by Stephen Mansfield In striking contrast to their ancestors, contemporary Japanese adore an excess of light, their great cities electromagnetic centers of brilliance, their nighttime living rooms flood-lit like sports stadiums. The rallying call of those who survived the “dark valley,” as the thirties and war years were dubbed, was akarui seikatsu, a “bright …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 12 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
by Rona Conti Tiny characters float within my vision as my fellow students are dedicatedly focused on writing the familiar to them but foreign to me. It is my first year of studying calligraphy. I love to watch Shimizu-san writing the most exquisite kana or onna-de (literally, woman’s hand), but know that I’ll never be …Read More
Reading Inaka: Portraits of Life in Rural Japanby Chad Kohalyk In a small city in western Canada — which one might call inaka by dint of the high ratio of giant pickup trucks and the 95% white demographics — a group of immigrant moms from Japan, most married to Canadians, decided to band together. Their …Read More
An original story by Marianne Kimura Mr. Nomura had a habit of taking his bicycle and visiting Buddhist temples around Kyoto on fine Sunday afternoons. He had been to Shodenji before, a perfect little jewel of a Buddhist temple, famous for its simple charcoal brush painting of ten monks walking up and down an invisible …Read More
From a Work in Progress, by Malcolm Ledger Kyoto had seen very little of the war, though its truth had long struck bitter, painful blows. A world pregnant with unrealized hopes and dreams had now become wraith-like, tenuous, and contingent, its substance dim and opaque, melting away like warm breath on a cold, glistening mirror. …Read More
AMY CHAVEZ (non-fiction) Amy’s Guide to Best Behavior in Japan (Stone Bridge, 2018)Guide to Japanese customs & etiquette. Running the Shikoku Pilgrimage: 900 Miles to Enlightenment (Volcano Press, 2012)First-person account of circling Japan’s Buddhist 88-Temple Pilgrimage route. Japan, Funny Side Up (e-book, 2010)A selection of ‘Japan Lite’ columns that appeared in the Japan Times from …Read More
by Cody Poulton I thought I was a citizen of the world, but today borders matter more than ever, and I’ve come around to thinking, in spite of myself, that it’s a good thing we have them. We’ve all erected barriers to protect ourselves from Covid-19, but if we’ve learned anything during this pandemic, it …Read More
by Richard Holmes The view from the roof was always dynamic and inviting. I could see clearly in all directions, something odd for a big city that was supposed to be in perpetual haze. I spent three years of my early youth on top of an eight-storey office building on Chancery Lane. This was just …Read More
A Meditation by Robert Weis The first time that I experienced the beauty of Sakura trees was in April 2017, at the Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo. A delicate breeze dispersed thousands of pink petals over the graves, in a poetic momentum that touched me deeply. For sure, I had seen Sakura before, in my home …Read More
Impossible to Imagine (2019) Film review: Jann Williams (March 30, 2021) Film length: 1hr 28mins Cast: Yukiko Ito, William Yagi Lewis, Kazuya Moriyama, Marika Naito, Koko Price, Akira Nishide Writer and Director: Felicity Tillack Producer: Hamish Downie Translator: Hidekazu Takahashi Impossible to Imagine (J. Souzou Ga Dekinai), presents a slice of contemporary life in Kyoto …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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