[In keeping with long-time legends of the ghosts and spirits that reside in Kyoto, this piece reminded the judges of the Kwaidan stories gathered by Lafcadio Hearn, simultaneously chilling and tender.] Yurei Ame/ Ghost Candyby Marianne Kimura, Canadian, resident in Kyoto Who was that? The same woman as last night and the night before. The …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 21 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
Reggie Pawle combines being a Kyoto psychotherapist with being a Zen practitioner, which has enabled him to explore the world within while helping others find their true selves. Zen and psychotherapy go back to the 1950s in fact, with Carl Jung holding ground-breaking discussions in 1958 with Hisamatsu Shinichi, a Zen philosopher with the Kyoto …Read More
Island of the Wind Child There’s an island off the coast of western Honshu Where six men in kayaks camp beneath moons Sometimes a crescent, sometimes a half But beware a full moon The king tide might just steal your craft. When the weather is fair and the sea breeze is soft They paddle …Read More
One of the pieces in the Second WiK Anthology (Echoes, 2017) was by Robert Yellin, international expert on Japanese pottery and owner of the Yakimono Gallery. The following piece is an extract only; the full article is in Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology, which can be obtained in print or Kindle ebook versions through amazon. …Read More
WiK member Sydney Solis has a longstanding interest in kamishibai, the Japanese art of picture story telling. She has created and published six titles of her own which can be found here. One of them was based n a Japanese folktale about the Grateful Crane. Last year, following her move to Japan, she did a …Read More
Travelling North by Simon Rowe Uramoto was short, in his thirties, with a buzz cut and a smile that practically broke his face in half. At eight p.m. he fired up his Fuso and told me to jump in. We would be carrying a consignment of senbei to Kōfu city in Yamanashi prefecture, he said. …Read More
Some Words and Photographs By John Einarsen The words attached to a photograph can radically alter how we “read” or understand it. Words give context, intended or unintended. One’s experience of an image often depends on the words that caption it. My approach to photography is perceptual, which means that my focus is on the …Read More
Self-Introduction: Rick Mitcham My full name is Roderick Ellis Mitcham, but please call me Rick. At the start of the various English-language courses I teach here in Kyoto, I use my name to introduce myself. I tell my students that Mitcham is my surname; Ellis, my middle name, is my mother’s maiden name; and Roderick, …Read More
“”””””””””””””””””””””” A KYOTO NEW YEAR The true soul of Japan is neither Shinto nor Buddhist. It’s Shinto-Buddhist. Until the artificial split of early Meiji times, the country had more than 1000 years of happy syncretism. Born Shinto, die Buddhist is the Japanese way. Shinto is this-worldly, concerned with rites of passage and social well-being. Buddhism …Read More
Reggie Pawle writes… I have gone on a meandering path in life from where I grew up, which was in the rural state of Maine in the U.S.A. I was brought up to follow in my family tradition (seven generations before mine) of being a Protestant Christian minister, I was a religion major in …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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