Is it true that only a suicide stops a Japanese train from running on time? Why did her father always ask questions about death? In his last letter he’d asked if she knew anyone who had visited Aokigahara, the so-called Suicide Forest. He said he’d read about it in National Geographic, that you could sense …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 1 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
A Short Story by Rebecca Otowa (Historical note: This story is set in the late 1580s, in the mountains somewhere between Kyoto and Nagoya. At that time, Japan had been for centuries a conglomerate of lots of little strongholds based on clans, much as England was before King Arthur. Three men emerged as “unifiers” of …Read More
From a Work in Progress, by Malcolm Ledger The first installment of Ledger’s “Prologue to a War” was previously shared on our website in 2021. Our readers may wish to refresh their memories of the storyline at this link before moving on to the following. ***************** No less incontestable, awesome, and powerful, was the Imperial …Read More
In Kokoro (Chapter 4 Section 6) Hearn writes of ‘Dai-Kioku-Den’, which is how Heian Jingu was known on its establishment in 1895. Hearn was in town for the celebrations to mark the grand opening of a monument to mark the restoration of imperial supremacy. (Shrine and temple were used interchangeably in early Meiji, before the …Read More
by Marianne Kimura Looking lost, my husband wanders outside with a wet rag he’d just used to clean the bathroom sink. I pop my head out of the window. “Otoosan”, I say, “hang it over there near the washing machine, near the other rags. When there’s more, I’ll wash them all together”. As I close …Read More
A Short Story by Rebecca Otowa Introduction We don’t know very much about the 12 Apostles of Jesus, his constant companions during the latter part of his life, except that Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and another pair of siblings, James and John, were fishermen; and the writer of one of the Gospels, St. …Read More
by Rebecca Copeland Sometimes it’s the unexpected detours that provide the greatest pleasure. Last week, I spent the afternoon with PhD student Ran Wei, who has been in Osaka on a Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We had planned to meet at Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangu Shrine, tour the garden, and then enjoy a long and …Read More
by Sara Ackerman Aoyama Sara Ackerman Aoyama first went to Japan in August, 1976 as a member of the Associated Kyoto Program (AKP). It gave her just a bare taste of Kyoto and after she graduated from college, she returned to Kyoto in the summer of 1978 with no plans other than conquering the Japanese …Read More
by Simon Rowe A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. ― FDR Sea kayaking isn’t an activity you hear much about, yet Japan’s coastline is made for travel-by-paddle. I have lived in Hyogo for 26 years and bought my first sea kayak in 2001 — a folding Folbot Greenland II — and later added an …Read More
ZOOM TALK on SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers International)March 22, 2024Report by Rebecca Otowa Last night I joined 25 people from around the world, mostly Japan, to hear WiK member Lisa Wilcut talk under the title of “What it Takes to Bring a Picture Book to Life in Another Language”, about her translation of …Read More
WiK Writing Competition
WiK Anthologies
The Nature of Kyoto (2023)
Eds. Lisa Twaronite Sone & Robert Weis
Foreword by Pico Iyer
Structures of Kyoto (2021)
Eds: Rebecca Otowa & Karen Lee Tawarayama
Foreword by Judith Clancy
Encounters with Kyoto (2019)
Eds: Jann Williams & Ian Josh Yates
Foreword by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Echoes (2017)
Eds: John Dougill, Amy Chavez, & Mark Richardson
Preface by Alex Kerr
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