The following excerpt is taken from: “Sword Dancer”, a novella by Simon Rowe (see www.mightytales.net). *********** ONE From somewhere along the hallway of the Ternate Port Authority came the clack-clack sound of an old-fashioned ribbon typewriter being punched one finger at a time. A toilet flushed and a phone rang constantly in a far-off office. It …Read More
Category: WiK members (Page 24 of 25)
Authors who belong to Writers in Kyoto
As is well-known, Lafcadio Hearn was preoccupied with ghosts, and his taste for the macabre found its supreme expression in the collection of stories in Kwaidan (1903). His belief in ghosts started out as a childhood obsession, when he would be plagued at night by visions and nightmares. Such was his screaming that his great …Read More
Mark Richardson, one of the most prominent scholars on the poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), will be presenting material related to the poet on Jan 21 (for details, please see the right-hand column). In particular he will be discussing an interesting but never published––and never mailed––letter that affords a fascinating look into the poet’s life and …Read More
Writers without words. (Photos courtesy Karen Lee Tawarayama)
The Ladies’ Temple in Saga By Jeff Robbins (Thanks to Sydney Solis for providing feedback on this.) In October, just before I left my home in Fukuoka to go to Kyoto, I discovered a Basho renku about the Nonomiya Shrine in Saga, west of Kyoto, and made time in my schedule to explore the verse …Read More
Our man in Himeji, WiK member Simon Rowe, reports on one of those startling phenomena in Japan – the constantly growing townscape. (For a previous Hyogo vignette, see here.) Notes from Himeji: A Fistful of Rice Crackers A lot can change in the space of a few weeks. One day you live in a …Read More
1. Not far from the American Embassy in Havana, mere steps from the body of water that proves narrower than ideology, stands a monument to the USS Maine, which exploded under mysterious circumstances in the city harbor over 100 years ago. Upon the monument an American eagle once perched, until on a January day in …Read More
Book Launch Nov 18, 2017 Report by Andrew Sokulski Zozaya, WiK intern Saturday night a splendid celebration was held in high spirits for the book launch of John Dougill and John Einarsen’s Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto. There were writers, artists, scholars, priests, tour guides and Kyoto Journal interns in the audience. A wonderful musical performance was held, …Read More
Notes from Himeji, Hyogo: I am a Passenger by Simon Rowe What do commuters think about on their long rides to and from the mills each day? I bet they don’t think about how lucky they are that the wheel was invented. I was a commuter once—a nameless man in a salt-stained suit and headphones. …Read More
Marianne Kimura is a Shakespearean scholar teaching at a university in Kyoto, and her papers on Shakespeare have proved popular on the website academic.com. She also writes imaginative fiction based on Shakespearean themes, integrating ghostly or SF elements as can be seen in the excerpt below from her second novel, The Hamlet Paradigm, published under the pseudonym 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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