“STRUCTURES OF KYOTO” Edited by Rebecca Otowa and Karen Lee Tawarayama The title refers to the many structures of Kyoto, including mental and cultural structures as well as physical ones.
Call for Submissions: from June 1, 2020
RSVP: July 1, 2020
Deadline: October 1, 2020.
Language: English. Original and unpublished material only.
Eligibility: WiK members only
Word limit: 2000 words.
File type: Microsoft Word. (PDF files will not be accepted.) Please use a standard format to facilitate editing and processing.
Illustrations: Each author may submit 2 black and white photos or black and white illustrations per submission. Information on size and method of submission will be provided later.
Revision: We will edit and return manuscripts within one month of submission. Authors will then have two weeks to consider, make changes if required, and return the edited submission.
Please RSVP to the following email address by July 1, and submit your Microsoft Word file to Rebecca Otowa as an attachment to rebecca.on.her.way@gmail.com by October 1.
Place your full name and word
count at the top of the submission.
Early submissions appreciated. Thank you. – Rebecca Otowa and Karen Lee Tawarayama
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Previous anthologies are available through amazon.jp and amazon.com. For Anthology 2 (Echoes) please see here or here. For Anthology 3 (Encounters with Kyoto) please click here or here.
This was a lovely depiction of a flickering relationship whose end was nigh, although one of the couple did not realize it yet. The overall sadness of the piece tugged at the judges’ heartstrings. Though it might have taken place in any setting, it was the “skeleton of a dry cherry leaf” and autumn showing that “death could be beautiful” that belied a more than passing acquaintance with Japanese literature. The judges also felt that the contrast depicted between the evanescence of sparrows compared to their steps caught forever in cement had a particular “Kyoto flavor”. – Karen Lee Tawarayama
************* Sparrow Steps by Amanda Huggins
Did you often recall that last afternoon in Haradani-en? I can still remember the clear blue skies, hear the leaves crackle underfoot. I held out the dry skeleton of a cherry leaf, told you autumn was proof that death could be beautiful. You took it from me, twisting the stem between your fingers. ‘So fragile,’ you said. You’d lagged behind as we climbed the hill, and when we reached the top you paused, out of breath. I laughed, said we were getting older, but you didn’t reply. I think you hoped your silence would say nothing, would go unnoticed, yet I could hear every word you’d bitten back, could hear them echoing around Kinkakuji Temple. We stopped at a bridge on the way back, and you sat on the steps to unfasten your boots, removed a small stone that was pressing into your heel. I crouched beside you, watched as you ran your fingertips over a row of bird footprints, captured forever in newly laid concrete. ‘Proof we can sometimes leave an eternal mark, that we live on after our beautiful deaths,’ you said. I took a photograph of the prints next to your splayed hand; the immortal footsteps of sparrows, like tiny dinosaur fossils. ‘We should make a pledge,’ I said. ‘A vow that if we ever lose touch we’ll meet here at the sparrow steps ten years from today?’ I was so sure we’d never be apart. It was an easy promise. You looked up at the cherry trees, and for a moment I remembered them in spring: petals delicate as insect wings, fluttering down like a whisper of moths, the trees bowing with the weight of their fleeting beauty. That’s when I saw the uncertainty in your eyes. ‘Yes,’ you said, quietly. ‘We should do that.’
WiK’s first ever Zoom event took place on May 23 at 4.00 pm with 18 participants in all, which was a good number considering the event was limited to WiK members only. Particularly pleasing was that we had participants from Scotland, Australia and Kamakura in addition to a speaker in Tokyo and an interviewer on an island in the Inland Sea. Needless to say, it was the first time for us to have such outreach, and given the inclusive nature of online conferencing we will surely be looking at holding similar events in future, regardless of Corona conditions. WiK too will be adjusting to a new normality.
As for the interview, Jeff covered a variety of topics in fluent and fulsome manner without recourse to notes of any kind. He started with the story of his Counterpoint Column, which he took over from Roger Pulvers and ran for many years before being suddenly dropped following the arrival of new owners at the Japan Times. This took place in the wider context of a campaign by the Abe government to ‘correct’ negative or critical reporting about Japan.
Another topic to loom large was that of apologies for Japan’s role in WW2. It was pointed out that while Japan has often apologised, this has been undermined by subsequent statements that served to devalue or negate them. Whereas social democrat PM Murayama spoke of ‘mistaken national policy’, the present PM Abe Shinzo sought to justify the sacrifice made by the wartime generation in enabling today’s Japan. In fact 80% of Abe’s cabinet belongs to the nationalistic Nippon Kaigi, one of whose aims is to revision WW2 as Japan’s liberation of Asia. (Emperor Akihito by contrast made a point of praising the postwar generation for the present prosperity.) School textbooks are an indicator of the change in official thinking, with the omission of such controversial issues as the comfort women (there remains just one approved textbook that mentions them, and the publisher has been subject to threats and harassment).
Another major topic was Article 9, which has been a sticking point for Abe, as one of his key aims is to amend the constitution and allow Japan to use its military power for more than self-defence. To get through such a constitutional amendment requires two thirds majority in the elective bodies plus a a referendum after that, and with the Komeito party, a government ally, not supporting him and the general public not in favour, Abe’s dream is seemingly unattainable. However, he effectively achieved his aim in 2015 by pushing through the US-Japan Security Treaty which asserts collective self-defense and which has effectively torpedoed Article 9 by obliging Japan to aid the US if need be.
Questions followed, amongst which was one about the lack of opposition to Abe, and one about his support for the nuclear industry. The former was partly ascribed to rural seats being given undue weight, which serve to boost the LDP. At the same time Abe could be said to be lucky in serving at a time when there is no strong rival. As for the nuclear industry, it was pointed out that there are many powerful vested interests and that promotion of Japan’s nuclear expertise has strong export potential. As with the other topics, the questions were dealt with by Jeff in a manner that showed he was well-informed and had a clear overview of developments. Though Zoom did not allow us to appreciate his physical presence, I think those who participated would agree that he came over very well online and on camera. This first step has set a good precedent for how WiK can overcome the Corona threat and benefit in the new normality to follow.
For those who would like to read the background to the termination of Jeff’s column for The Japan Times, please click here.
Jeff Kingston is the director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. He became well-known through his column for the Japan Times, in which he commented on politics and current affairs. His final column about the power accrued by Shinzo Abe was on Sept 23, 2017. He holds a PhD in history from Columbia University, and he writes for a large number of media outlets. Amongst his books is Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan (2017), and his most recent work Japan, published by Routledge, has won favourable reviews worldwide (see this one by Damian Flanagan). He is also the editor of Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan, published in 2019.
This is the second in a series of excerpts about Kyoto taken from the autobiography of Alan Watts, In My Own Way (1972). The passage below comes from the 2001 edition, p.345-6.
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Sanjusangendo (Photo courtesy Discover Kyoto website owned by Niwaka Corporation)
That day we go down to Sanjusangendo, a long barn of a building which contains one thousand and one images of an astonishing hermaphroditic being known as Kannon, the Watchful Lord, and revered popularly as the Goddess of Compassion. One thousand of these images are life-size standing figures, each with eight arms, lined up along five or six platforms which run the entire length of an inside wall down the center of the building. At mid-point there is the one extra figure, sitting on a lotus throne with eleven heads in a tall column and exactly one thousand arms forming an aureole about the figure. Most of the hands are empty, but at least a hundred of them hold various objects – bells, wands, flowers, thunderbolts, daggers, conch trumpets, flags, books, rosaries, staves, and bottles – instruments which this cosmic millipede is manipulating all at once without having to stop to think about any one of them in particular. It is the same way that my nervous system manages the multitudinous functions of my body, and the energy of working together in an ecological balance of unthinkable complexity. For you cannot truly think of one without thinking of the others, just as the earth implies the sun, and the sun implies the galaxy. To think of one alone is to have your mind caught or hung up on it so that you miss the movement of the whole, and this is what Buddhist mean by ignorance (ignore-ance) and consequent attachment to worldly things. This means any particular thing, such as myself, considered as separate or separable from the rest, and attachment in this sense is almost exactly what we now call a ‘hang-up.’ Spiritual myopia. Not seeing the forest for the trees. Killing flies with DDT and forgetting about the fish and the birds. Thus in passing judgments of praise and blame upon myself I forget that I am like one of Kannon’s hands – a function of the universe. If my conscious mind had eleven hands and one thousand arms I might know what I was talking about. But my conscious mind is but one small operation of my nervous system.
When the rains stopped, Jano and I took a day off for meditation at Nanzenji, not in the temple itself, but on the forested hillside behind it, where we sat on the steps of some ancient nobleman’s tomb, supplying ourselves with the kit for ceremonial tea and a thermos bottle of hot saké. Zen meditation is a trickily simple affair, for it consists only in watching everything that is happening, including you own thoughts and your breathing, without comment. After a while thinking, or talking to yourself, drops away and you find that there is no ‘yourself’ other than everything which is going on both inside and outside the skin. Your consciousness, your breathing, and your feelings are all the same process as the wind, the trees growing, the insects buzzing, water flowing, and the distant prattle of the city. All this is a single many-featured ‘happening,’ a perpetual now without either past or future, and you are aware of it with the rapt fascination of a child dropping pebbles into a stream. The trick – which cannot be forced – is to be in this state of consciousness all the time, even when you are filling out tax forms or being angry. Experiences move through this consciousness as tracklessly as the reflections of flying birds on water, and , as a Zen poem says –
The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, but raise no dust.
In this state it seemed the whole city of Kyoto – with its thousands of shops and businesses, its streetcars, schools, temples, taxis, crooks, policemen, politicians, monks, geisha-girls, salesmen, firemen, waitresses, fish vendors, students and bulging sumo wrestlers – was no other than the thousand-armed body of Kannon.
An evocative journey, including vignettes of Kyoto’s four seasons in keeping with Japanese literary and artistic traditions. Nature and human life are skillfully woven together through these images. – Karen Lee Tawarayama
************* Interlude: Kyoto by Brenda Yates
Windows flung open, wide night brings itself indoors. But this air’s never enough for me: no melancholy wannabe lotus-eater long
endures those bitter onslaughts chilling down to my smallest bones, bones which even now, despite spring, remember and hunger after sun-baked warmth.
* Rainy season days, cloudbursts, thundering restless nights until wind turns and dawn, breaking bright, fructifies promises, ones that rise in the dark like colorless dreams while feverish green ideas sleep furiously.
* Overhanging heat, unruly July, ever-more lush August, brings energy-sapping days, and nights too hot to sleep. Our languished spirits— complaints voiced—bed down for fitful slumber on not quite cool balconies.
* Then another fall’s fiercely vivid death: autumn leaves on stoic ground and chilly air just right for a wandering walk’s long meditation.
Or to watch robed monks chase American children out of the temple after finding they’d climbed behind Buddha to see what he looked like there.
* Opening the door, I leave home. Winter’s crisp breath excites my bare face. You can laugh because you know what’s coming but hope’s inexhaustible
(although this year might be almost identical): piled up, grotty snow rutted, ice-glazed roads, frozen eyelashes, burning lungs, cheeks, ears and nose;
fingertips, toes too cold to move, part of winter’s aged harvest of bones when no happiness need apply, only waiting to fling this aside.
Cipangu, Golden Cipangu: Essays in Japanese History by Michael Hoffman Virtualbookworm.com Publishing, 2020, pp.298
Book Review by John Dougill
Michael Hoffman’s literary and historical articles for The Japan Times have always come across as remarkably well-informed, remarkably well written too. It led me to read his first collection of miscellaneous pieces called In the Land of the Kami, and it led me to acquire this book too, the title of which refers to Marco Polo’s imaginative description of Japan which inspired Christopher Columbus to set off in quest of it.
There are sixty-three topics in all, taken from the monthly (and ongoing) column called The Living Past. They range from consideration of the Jomon Period to relatively unknown works of modern literature. Along the way Hoffman offers cultural insight and an ability to describe the complex in clear-cut terms. Throughout the book the author maintains a keen sense of judgement and a pristine style. No waffle here, no vagueness, no obfuscation.
The trenchant sentences sound like aphorisms. ‘Truth is a Sordid Business,’ begins one story. There is a certainty about the prose that suggests the author has not only mastered his material but stands above it with sufficient oversight so as to identify the salient points. It’s as if maybe, allegedly, perhaps, seems and sometimes have been ejected from his vocabulary.
The result is an edifying combination of concision and instruction. He covers the Gempei War in one informative paragraph. He sums up the Meiji Period as walking a thin line between science (Western technology) and myth (Japanese tradition). He shows how poetry in the Heike Monogatari is as highly valued as swordsmanship and valour. And in a brief summary of Japan’s debt to China we learn there were 19 official missions between 607-838, and that a third of those who set out perished before their return.
A hundred years ago Lafcadio Hearn was much admired for writing sympathetically of Japanese culture and raising awareness in the wider world. Hoffman is very much in that tradition. He not only sheds light on different aspects of Japan, but does so in a way that raises the interest of his readers. Jomon Japan, for instance, is championed as a progressive era of peace and varied diet – ‘Jomon Japanese were more active traders than medieval Japanese,’ he tells us.
In contrast to the norm elsewhere, Hoffman sees the Japanese tradition as marked by ‘the struggle to be unfree’. Obedience, servility, self-sacrifice, the suppression of ego are the underlying themes of the country’s heroic models, and its epitome was reached in the practice of junshi (following one’s master into death). Donald Richie and Lafcadio Hearn came to much the same conclusion.
If one were forced to make a criticism, it would be about the Contents, for they give little indication of the actual content. ‘Freedom’ runs a title, which could concern just about anything. In fact it relates to the first political parties in Meiji times. ‘Let’s Take a Break,’ suggests another title, which gives no clue to it being about Heian literature. Incidentally, in these Corona crisis times with Kyoto devoid of tourists, Hoffman notes that tenth-century Heian-kyo had a population of 150,000, of which the nobility were just 10,000. We think of Kyoto being ’empty’ now, but imagine all that space and all that nature with so few people around.
And that in the end is what Hoffman manages to do so well – make us imagine. Thanks to his limpid prose, the pages of history come alive and glisten with appeal. The clue is in the title: Cipangu, Golden Cipangu.
The judges were reminded of their early days in Japan, when abundant advice was offered by those who had arrived years prior. Some, however, felt that they were stepping into an unknown world as they would probably not visit the type of bar described. The “young and casual” nuance stood in contrast to many more traditionally-focused submissions. – Karen Lee Tawarayama *************
ANABA by Kristin Osani
Not for the first time since we sat down for lunch, I launch my map app so my friend can show me where to look later tonight for this bar she’s raving about. I save a pin in the general Kiyamachi-Pontocho neighborhood north of Shijo and label it anabar, allowing myself an indulgent giggle at the play on the Japanese for hole-in-the-wall.
“It seriously is a hole.” My friend, all excited, doesn’t even pause to commend me for my genius pun. “It’s in this stunted little apartment building, up a couple flights of rickety old stairs. Look for the duct tape doorknob. Or I guess feel for it, the one bare lightbulb in the stairwell doesn’t illuminate shit.”
“Sounds like a great place to get murdered.”
She snorts, crunches a daikon pickle between her teeth. “It’s about as big as this—” She leans one hand back on the tatami and twirls her chopsticks around the ten-square-meter room. “—but super minimal. Bare concrete, LED lights on the walls, booze right on the counter. I wanna say there are like four stools, and a bench-thing in the back by a window covered in this ratty-ass sheet. There’s no menu, you just tell the bartender what you want, and as long as he has the stuff he’ll make it for five hundred yen.”
“Cheap as.”
“Oh, and then dude, you get the drunken munchies, you gotta go down the street to this killer ramen place.” She moans hungrily, as if we haven’t just gorged ourselves on obanzai, and motions for me to pull my phone out again.
Only a few months into my relocation to Kyoto and she’s given me a list longer than the Kamo River of places I gotta check out.
The judges found that it was easy to step into the mind of the photographer. A moment of silence and contemplation is provided for the reader.
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Capturing the Zen Spirit by Michael H. Lester
Since a bamboo grove
is relatively open and airy, you can get lost in one only if you put your mind
to it, which is (figuratively speaking) precisely what I plan to do.
On a visit to Kyoto,
I load my camera equipment into the car and set out before dawn for Arashiyama
Bamboo Grove. I hope to get a photograph there without a gathering of
open-mouthed tourists crowding the steps through the grove.
morning light filters through the bamboo— a stray skylark
Lifting the collar of
my jacket against the chill, I place my camera on a tripod, adjust the
settings, and wait for sunrise. A Zen-like sense of well-being sweeps across my
body in this mystical place.
After having taken several
atmospheric photographs of the bamboo grove, I head over to the nearly
800-year-old Tenryu-Ji Temple where I hope to be lucky enough to capture a
photograph of the spirit of Emperor Go-Daigo.
a cormorant dips its head in the pond— my shutter clicks
WiK welcomes new member Rona Conti, known for her calligraphy. The passages below are extracted from a longer account, ‘Encounters with Brushes Part One‘.
About Rona Conti
Rona Conti is a painter and calligrapher whose artwork is represented in numerous public, private and corporate collections and museums in the United States and internationally. English editor for Beyond Calligraphy, in 1999, she began studying Japanese calligraphy with (Mieko) Kobayashi sensei of Gunma from whom she received her pen name (魂手恵奈). Invited to exhibit calligraphy at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art with the International Association of Calligraphers for the last five years, she received the “Work of Excellence” Prize three times. She was invited to demonstrate Japanese Calligraphy at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2009. Her handmade paper artwork is produced in New York City at Dieu Donne Papermill.
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Dreaming Japan eons before I ever set foot on its soil, from the time I was in college studying ceramics and painting I was mesmerized by Japanese scrolls, the essential black and white mysteriously beautiful forms brushed upon tactile surfaces, then mounted and hung in soft-lit rooms of museums. Envisioning Japan from books and objects, I dreamed of studying calligraphy in its proper setting.
The resumes of Japanese Calligraphy Masters usually start with the young age at which they began their studies, often with a relative. As a Western counterpart, I can only point to my parallel path, my taking up of a different kind of brush. The desired image of my five-year old self, painted with oils on an un-stretched canvas, somehow miraculously survived. It was painted at the studio of my aunt, Helen Jacobson, a fine painter and a beautiful woman. She was blond haired and blue-eyed, always elegantly dressed, I was brown and brown. Vividly remembering painting in her cavernous space where my imagination soared, I decided at that moment my future path. Wishing to be an artist ballerina when I “grew up”, the incongruity of painting in a tutu never occurred to me.
……….
Love and youth has a way of re-shaping dreams. Had I not found the former and not been the latter, I likely would have found a way to adventure to Japan at that time. Instead, I received a letter from Japan from my friend and advisor at Antioch College, Karen Shirley, a potter three years my senior, my “senpai”. “Be sure to come to Mashiko and see Japan before all of the wood burning climbing kilns are no longer allowed because of pollution.” It was 1964. I had graduated that May and was in Boston. I filed her advice away for later and set about pursuing my passion which began with brushes. …………… Over the years, growing as an artist, the thought of the now rather distant past dream never left. While reveling in color and paint and later exploring work using handmade paper pulps, the vision of Japan continued to come front and center. Dividing the space, placement, the glory of the simplicity of Japanese calligraphy, eliminating the unnecessary and getting to the essence of the black and the white and in between seemed attainable at last. Seeking adventure, finding a way, I secured a job teaching English, sold my car, rented my apartment, told my two creative projects, now 28 and 23, to come and visit, and I departed for Japan. It was summer, 1998.
While I spoke no Japanese, while it took quite a lot of work to convince my bosses that I could teach and study, thanks to an adult student, I found a calligraphy Master willing to teach me. It was March of 1999, I had only three months left on my work visa.
The most precious moment held forever in memory was of holding a brush for the first time in Kobayashi Sensei’s studio, the long journey only just begun. It was the first, but definitely not the last time in Japan that quiet tears of joy would travel slowly down my cheeks. I was home.
The judges of the Fifth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition are delighted to announce their decisions.
This year, despite the unprecedented challenges posed by the Coronavirus pandemic, we received an impressive number of submissions from countries and regions throughout the world. Several included mentions of the unique situation, and we felt that this was a poignant representation of the times. We are thankful that the virtual nature of this competition provided a means for individuals of several nationalities to express their continued love for Kyoto and Japan, even if currently unable to visit in person. This is a strong indication of Kyoto’s strong international appeal, though it should be noted that the judges were unaware of the names or nationality of those involved.
The winners of the Fifth Annual Kyoto Writing Competition are as follows.
The judges appreciated the feminine quality of this piece, which was evocative and skillfully recreated a moment in a person’s life. Residents of Kyoto who have had the pleasure of visiting the Ohara area would be able to imagine the story clearly, based on their personal experiences there and the vivid descriptions.
This was a lovely depiction of a flickering relationship whose end was nigh, although one of the couple did not realize it yet. The overall sadness of the piece tugged at the judges’ heartstrings. Though it might have taken place in any setting, it was the “skeleton of a dry cherry leaf” and autumn showing that “death could be beautiful” that belied a more than passing acquaintance with Japanese literature. The judges also felt that the contrast depicted between the evanescence of sparrows compared to their steps caught forever in cement had a particular “Kyoto flavor”.
An evocative journey, including vignettes of Kyoto’s four seasons in keeping with Japanese literary and artistic traditions. Nature and human life are skillfully woven together through these images.
The judges were reminded of their early days in Japan, when abundant advice was offered by those who had arrived years prior. Some of us, however, felt that we were stepping into an unknown world as we would probably not visit the type of bar described. The “young and casual” nuance stood in contrast to many more traditionally-focused submissions.
The judges found that it was easy to step into the mind of the photographer. A moment of silence and contemplation is provided for the reader.
Honorable Mentions:
“The Sky Shrine” by Joanne Carmen Rasul Binti Abdullah
“The Winds of Kyoto” by Wim Vanderbauwhede
“Turn of the Century” by Martin Rice
“The Bell” by Allen S. Weiss
“Signs of the Times” by Craig Hoffman
Untitled by Angiola Inglese
Congratulations to the winners, and our deepest feelings of gratitude to all those who took the time to submit their writings on the ancient capital. Plans are underway to hold another writing competition in 2021. We look forward to receiving your submissions again at that time. A call for entries will be published on the Writers in Kyoto website in mid-Autumn 2020.
We wish for everyone’s health and safety, and hope that we will have a chance to meet again in Kyoto very soon.
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