Hello. I’m honored to be one of the members of Writers in Kyoto. I’m Yuki Yamauchi, a translator of English and Irish literature and part-time event writer for The Japan Times. I have written about events in Kyoto, such as annual performances of Kyoto’s five kagai (geisha districts), Kyoto Experiment and Nuit Blanche Kyoto. I was born in …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 14 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
Hans Brinckmann: Born in 1932 in The Hague, Hans grew up during the German occupation of Holland. Due to the dismal post-war conditions, he had to suppress his hope to become a writer. In order to make a living, he joined a Dutch bank after high school, for a one-year in-house education, in preparation for …Read More
by Chad Kohalyk A physical space for your inner self — reading a new translation of Hōjōki by Matthew Stavros My clearest memory of my grandfather is the little cot in his back room. Lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, he would spend hours on that folding metal bed with the thin …Read More
William Altoft is a teacher in Bristol UK, who has links to Kyoto and draws inspiration from the Japanese tanka form. The following were written on the Bristol harbourside, as pictured below. (For more see his homepage here.) I Tower peaks; quartet sleeps; the gull’s braced, as am I – the lock-gate, leading southward, …Read More
Ken Rodgers, KJ managing editor I greatly enjoyed talking with author Alex Kerr about his new book, Finding the Heart Sutra, on our WIK Zoom session on Sunday Nov. 29th. (A recording is available here—thanks to Lisa Wilcut and Rick Elizaga for their technical support!) As an additional reference I had intended to mention that …Read More
The Witches Play Macbethby Marianne Kimura In Birnam Wood, we’d all meet, all the witches, to dance. We’d twirl and skip under the stars with the god Pan. No dull churches for him: he could be found only in groves and grottoes, riverbanks and the little sandy edges of the Forfar Loch, where grasses grew. …Read More
by Lisa Twaronite Sone Not to brag, but my cash drawer always balances at the end of my shift. Not once in all of my decades behind a register has it ever gone over, or come up short. If you understand how busy supermarkets can get, you’ll appreciate how miraculous this is. But really, it’s …Read More
The Wind’s Word (all photos by the author) intricate scripture – each leaf’s quiver the wind’s word on a page of air snail on his way down the rain soaked road easy grace of line shadows of bamboo score a melody of wind on the old stone wall crow carries its cry to the heights …Read More
It takes some time getting to Chikubujima. You first must take a train up to Biwa’s narrow northern shoulder, eternally bullied by the brawny peaks of Hirasan above. A boat will then take you to the island. On approach it looks in decay, centuries of guano having stripped many of the trees and eroded the …Read More
1) Could you tell us a little about yourself?I moved to Japan to flee family expectations, and also to chase a guy. I first arrived in 1985 to study at Doshisha for a year, where I met the Kyoto native who would much later become my husband. He wasn’t the reason I came in the first …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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