr. Kawamoto gets out of his luxurious gray sedan, grabs his briefcase and climbs quickly the stairs of the town hall. He is late for the city council. He does not like these meetings, the big room is cold and humid and if he can find pleasure in negotiating, he does not really respect his peers. The city mayor in particular may be supportive and more efficient than his predecessors, but could not have been elected without the businessman’s endorsement.

Mr. Kawamoto hoped to stimulate the economic life of the province and perhaps one day establish a political career there. But he was not there yet. In the short term, he needed above all to develop his business and give the taste of success to the other members of the board. When he was younger, he made the mistake of believing this would be an easy task, but the restlessness of other council members had lost him many opportunities. For a reason that he could not understand, some citizens just wanted to stay anchored in the past, even if it meant letting their cities wither away little by little with the exodus of the young generations.

He had therefore prepared his project carefully and it was with confidence that he pushed open the heavy door of the meeting room. He rushes in while his peers are standing talking together and goes straight to the mayor, shaking hands with him ostensibly. He then nods to the mayor’s political adviser who is attending the meeting and has proven his usefulness on several occasions. He quickly greets a few notables and settles down in his seat. The other advisers are called to do the same so that the session officially begins.

Several innocuous matters are called to the vote, most of them known for a long time and included in the city’s annual budget. Had his project not been a topic of the day, he would have argued that he had a business trip to avoid this tedious session. However, the agenda for the day included the planning permission to build a shopping center on the edge of the municipality. Mr. Kawamoto’s construction companies will naturally be called upon to participate in the project and the mayor sees it as a definite opportunity to energize the city.

The voice of a CDP adviser, Mr Kato, however, is against the project. The old man represents this fraction of the population who opposes Mr. Kawamoto’s projects. Mr Kawamoto stares at his opponent, Mr Kato, whose small stature gives him a frail appearance. While many advisers make the effort to wear a suit, Mr. Kato’s brown cotton jacket contrasts with the seriousness of this assembly. For the businessman, the serene face of Mr Kato, his attachment to great and obscure principles, betray the arrogance of a life spent in the security of a function, a life spent without the daily struggles necessary to bring a livelihood for employees and their families.
Mr. Kawamoto would do better without such representatives, but there are not so many volunteers to participate in the municipal council. Mr. Kato was originally from Hokkaido, but, as time went by, he had built up a solid network of friendships in the community …Mr Kawamoto reckoned that any great man would have to deal with such opposition as he endeavors to brush off his frustration.

Mr Kato stands up and calmly states his arguments: he insists repeatedly on the environmental impact of the project, which will affect the quality of life of residents in the vicinity of the new center, and stresses the risk of competition with town shops, who owners are already struggling to generate enough revenue. His words ring true, especially as the supply of shopping centers in neighboring cities is already quite large.

Mr Kawamoto frowns at the mayor, who is taking too long to intervene to his liking. Mr Kawamoto grumbles: “What is wrong with him? It’s as if he is buying into all that nonsense. He must be half asleep once again”. Mr Kawamoto now looks towards the political adviser, his disillusioned look betrays his anguish. The adviser had understood very well that the situation was taking a wrong turn, but was waiting for Mr Kawamoto to come to him and recognize his contribution to solving this hazardous path. It does not take him much effort to fix the issue: the advisor makes a few steps towards the mayor, who pulls himself together as he notices the adviser’s maneuver.

The mayor stands up, raising his hand to take back control of the meeting. He stresses the importance for the city to remain competitive towards other economic hubs and highlights the benefits of innovation for the province. The answer does not satisfy Mr. Kato, who would like to fight back, but the mayor quickly calls for a vote. Mr Kawamoto had already secured the number of votes required to win the ballot long before this day and the business is therefore finally settled. As the meeting ends, Mr. Kawamoto leaves victorious and satisfied to be able to go on with his projects.

As usual after his official meetings, Mr. Kawamoto leaves to visit his father, to whom he reports on current affairs and inquires about his health. The old man lives on the edge of town in a traditional house standing high on the side of a hill. Mr. Kawamoto climbs the ten-meter staircase to reach the front door.

As a child, he took pride in this house which gave him the impression that his family was of some importance, after all, the guests who went to their homes had to pay a considerable effort to do so. Growing up though, Mr. Kawamoto realized the drawbacks of such a home and began to envy those of his friends who lived in apartments in the city center. Perhaps, it was at this point in his life that his calling as a real estate developer really began. On the right of the house, his parents had established a beautiful traditional tsukiyama garden, but after the death of his mother, the garden had lost its appearance, his father contenting himself with regularly pruning the branches of black pines.

Whatever the financial limits of his family, Mr. Kawamoto had always kept the greatest respect for his father. Over the years, he had gained a reputation for being reliable in the community and the region, and his wise advice had guided him on numerous occasions. He was in a way the guarantor of respectability that many ambitious entrepreneurs could not have.

Mr Kawamoto sits down, as always, at the family table and the two men slowly drink a cup of tea before talking about the agenda of the day.

Writers in focus

The beauty and the watchtower

August 31, 2020

by Jann Williams

There is one woman that connects me with Kyoto like no other. We met a few years ago at a gallery soiree and have been inseparable ever since. Hailing from different eras, different countries and different cultures, this apprentice geisha and I share an enduring bond. Both of our lives have been indelibly changed by the imposing watchtowers of Nijo Castle – sentinels that have stood guard for centuries. 

Nearly 100 years ago Miki Suizan chose a Nijo watchtower as the milieu for my maiko friend. She brings his woodblock print Nijojo no tsuki (Moon on Nijo Castle) to life. My lodgings in Kyoto come with a strikingly similar watchtower view, one that is unceasingly welcoming. The setting takes my breath away. It will be marvellous to once again feel the energy of this place once international travel restrictions are lifted.

Nijo Castle was selected as one of the Noted Places of Kyoto by Suizan and the enigmatic beauty is one of his bijinga (beautiful person pictures) created in 1924. Unable to interpret her gaze, I sense that she is waiting for someone. Her muted winter clothing protects her from the cold. I have witnessed snow blanket Nijojo so know how chilly it can be. In contrast another maiko, immortalised the same year in a woodblock print by Tsuchida Bakusen, wears a vibrant summer kimono. The seasons in Kyoto are distinctive, delightful and at times demanding.

In 1930 my maiko friend travelled to Toledo with five other Suizan beauties from the ancient capital. The goal was to help promote the shin hanga (new prints) movement in the United States. In 2013 the Toledo Museum of Art revisited this watershed exhibition. The original catalogue was updated and renamed ‘Fresh Impressions.’ Given a new lease of life, the influence of the Nijo Castle beauty is spreading. I followed in her American footsteps in 1988 on a different type of grand adventure with my sister Ruth and nephew Louis.

It was in 1996 that the seeds of my relationship with Japan were sown. An international forest management meeting in Yokohama and related scientific gathering near Mt Fuji took me there the first time. My enduring memories of Japanese culture from that visit are an exquisite ceramic bowl (which came to Australia) and a taiko performance at the conference dinner. The drumming seemingly seeped into my soul. That’s a story for another time.

Twenty years later, when the Nijo watchtower view and Suizan bijinga entered my consciousness, my affinity with Japan had truly blossomed. It was becoming a home away from home. What else but destiny could have drawn us together? 

For now, the beauty and the watchtower, bathed in moonlight, adorns our bedroom wall in Tasmania. I would love to know the name of my Kyoto friend. She is a reminder of a place currently out of reach, yet one that will be waiting when it is possible to return. What a special day that will be.

Writers in focus

Sōseki’s Evening Arrival in Kyoto

August 26, 2020

An Evening Arrival in Kyoto
by Natsume Sōseki
Translation copyright Richard Donovan

(Originally published in Translating Modern Japanese Literature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.)

Swift as a shooting star, the steam train has traversed 200 leagues of springtime landscape before shaking me off at Shichijō Station. As my heels strike the platform, sending up a chilly echo, the black hulk coughs up a shower of sparks from its black throat and roars off into the dark country.

Oh, but what a lonely place Kyoto is. The fields blooming with scarlet kadsura, the rivers with their ducks, the mountains Hiei, Atago and Kurama—all just the way they have been since ancient times, they are, Kyoto’s fields, rivers and mountains. And it is the same as one travels among these constant fields, rivers and mountains, past Ichijō, Nijō, Sanjō Avenues, and ever further south of the Imperial Palace, on down to Kujō and Jūjō Avenues: everything remains as it was. Were one to count off to the hundredth such avenue, or live a thousand years, Kyoto would assuredly remain as lonely.

Arriving in the spring chill of early evening, unceremoniously offloaded by the train before it runs on apace, I must cross this lonesome Kyoto, however cold and lonely I may be. I must cross from the south to the north—so far north that the town has run out, the houses have run out, the lamps have run out too.

“It’s a long way,” my host says after me. “A long way!” the acolyte calls ahead of me. I am shivering as I get into the rickshaw. When I left Tokyo, I hadn’t thought such a cold place in Japan existed. Until yesterday, it had felt as if fireworks were sparking off all the jostling bodies, as if my fevered blood were running rampant in its vessels, as if my sweat would ooze out of every pore of my body. Tokyo is a fervid place indeed. Having left such a scintillating capital and suddenly alighting in as ancient a place as Kyoto, I felt as if I were a stone baked by the sun in the height of summer that has dropped into a dark pool, a pool so far down in the green depths that it does not reflect the sky. I worried that the sudden loud burst of steam that escaped me might shake the quiet Kyoto night.

We three in our rickshaws—the man who said “It’s a long way”, the man who echoed him, and my shivering self—proceed in convoy up the narrow street, north and further northward. The quiet night is drowned out by the clanging of the wheels as we go. The clanging, baffled on either side by the narrow roadways, resounds to the open sky—kankararan, kankararan—and when we hit a stone, kakan, kakaran. It is not a melancholy sound; but it reverberates coldly. The wind blows from the north.

The houses crammed together along the narrow street are uniformly black. Every door without exception closed. Here and there under the eaves hang large paper lanterns, with the red characters for zenzai, red-bean soup. What might they be waiting for under the deserted eaves, these scarlet advertisements for zenzai? The chill spring night deepens. Who knows: perhaps Emperor Kanmu’s ghost will deign to appear at the last—when even the waters of Kamo River have dried up—to come and eat that soup.

Whether these lanterns for zenzai already stood out red under the eaves during Kyoto’s first emperor’s reign is a question for history. But red-bean soup and Kyoto—each with a thousand years of history—are at once utterly inextricable, and mutually indispensable. I know not whether Emperor Kanmu may have partaken of zenzai in antiquity, but I feel that fate has bound Kyoto, zenzai and myself together since before recorded history. I first came to Kyoto some fifteen or sixteen years in the past. That time Masaoka Shiki was with me.

Shiki and I arrived at an inn called Hiiragiya in Fuyachō district, and when we went out sightseeing in the Kyoto night, the first thing I saw was those large red lanterns for zenzai. Now that’s Kyoto, I thought on seeing them, for some reason, and now here we are in the fortieth year of the Meiji era and my impression is unwavering. Zenzai is Kyoto, and Kyoto is zenzai—my first impression remains my last.

Shiki is dead. Still I have yet to eat zenzai. The truth is, I don’t even know exactly what it is. Shiruko—sweet red-bean soup with mochi? Boiled azuki beans? Whatever the actual ingredients, they are nowhere to be seen—yet just a glance at those bold, sloppy red characters advertising the stuff is enough to transport me back to Kyoto in a flash. And to recall at the same time that—alas, Shiki is dead. He shrivelled like a dried-up loofah gourd and died—the lanterns still dangle from the dark eaves. I tuck my neck in against the cold and continue my traverse of Kyoto, south to north.

The clanging rickshaw—kankararan—startles Emperor Kanmu’s ghost as it races on. The acolyte in front rides on in silence. Nor does my host behind show any sign of speaking. The rickshaw pullers are intent on rushing north along the long, narrow street—kankararan! It is indeed a long way! The farther we go, the stronger the wind. The faster we run, the more I shiver. The acolyte took my lap blanket and umbrella for me after I was tossed out of the train at the station. Being deprived of my umbrella doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t rain. But having lost my blanket in this cold, I regret splurging so much on it—twenty-two yen and fifty sen—as I was leaving Tokyo.

When I came with Shiki, it wasn’t this cold. I particularly remember us walking down some thronging street dressed to impress, Shiki in serge, I in my flannel uniform. Shiki had bought bitter natsumikan oranges somewhere, and passed me one, telling me to eat it. I peeled the orange and then tore off a segment and ate it, tore off another and ate it, wandering aimlessly until at length we found ourselves in a narrow alley just six feet wide. Houses lined both sides, and every house had a one-square-foot hole in its door. And from each hole came a voice saying hello. At first we thought nothing of it, but the further we went and the more holes we passed, the more the voices seemed to be addressing us in concert. And they were so vociferous that should we ignore them, I felt, hands would emerge from the holes to grasp at us. I turned back to Shiki in query, and he said it was a brothel. Still chewing on my orange, in my mind I drew a line roughly down the middle of the narrow lane, and walked a mental tightrope of disinterest as I marched along it. I thought I would be in serious trouble if hands were to emerge from the holes and grab at the seat of my trousers, for example. Shiki laughed at this. If he were to see me now, shivering without my confiscated blanket, Shiki would surely laugh again. But the dead, however much they may want to laugh, and the shivering, however much they may want to be laughed at, must want in vain.

The kankararan caravan veers left towards the approach to a long bridge, and then heads across it, passing over the faint white of the riverbed and then past a clump of unevenly arranged houses with what looks like thatched roofs. The rickshaw suddenly swerves to the side, stopping directly beneath a myriad of lanterns that light up a stand of large trees with a circumference of four or five arm-spans apiece. We have passed through the cold city only to end up in an equally cold place. I look up at the sky far above, and it is obscured by branches; in the depths of a patch in the heavens the size of a palm-width the stars emit a frigid glow. I get out of the rickshaw and wonder where on earth I am going to sleep.

“This is Kamo no Mori,” says my host.

“Kamo no Mori is our garden,” says the acolyte. I skirt around some of the huge trees, and then, retracing my steps, glimpse a light in an entranceway. I realise there is a house there.

Noaki-san, waiting in the entranceway, has a shaved head like a monk. So does the old man who pokes his head out of the kitchen. My host is a philosopher. The acolyte, a lay monk based here rather than at a temple, is a disciple of the Zen rōshi Kōsen Oshō. And the house is in the middle of the wood Kamo no Mori. Behind it is a bamboo grove. How their shivering guest, who has suddenly descended on them, feels the cold!

Yes, it has been fifteen, sixteen years since I came here with Shiki and found myself equating zenzai and Kyoto. Riding on the summer night’s full moon, wandering Kiyomizu Temple’s precincts, the colour of the obscure night recumbent like a floor covering before me; letting my eyes roam far into the hazy depths, abandoning myself to liquid, dreamlike fantasies on the countless points of red light—it was a period of life when I was well aware the buttons on my uniform were made of brass, but still I was drawn to gold. When we had the epiphany that brass was but base brass, we tossed our uniforms away and dashed out into the world stark naked. Shiki coughed up blood and became a newspaperman; I tucked up my kimono skirts and hightailed it to the western provinces. We both lived tumultuous lives. And at the peak of his tumult, Shiki turned to bones. Those bones moulder away to this very day. And even as he lies rotting there, he would surely never have guessed that Sōseki would renounce teaching and become a newspaperman himself. But if he’d heard that Sōseki had given up teaching and come to visit cold Kyoto, he would likely have asked if I remembered the time we climbed Maruyama hill. It would doubtless surprise him to hear I was living the quiet life as a newspaperman, spending my leisure time deep in the woods of Tadasu no Mori, along with a philosopher, a Zen acolyte, a young shaven-head, and an old shaven-head. He would surely scoff at how affected I’ve become. Shiki was the kind of man who liked to scoff at things.

The acolyte bids me take a bath. My host and the acolyte, together, unable to ignore my shivering, urge me into the bath. My teeth are chattering wildly as I plunge bodily into the limpid waters of the Kamo. Among all those who have taken the waters since antiquity, there can have been few who shivered so much as I did as I entered. When I emerge from the bath, I am advised to sleep. The young priest carries thick futons into a twelve-mat room. When I ask if they are clad in Gunnai silk, he replies that it is the thick silk cloth futo-ori, “brought in brand new for thee.” Though chastened I cannot reciprocate, his explanation reassures me, and I gladly accept the great hospitality behind this thoughtfulness.

They are as comfortable as can be, these two layers over me and the two under, but they remain mere futons in the end, and cannot keep out the winds of Tadasu no Mori—chilly, chilly they blow upon my shoulders. I cannot escape the cold—cold in the rickshaw, cold in the bath, and finally, unexpectedly, cold in the futon. Hearing from my host that Kyoto does not make night-clothes with sleeves, I feel that this city does its utmost to chill people to the bone.

In the middle of the night, the eighteenth-century clock on one of the staggered shelves in the alcove above my pillow chimes in its square rosewood case, resonating like ivory chopsticks striking a silver bowl. The sound penetrates my dreams, waking me with a start; the clock’s chime has ended, but in my head it rings on. And then this ringing gradually thins out, grows more distant, more refined, passing from my ear to my inner ear, and from there into my brain, and on into my heart, then from the depths of my heart into some further realm connected with it—until at last it seems to reach some distant land beyond the limits of my own heart. This chilly bell-ring perfuses my whole body; and the ringing having laid bare my heart and passed into a realm of boundless seclusion, it is inevitable that body and soul become as pure as an ice floe, as cold as a snowdrift. Even with the futo-ori silk futons around me, in the end I am cold.

A crow cawing atop a tall zelkova tree at daybreak shatters my dreams for the second time. But this is no ordinary crow. It doesn’t caw in the usual mundane way—its call is twisted into a grotesque cackle. Twisted too its beak, into a downward grimace, and its body hunched over. Myōjin, the resident deity of Kamo, may well have imposed his divine will to have it caw like that, so as to make me all the colder.

Shedding the futo-ori futons, shivering still, I open the window. A nebulous drizzle thickly shrouds Tadasu no Mori; Tadasu no Mori envelops the house; I am sealed in the lonely twelve-mat room within it, absorbed within these many layers of cold.

Spring cold—
Before the shrine,
The crane from my dreams

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(The above translation is taken from Translating Modern Japanese Literature, which was published in 2019 and is available from the publisher, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, or on sites such as Amazon. If you are interested in obtaining a copy at a discount, please contact Richard directly at donovanrichardn [at] hotmail.com.)

Featured writing

Sōseki’s Kyoto Haibun

August 24, 2020

Considering Sōseki’s「京に着ける夕」”Kyō ni tsukeru yūbe” as a haibun
By Richard Donovan

In the first part of Natsume Sōseki’s account of a visit to Kyoto in the spring of 1907, the author and his hosts run their rickshaws ever further north. At the same time, Sōseki and his thoughts rush onwards across the psychological terrain of memory and conjecture, a palimpsest of his summer visit many years before with his poet friend and mentor Masaoka Shiki, of his current early-spring visit without him, and of the cultural and literary associations of Kyoto he has accrued over a lifetime. Even when he is at last in bed at his host’s residence in the woods of Tadasu no Mori, near Shimogamo Shrine, his mind is still in motion:

In the middle of the night, the eighteenth-century clock on one of the staggered shelves in the alcove above my pillow chimes in its square rosewood case, resonating like ivory chopsticks striking a silver bowl. The sound penetrates my dreams, waking me with a start; the clock’s chime has ended, but in my head it rings on. And then this ringing gradually thins out, grows more distant, more refined, passing from my ear to my inner ear, and from there into my brain, and on into my heart, then from the depths of my heart into some further realm connected with it—until at last it seems to reach some distant land beyond the limits of my own heart. This chilly bell-ring perfuses my whole body; and the ringing having laid bare my heart and passed into a realm of boundless seclusion, it is inevitable that body and soul become as pure as an ice floe, as cold as a snowdrift. Even with the silk futons around me, in the end I am cold.

A crow cawing atop a tall zelkova tree at daybreak shatters my dreams for the second time. But this is no ordinary crow. It doesn’t caw in the usual mundane way—its call is twisted into a grotesque cackle. Twisted too its beak, into a downward grimace, and its body hunched over. Myōjin, the resident deity of Kamo, may well have imposed his divine will to have it caw like that, so as to make me all the colder.

Shedding the futons, shivering still, I open the window. A nebulous drizzle thickly shrouds Tadasu no Mori; Tadasu no Mori envelops the house; I am sealed in the lonely twelve-mat room within it, absorbed within these many layers of cold.

Spring cold—
Before the shrine,
The crane from my dreams

[Original haiku: 春寒（はるさむ）の社頭に鶴を夢みけり]

The fact that this piece consists of prose narrative concluding with a single haiku, and hence is technically a haibun, means we can see it as a tribute to Sōseki’s haiku mentor, who had died four years before. One of the work’s strongest themes, loneliness, is perhaps counterbalanced by a note of optimism in the 季語 kigo of the concluding haiku, the crane, which is associated with winter. The crane is a migratory bird that comes south to Japan to overwinter but then heads north again in spring. Sōseki’s Kyoto remains inescapably cold during his visit, but it is the cold of early spring. Here, at the end, the crane has roused itself, as if from the author’s dream, and stands before the shrine ready to be on its way. Winter is coming to an end, and taking its place is the promise of regeneration. Even as he complains bitterly of the cold, and of the parallel loss of his warm friendship with Shiki, Sōseki is perhaps also acknowledging the healing power of time. If the crane represents Shiki’s spirit, Sōseki is acknowledging that it once spent time with him as the corporeal Shiki, but will now move on, as too must Sōseki.

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(The above commentary and translation are adapted from Translating Modern Japanese Literature, which was published in 2019 and is available from the publisher, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, or on sites such as Amazon. If you are interested in obtaining a copy at a discount, please contact me directly at donovanrichardn [at] hotmail.com.)

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

The Family (poem)

August 15, 2020

THE FAMILY
By Felicity Tillack

Felicity writes: I wrote this poem a few years after moving to Japan for an anthology called Elements of Time. The feelings expressed in the poem are definitely ones I’ve had, though it’s written from a male perspective. I think I liked the image of the man’s coat, and the grown-up nuance it has, falling down as the protagonist melts into memory. For a long time, I felt awkward going home, particularly in the first few years when my brothers were still there, and I was the only one who’d left. The feeling is less acute now we’re all out and making families of our own. I know too that if I was living nearby for longer than a Christmas holiday, that the closeness we enjoyed as kids would return because it hasn’t gone, it’s just waiting beneath the surface. 

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

He’s been gone too long.
Those in the house have not forgotten the face,
only the shape of the soul within.
With the awkwardness only a family
of unfamiliar people can have,
they welcomed and withdrew.
His mother, his father, his sisters, his brothers,
fully filling their home with their busy bustling
between buttering bread and placing plates,
the setters and the servers.
While he can only wait, watch,
outside of the rituals and routines,
written off years ago.

And so being apart felt familiar –
more than the noise of his nieces. 
He climbs the hill that has always cradled his parent’s house in its lee.
He walks its scrub strewn streets, 
its withered, winding ways,
well worn when he, when they, walked them.
Explored time over in expeditions to the bedimmed beneaths of bushes;
over lorded by older sister dynasties; 
devastated for dirty battles and strip-mined for staves and stick weaponry. 
Site of seed collections hoarded, lost, forgotten, sprouted.

He remembers the first time he took time to notice the roughness of a tree.
If he thinks hard, can feel the prickle of remembered bumps 
ghosting his fingertips.

He stands by this tree, 
slowly dissolving.
The man’s coat no longer fits. 
If he thinks hard he can still remember, 
the security he felt inside his father’s car;
the pride in helping his mother’s gardening;
the sting of sibling unfairness,
and the warmth of sibling inclusion that even now in exclusion, 
he can feel ghosting him just beneath the skin.

He feels it all so strongly here,
now. 
Will it evaporate with the electric lighting, etching away the dark?
But that he could draw them out here between the trees in the dusk,
let the dimness dissolve the faces’ features and the differences of the years.

Let loose all nieces,
their screams and chatters like a long echo,
to remind the adults of their story.

Mashed-up, remixed, retold. 
Remembered.

Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto

Self-introduction (Altoft)

August 11, 2020
William Altoft at home in Bristol

1) Please tell us something about yourself. 

I am a (nearly) 30 year old guy from Bristol, England. Aside from being a writer, I’m a tutor for kids of all ages across a bunch of different subjects, which is a wonderful and fulfilling thing to do in between writing poems in the same three or four cafes. It wasn’t until I was at least 25 when I started writing – that is, aside from classwork and homework in school. But it has been exponential ever since.

2) You live in Bristol, England, so why do you want to join Writers in Kyoto?

I would like to come and spend time in Japan, and Kyoto is such a well of modern and historical/traditional culture that I often dream of being there. In researching writing communities and poetry journals in Japan, I discovered Writers in Kyoto, as well as the Kyoto Journal, and it was obviously such an interesting, valuable community made up of English-language writers that I felt compelled to inquire about joining. I’ve never been part of any writing community or group before, and so it is exciting to be joining this one!

3) You write tanka and haiku. Why did you choose those forms, and which do you prefer?

I have definitely fallen in love with the tanka form! That and the sonnet are my favourite – both words mean “short/little song”. Like most in the English-speaking world, I was taught that Japanese pottery was haiku, and that haiku were three lines, with the syllable pattern of 5-7-5. So I was majorly confused when I discovered haiku that, though they were three lines, were definitely not 5-7-5. I started to study Japanese poetry and got to know haiku, senryu, tanka, choka and others. I had always tended to write very long, verbose, flowery sentences, whether in prose or poetry. I still do. But Japanese poetry was such a different way of writing – in fact, the complete opposite –  and I was drawn to it.

4) Your website is well-designed and original. Can you tell us how it was set up?

ありがとうございます! I had a free WordPress account originally, but I subscribed to their premium plan and played around with the templates and designs they had. I found a set-up that I liked the look of and which worked, and went with it. So really the compliment should go to WordPress… The images I use are sometimes my photos, but generally I find them online, and always put an image credit at the end with a link to where it’s from.

5) On your website you have a tanka about a Cafe Napolita in Japanese and English. Which language was it written in, and how do you find the task of translating yourself?

Well, it is a bit of a hybrid, in terms of which language it was composed in. The same goes for most of my poetry in Japanese so far. I have a tiny vocabulary, so I have to look words up and consult my little grammar book. However, I usually begin in Japanese, often trying out a new bit of grammar or set of words that I have recently learned, and adding in the words I have had to look up when needed – which is when it switches over to being half-composed in English. With all my Japanese poetry, the English translation is not what it would have been like had I just written it in English from the beginning. So I try to make the English somewhere between a translation and a literal, word-for-word accompaniment. It would be interesting to do the reverse, and to translate an English poem I have already written into Japanese… 

6) What is your proudest achievement in writing so far?

The proudest feeling I have ever had with writing was in June 2019, in a cafe on the Bristol harbourside, when I wrote the words: Fire and starlight. With those three words, I finished The Floating Harbour, my first novel/novella. I started it in January of 2016, and so it had been with me for about three and a half years by the time I wrote the final words. It had begun out of my interest in the history of Bristol and its port, but it became a deeply personal journey, even as it kept that harbour history foundation and backdrop. I’ve written much poetry since, and am roughly halfway through another harbour novel/novella – all of which I am proud of. However, that moment still stands out. (The Floating Harbour is available as a free PDF on my WordPress.)

7) How would you like to see your writing develop in future?

Into fluent, creative Japanese! On the English side of things, I never really have a goal of any particular stylistic development, though I do have ideas for things I want to write. I do, however, recognise, in retrospect, stylistic developments. For example, I blame Ulysses by James Joyce for how weird my second harbour novel is becoming. I want to share my writing more and more widely, and to have it be always freely available, even if it makes it into purchasable, published form. I would like to lead poetry workshops with kids as well, in both languages and in both countries, and write with and alongside them. I just want to write, hand it to the world, then go and write some more.

William Altoft’s website can be accessed here.


Writers in focus

Nicolas Bouvier in Kyoto

August 9, 2020
Nicolas Bouvier with his son Thomas, Kyoto 1964.
Courtesy of Bouvier family (all rights reserved). 
Bibliothèque de Genève,  Arch. Bouvier 17, env. 2, pce 3.

The World through the Magic Lantern – Nicolas Bouvier in Kyoto
By Robert Weis

‘Scent of pine tree. Soaring foliage, stiff and alive with cicadas. In a cemetery a priest in a raspberry robe recites the sutras on a tomb, and it is like the sound of a distant fountain.’*

Almost like an iconographic momentum, these words, from The Japanese Chronicles, accurately reveal the writer’s intimate appeal to different forms of art, including words and pictures. A poet at heart, and with the spirit of the eternal scholar who has seen and learned a lot about the art of life, Nicolas Bouvier is best known as a travel writer ante litteram through his widely acclaimed masterpiece ‘L’usage du monde’ (translated into English as The Way of the World).

In the book Bouvier narrates the voyage of self-discovery which he undertook in the early 1950s with his artist friend Thierry Vernet, starting from his native Geneva passing across the Balkans to Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, then India and Ceylon, where, self-isolated, he got stuck in a physical and emotional void, an episode brilliantly reported in ‘Le poisson-scorpion’.  

Kyoto summer evening
(Yumi Nakano)

Redemption for Bouvier came in the form of a boat ticket to Yokohama, the gateway to Japan, where he would stay for over a year during 1955-1956. It is at this occasion that he encounters Kyoto for the first time, after a journey by foot from Tokyo on the Tokaido, which involved six to seven weeks of walking through country fields, following the vision depicted by Hiroshige:

‘…Nights spent beneath the roofs of little temples in the countryside, hamlets and lonely rice fields of the Ki peninsula: I arrived at the outskirts of the old capital an amazed vagabond, which is how you should approach a city of six hundred temples and thirteen centuries of history.’*

The old capital fascinated him, although he felt it difficult to enter into, at times surreal: ‘This city – one out of ten worldwide that are worth living in – has for me, despite its gentleness, something maleficent. Austere, elegant, but spectral. One would not be too much surprised to wake up and not find it anymore.’’**

In a letter to his friend Thierry Vernet on the July 12, 1956, he writes: ‘I believe that the country can’t give me more without asking me to lose all the rest. There are doors here that I could open only by closing others. I will therefore extract myself and leave, abandoning much fruit on the trees, but the orchard is still to be planted at home, in a fortress of quietness.’***

Nonetheless, Kyoto definitely became a central locus in his inner geography, and it was just a matter of time, in fact a decade later, before Bouvier would return to the city as a short-term resident, this time with his pregnant wife Eliane and his son Thomas: ‘In the interval between these two journeys, I feel I have somehow been absent from my life. I am curious to see which is more changed – this country or me.’*

The family stayed first in a house on Yoshida hill, and later in a building belonging to a subtemple of Daitoku-ji, the address of which translated as ‘Pavilion of the Auspicious Cloud, Temple of Great Virtue, Quarter of the Purple Prairie, North Sector, Kyoto’. Nicolas earned money with journalist articles, and in parallel worked on a book and photography project. His work as an iconographer, researching images in archives, was complementary to his writing work: both served the goal of illuminating the void with ‘the magic lantern’ of poetry, and thereby decoding the universe, a major theme in his work and life.

During his second residence in Kyoto, his fascination for the city remained unaltered, nourished by its elusiveness; Bouvier considered himself an observer at a distance, a role he was perfectly comfortable with:

‘Grey, pearly sky. The giant trees of Yoshida, swelled by the rain, gesticulate with nonchalance. There are really beautiful trees in Kyoto, but most of the time they leave you alone. From time to time, a warm wind chases the dust northwards. Took a taxi and drove along the river Kamo by swarms of school kids with heavy tresses, black uniforms […]. On the river banks, indefinite silhouettes walk dogs…I was struck by a doubt: after all, what if this country didn’t really exist?**

Bouvier was deeply impressed by the artistic and cultural density of the city, although he was aware that the abundance of academic specialists and critics also induced a lack of freshness and innovation: ‘Throw a stone, and you will hit a professor’.* On the other hand, in his everyday life he preferred the company of people he met while wandering around; the hard-working soup-shop tenant, the toothless peasant, the old landlady, the descendant of a ruined samurai family.

Not surprisingly, as a resident of the Daitoku-ji temple complex, Bouvier showed an interest in Zen and he coined his very own definition of it: ‘ Zen: a Buddhist vaccine derived from the Tao of fighting evil – or a secondary effect born from Buddhism’**.

Zen garden at Ryogen-in, Daitoku-ji (Robert Weis)

However, Bouvier was not eager to commit to the path of enlightenment: he remained in the position of an observer. For him, Zen was a house where he happened to be a concierge for a couple of months, watching his son grow up and catch butterflies in the garden: ‘ […] he was the most Zen of all; he lived, the others were searching how to live.’*

The final goal of writing and travelling, just as of life itself, is to accomplish the act of fading away. It’s in the absence of self that things come up. This attitude, including a fine sense of humour, inadvertently brought Bouvier to the essence of Zen:

‘I console myself by remembering that in old Chinese Zen it was traditional to choose the gardener, who knew nothing, to succeed the master, rather than one who knew too much. So I still have a chance.’*

Soon after the birth of his second son, and after finishing his book project, Nicolas Bouvier left Kyoto and went back to his native Switzerland. Later, he visited Japan on other occasions, for instance in 1970 during the World Expo in Osaka. The writings from these various journeys are condensed in the volume ‘Chroniques Japonaises’ (an enhanced version of the earlier ‘Japon’, and translated as The Japanese Chronicles). Here he reports historical facts about Japan, alternating them with sometimes melancholic, sometimes witty observations from his daily life. A more comprehensive excerpt from his personal diaries was later published in French under the title ‘Le vide et le plein’. Another volume, ‘Le dehors et le dedans’, contained poems written during his time in Japan, particularly with reference to excursions made to Miyama and Tango-hanto in the north of Kyoto Prefecture.

Asked what he admired most about Japan, he gave an answer that was as brief as it was categorical: women and graveyards. Symbols of life and death, the two extremes allow the unfolding of a miraculous in-between space of inner liberty, on a journey that Nicolas Bouvier embraced in his very own way, preferring to ‘rather be ashes than dust’ in the words of Jack London, one of the influences on his youth.

‘Like water, the world ripples across you and for a while you take on its colours. Then it recedes, and leaves you face to face with the void you carry inside yourself, confronting that central inadequacy of soul which you must learn to rub shoulders with and to combat, and which, paradoxically, may be our surest impetus.’ (from The Way of the World)

*excerpt taken from The Japanese Chronicles (English edition)

**original quotes from ‘Le vide et le plein’, translation from French by R. Weis

***original quote taken from ‘S’arracher, s’attacher’, translation from French by R. Weis

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

Selected Bibliography:

-Nicolas Bouvier. The Japanese Chronicles. Eland Publishing, London, 2008. 205 pp.

-Nicolas Bouvier. S’arracher, s’attacher. Textes choisis et présentés par Doris Jakubec et Marlyse Pietri. Photographies de Nicolas Bouvier. Collection Voyager avec…Editions Louis Vuitton, 2013, 267 pp.

-Nicolas Bouvier. Le vide et le plein, carnets du Japon 1964-1970. Gallimard, 2009, 256 pp.

-Nicolas Bouvier. Le dehors et le dedans : poèmes. Editions Point, 2007, 128 pp.

-Nadine Laporte. Nicolas Bouvier, passeur pour notre temps. Editions Le Passeur, 2016, 238 pp.

Books set in Kyoto

The Voices in Rocks (novel)

August 6, 2020

This is the first chapter of a novel titled Kyoto Dreamtime being written by Everett Kennedy Brown.

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

            Chapter 1        The Voices in Rocks

“Quietude in the temple grounds. Quietude in the surrounding hills and forests.  In the stillness you can hear them. The rocks. Listen to the way they murmur. Listen to how they chatter. They speak of Kyoto dreamtime.”

            Those were the first memorable words Junko and I heard after we moved to Kyoto. It was more than three years ago now. They were spoken by an old kimono designer.  His name is Yamamoto Sensei. He was to become my teacher, my sensei, as we started our new life in Kyoto.

             It was Junko’s idea to meet him. Her grandmother had several kimono that were made by Yamamoto’s ancestors. The kimono were important pieces in Junko’s collection of kimono that she inherited from her grandmother. For many generations, Yamamoto sensei’s family had been making kimono in Kyoto and Junko thought a visit with him would be a good person for us to meet. Junko’s intuition was right.

            As is the custom in Kyoto, we arrived a hair’s breath before the decided hour. Junko had brought a gift of carefully wrapped Parisian chocolates to present to Yamamoto Sensei. She had chosen a particular traditional chocolate because of the Paris World Exposition in 1867.  Junko knew her Parisian chocolates. She had studied classical flower arranging in Paris in her twenties. She had rented an apartment in the Seventh Arrondissement for a couple of years and knew the city and its people quite well. Junko came to understand a lot of similarities between Kyoto people and Parisians: their attention to detail; the importance of form in social situations; their insularity and mastery of innuendoes. She knew that Parisian chocolates would please Yamamoto Sensei. At the 1867 World Exposition his family’s kimono were a major attraction. Legend has it that the painter Monet had come to admire their vivid colors and intricate brocade silk designs.

            Just at the appointed time Yamamoto Sensei greeted us at the sliding wooden door of his atelier. He was a somewhat tall man. His facial features were delicate, almost feminine; not uncommon in men from old Kyoto families. The wrinkles in his forehead spoke of the many intricate social relations he had accumulated over a lifetime. With his long and graceful fingers he gently received the gift from Junko’s hands. As he glanced quickly at the box of chocolates, wrapped in a heavy paper ornate with 19th century Belle Epoque designs, he seemed to approve.  He then welcomed us inside his atelier. The coolness of the interior and the aroma of exquisitely fragrant cypress wood were comforting. In his guest room his assistant offered us matcha green tea with a traditional Kyoto sweet. It was a sweet bean concoction, shaped like a purple morning glory flower and presented on a little black lacquer dish. It was too sweet for me, but I still politely ate it. Over tea we talked. We talked of many things. Of Paris. Of his work. His latest project to revive the ancient design motifs that were popular in China during the time of the Silk Road. He even revealed his views on the sad decline of the fine weaving industry in Japan.

         Yamamoto Sensei took us to his back room, where his collection of rare and prized kimono were carefully stored. He showed us examples of kimono his family had been weaving for five generations of Japanese Empresses and the little tapestries commissioned by an A-list of European and Middle Eastern royalty.  On a large table by the wall we were able to touch his latest obi, a thick hand-woven sash worn over the kimono. It was inspired by ancient fabrics he had seen in Shoso-in, that great treasure house of Silk Road artifacts in the city of Nara, opened to the public only a few weeks of the year in late autumn.

         Junko loved the designs of the unicorns and mythical lions, and particularly the deer with bouquets of flowers in their antlers. “This is such an ancient design motif, much older than the Silk Road,” she suggested. Since moving to Kyoto, Junko had started writing about the beauty secrets of Kyoto women.  She had found a thousand-year-old Heian era text called Ishin-ho, which made references to the efficacy of deer antlers and certain medicinal flowers. The ancients would mix these to make a tonic wine for health and longevity.

         “That bouquet of flowers in the deer antlers is a design motif found throughout the ancient world. From Asia, to Persia and even Europe,” Yamamoto sensei explained.

         “It may perhaps be one of the most ancient designs going back to paleolithic times. Deer antlers and medicinal plants were some of the first commodities traded by our distant ancestors,” Junko suggested.

 In her research, she had discovered that before the advent of the Silk Road, way back into deep prehistoric time, there were medicinal trade routes that connected Asia with the Middle East and Europe. This so-called Medicinal Road was something researchers were only beginning to understand and explore.

         “If we understand the background of the kimono symbols and designs they can connect us with such deep cultural memory,” Yamamoto sensei pointed out.

         “My grandmother’s generation, all of this came so naturally to them, “ Junko added. “It was a part her family’s upbringing.  Since childhood she became familiar with all the many kimono designs and their connection with the seasons. As a child it was like a game to try to understand their meanings.”

“Yes, the kimono is a lexicon of cultural knowledge,” Yamamoto Sensei pointed out.  “With the cycle of the seasons the pages of that lexicon are revealed. The kimono styles and patterns announced the arrival of each new season. That is why it was fashionable to wear, say a plum blossom design, not during, but just before the plum blossomed. The kimono were references to time; to what was coming. They were also windows into the past. Even the very ancient past, like we see with this deer design.  Passed down from grandmother to granddaughter, the kimono connected us with our ancestors and with the culture that has nourished our hearts for countless generations. In this way the kimono intuitively connected us with the passage of time.”

         “In our modern lives, we are losing this sensitivity,“ I added. “Our sense of time has become so truncated, so linear. So the kimono is a way to reconnect intuitively with the cyclic nature of time?”

         Yamamoto Sensei paused. He gazed at me with a deep calmness and receptivity in his eyes. “Come, let me show you one more obi sash.”

         From a special cabinet in the back of the room he laid on the table a bundle. It was carefully wrapped in a thick handmade washi paper. From inside the bundle he unfolded a long piece of silk fabric. Thirteen meters of the most intricate silk weaving that Junko and I had ever seen. “This was woven by an unusual technique that came to us in ancient times. It is from Egypt.“ Yamamoto Sensei explained.  “To weave this fabric the artisans had to carefully file their fingernails into miniature forks.  They were then able to comb the minute weft threads with their fingers. This nearly forgotten technique that has continued for thousands of years is still preserved by a few Kyoto craftswomen.”

         Our afternoon went later than expected.  Feeling hungry, Yamamoto Sensei called his favorite Italian restaurant in the Gion geisha district and made reservations for the three of us. We took a taxi together, one of the black taxis with drivers in white gloves who rush out to open the door.

         Before ordering dinner Yamamoto sensei asked the waiter to bring a bottle of his usual wine. It was a very drinkable white sparkling wine. He said he only drank white wine.  Preferring white wines made from Koshu grapes.

         I was familiar with Koshu wine. It was an up and coming world class wine from Japan’s Yamanashi region, near Mt. Fuji. The Koshu grape has been cultivated in Japan for over a thousand years, Yamamoto sensei told us. The grapes were transported over the Silk Road from Western Asia sometime around the sixth or seventh century, he believed.

         Well into our second bottle, Yamamoto sensei leaned over towards me. We were both a bit wobbly, but after a momentary pause, he firmed up and whispered in my ear. “I have a secret. If you want to understand Kyoto,” he said. “I’ll show you how to listen to rocks.”

          I immediately thought of the famous rock gardens of Kyoto where zen monks went to meditate. I was also familiar with the tradition of listening to trees. I had hugged trees before. It’s one of those things you do in Japan after you’ve lived here a while. Especially the sacred trees in Shinto temple grounds that are designated with handwoven hemp rope tied around them.  In Kyoto there is one such famous tree. It is in a shrine, called Seimei Jinja, which was founded by an ancient sorcerer, named Abe no Seimei. On the shrine grounds is a large sacred oak tree with a special hugging deck where you can climb up to embrace and listen to the tree spirit.

         I looked at Yamamoto sensei with a childlike curiosity.  “I’ve listened to a few trees before, but tell me about the rocks.”

         Yamamoto sensei’s face was now rosy from the Koshu wine. He gazed back at me with his large and uninhibited glazed eyes. “Trees, their spirits are closer to us humans. That makes it easier to communicate with them. But if you want to understand the deeper story of Kyoto, the rocks, they can tell you much more.”

         I was getting more curious. Yamamoto Sensei said, “Lets have some dessert and then I’ll show you.”

         After a dessert of tiramisu infused with sweet sake, and a soothing cup of mint tea, Junko and I began to learn more about the rocks of Kyoto. “Oh they can be so chatty,” Yamamoto Sensei said. “The rocks can be so distracting sometimes that I can’t get on with my day! Walking down the street they call out to me, asking if I want to listen to the most outrageous stories. But I tell you, if you learn how to listen, they can tell you amazing things.”

         “Any kind of rocks?” I asked.

         “There are special rocks.  Rocks that were placed around the city a very long time ago,” he told us.

         “By whom?” I asked. He shrugged and didn’t say.

         “Kyoto is a place of many secrets,” he replied after a brief pause.  “We are forgetting the old secrets. That is why the rocks are calling us to listen.”

         Yamamoto Sensei paused again. He looked deeply into my eyes. “If you allow yourself to listen to the rocks, they will help you find your way through the city. You’ll need this knowledge if you want to make it here.”

         I felt as if Yamamoto Sensei was reading my heart.

         “Do you think Kyoto will accept me?” I asked.

         “For most people, here in Kyoto you’re only as good as your reputation. What people are saying about you can determine your success here.” Yamamoto Sensei explained. “But what most people don’t realize is that what the rocks are saying is even more important.”

         I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. The plan to move to Kyoto involved a scandal I’d created for myself and honestly my footing in the city’s social life was far from secure.  I needed to get deeper than the gossip that was going around the city about me. I knew I had to build a relationship with the city that went deeper, more spiritual, perhaps. There is no denying that a series of unexpected occurrences had brought Junko and me together here in Kyoto. Regardless of those undesirable circumstances we both felt that we were “called” to Kyoto.

         For me, it was time to let go, to retrieve a life I had almost forgotten. It was the neighboring mountains and the little known world of the Yamabushi that was calling my spirit “to return to Kyoto.”

         As we were leaving, Yamamoto Sensei insisted on paying the bill. Outside we hopped into a taxi and were ushered into the night. Our new friend and guide to Kyoto took us to a temple in the middle of the city. It was a temple I had often walked past on previous visits to Kyoto. In the darkness, behind the temple gate, Yamamoto Sensei showed us a rock. It was a rock like many of the other large rocks you see around the entrances of Japanese temples. But this one was different Yamamoto sensei said. He asked us to look carefully.

“Don’t stare at it,” he cautioned. “Just let your eyes gently gaze on it. Try to open yourself to its presence. Try to feel the shape of the rock with your eyes.”  Our rock was large and oval-shaped. It was almost breast height. In the dim light I could make out its pale green color. It had ripples of white granite that striated diagonally along its sides. Among the imposing trees that arched high above us in the temple grounds it was the kind of rock you could easily pass by without noticing. But if you looked closely, it was a rock that, one could imagine, had a story. Following Yamamoto Sensei’s directions, I let my eyes relax and try to feel the rock’s periphery.  Junko and I stood in silence and gazed at the rock for several minutes. The occasional thought in my head expressed dismay that I was submitting to this drunken whimsy.  But I respected Yamamoto Sensei. Both Junko and I felt he had a lot to teach us.  After a few more minutes I began to notice a shift in the rock’s presence. It was like some magnetic energy was beginning to radiate from the rock. Slowly, I began to feel my perception changing, expanding, somehow influenced by the rock’s seemingly magnetic pull that was reaching out towards me. “Do you feel it?” Yamamoto Sensei whispered. I sensed that he knew what I was experiencing. “Can you begin to hear the rock’s murmur?”

         I couldn’t quite understand what he meant. But I was definitely beginning to experience heightened sensory arousal.  There was some kind of animate quality emanating from the rock. If only I could allow my rational mind to let go, I thought to myself, and “believe” that the rock can, indeed, talk.

         “This rock can be your guide; your doorway into the city’s past,” Yamamoto Sensei said, touching my arm gently.

            Over the following weeks and months Junko and I met Yamamoto Sensei again for food and wine. Junko preferred not to drink, but she loved the stories as much as I did. He eventually invited us to his home, where his wife prepared traditional seasonal Kyoto cuisine served in small porcelain and lacquer dishes, and we drank the same white Koshu wine.

            I was curious why Yamamoto sensei preferred Koshu wine. I knew the wine well.  The Koshu grapes were grown in Yamanashi Prefecture, just a short drive west from Tokyo. The region was in the mountains and offered great views of Mt. Fuji. It was also known for its peaches, pears and grapes. There was good sunlight; the slopes were also rich in minerals and had excellent drainage. This made for good wine. It is why the Japanese government had commissioned the local landowners to plant vineyards in the 19th century to provide wine for official gatherings with foreign dignitaries in Tokyo.  I knew all this because my good friend’s family owned one of the region’s oldest wineries. I had spent many evenings there enjoying the ephemeral glow of moonlight over Mt. Fuji and the vineyards,  while drinking wonderful vintages; not only Koshu wine, but also formidable Bordeaux reds from the winery’s old stone cellar. 

            “It’s the taste, but also the story hidden in the Koshu grape that I love,” Yamamoto Sensei explained to us.  “This is a Silk Road wine. It came to Japan with the ancient weavers who brought with them their skills, and also their culture and stories of distant lands. Those stories are awakened in the taste of this wine. They are for us to enjoy.”

            “Yes, and many more ancient stories too, perhaps!” I added. “Scattered in the soil of those vineyards are fragments of ancient Jomon era pottery. Those shards of pottery must add some special flavor to the wine too!” I added. 

            “Yes, this is the wine of the Japanese gods! It is a marriage of the great cultures of antiquity and also Japan’s prehistoric past!” Yamamoto Sensei said. “Thousands of years of the most creative flowering of Jomon-era culture are in the pottery fragments scattered across the vineyards! And here we have the essence of that ancient fertile culture in our wine glasses!”

            With Yamamoto Sensei, this was how our conversations flowed. We shared a similar wavelength that was sometimes rarefied. Always liberating. Our talk felt like free jazz.  He was becoming more than just a teacher. We were developing a relationship that could no longer be defined.

            After dinner, we’d often go out into the night to meet new rocks. He’d introduce me to his favorites. I was beginning to get an idea of how many talking rocks there are in Kyoto. The city is full of rocks. You could call Kyoto a city of rocks. Yamamoto Sensei showed us rocks hidden in empty lots between tall office buildings. There was one special rock half buried in the asphalt beside a parking lot. Quite a few were placed at street corners in residential neighborhoods where they seemingly watched the busy passage of human life go by.

             This got me to start looking at rocks in Kyoto in a different way. Wherever I went I started noticing rocks, their shapes, their textures and striations. I began to distinguish their different characters and even dispositions. Some rocks did indeed seem more conversant than others, but I was still not quite sure.

            “The most profound rocks,” he would often say, “are the ones in the great rock gardens of the temples.”

             I must admit, I’m still only beginning to understand this world of rocks. There is a voice in my head that says this is all fantasy. Some part of me is stubborn and doesn’t know how to listen. I know it’s my education, my upbringing. Like most of us, I was trained to think rationally. This so- called animistic way of opening up our eyes and ears and other senses to the world around us, it seems so alien.

            From my time with Yamamoto Sensei I was beginning to realize that to be able to listen to rocks would require a lot of time and effort. Was going down this rabbit hole to communicate with rocks really worth the required investment of my time and energy?

            Regardless of these doubts, I was beginning to realize that what Yamamoto Sensei referred to as “listening” didn’t necessarily pertain to the voices we usually hear with our inner ear. It’s more of an intuitive hearing. I was beginning to wonder where all of this was leading me.

A Zen Romance

August 2, 2020

Book review by John Dougill

There’s often a mystery about why some books last and others fade from public awareness. That certainly applies in this case, because for some reason this reviewer fails to understand, A Zen Romance fails to come up in talk of best novels about Japan. Shamefully it was not even included in WiK’s initial listing of Kyoto books. Yet the book is an absolute gem.

Imagine The Lady and the Monk written from the Lady’s viewpoint. Imagine too that the induction into Zen is laced with lascivious monks and a rich sense of humour. Add to that an astonishing facility with language and you have something of the measure of Deborah Bollinger Boehm’s memoir. Set in 1970, it’s written from the perspective of the 1990s when the book came out – five years after Pico Iyer’s The Lady and the Monk.

The story follows a well-worn path. An innocent outsider arrives in Kyoto, finds a room by chance in a subtemple, and is attracted to ‘the supernal serenity of the Sodo’ (meditation hall). As she grows to love the ‘aesthetics and atmosphere and aesthetics’, the reader is taken with her to learn about life inside a Zen monastery. Along the way there are side excursions into the tea ceremony, the firing of a Raku bowl, and even a visit to David Kidd‘s house in Ashiya.

By the end of her stay in Kyoto the heroine has learned a lot about Zen and is changed by the experience. The twist here is that, unusually, the main character is a sensual female with a fascination for Japanese males, particularly monks – though remarkably she remains a virgin throughout. The romance of the title is thus both for the Gion-located monastery of the humorously named Zenzenji, as well as for the monkish figures who attract her attention.

But the storyline is almost incidental, since centre stage is taken by the brilliance of the language. There are moments when you want to put down the book and applaud the virtuoso writing. Serpentine sentences of seductive prose sit alongside sensuous lists of food, clothing, smells, tastes and sights, all depicted with a dash of irony. Eisai, founder of Rinzai Zen, is called aptly but archly, ‘the avatar of tannic enlightenment’.

In keeping with the title, romance colours the writing throughout. A Kyoto early morning is described as ‘a glorious abalone dawn, pearlescent pink and blue with a river of silver along the horizon, like spilled mercury from the thermometers of hypochondrical gods.’ The similes, strikingly original, always seem to hit the mark, as when on the edge of sexual excitement the heroine feels like ‘a cabbage leaf in a rushing river, powerless to stop the romantic momentum.’

If the command of language is impressive, the range of vocabulary is astounding. Terpsichorean, ligneus, kelpie, eidetic, burlap, nacreous, vermiculate, cenobite, kibble, sigmoid flexure, supraliminal, emphaloskepsis – words tumble off the page as if out of a dictionary, yet such is the sumptuous nature of the prose that none of it feels forced. On the contrary the sheer bravado skill bears testimony to a master writer. In an explosively erotic first chapter (which surely deserves renown as one of the best openings ever), the panty-less heroine is ravished by a kimono-clad monk on the floor of the meditation chamber (‘our bodies stuck together like caramel apples’) – only for it to be revealed afterwards as a dream.

Rather than austere and martial, as most people find monastical life, the heroine regards it as ‘a constant voluptuous treat for the senses’. What’s more, it’s a ‘cosmic cookie jar, filled with everything I wanted in those days: beauty, serenity, simplicity, wisdom, ritual, mystery, style, and the company of fascinating men.’ Her tale of discovery is laced with Zen quotes, Zen insights and Zen witticisms – ‘What is the sound of one hand waving goodbye?’ she quips as she takes her leave at the end.

And so the mystery remains: how did this book disappear from the shelves? Was it poor marketing? The female perspective? The humour? The lack of earnestness towards Zen? And what of Deborah Boehm – Wikipedia reports that though she followed a career as a writer, she only wrote one other book. For myself I found this one such a triumph of fine writing that like Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets, I started reaching for the best compliment I could think of – this book made me want to become a better writer.

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

Review
“A highly entertaining, vital and utterly convincing account of the author’s immersion in the world of Zen.” — Lucien Stryk, author of The Awakened Self
Review
“A triple quest–artistic, erotic and humanely curious–that no serious Zen student should ignore. The tale is funny, too.” — Janwillem Van de Wetering, author of The Japanese Corpse
Review
“Boehm is one of the wittiest observers of the Japanese scene that I have read.”–Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books
Review
“Sometimes sharp and sometimes delicate, sometimes meditative and sometimes sensual, … always beautifully written.” — Edward Seidensticker, author of Low City, High City
Review
“The most delectable travel account of the area [Kyoto] that I’ve read.” — Pico Iyer, Kansai Time Out

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Writers in Kyoto is a group of published and self-published English-language authors working or living in the city. It is run on a membership basis and its purpose is for writers to help each other by creating opportunities for promotion, book launches, readings, the exchange of information, and social events. Read more

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