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Simon Rowe goes marketing
Peddling Papa: A Writer’s Tale of Selling His Book by Simon Rowe On a foggy November night, a ship named the MOL Grandeur hauls anchor and departs Hong Kong bound for the port of Kobe.…
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Hearn on art and shadows
Kyoto, April 16. The wooden shutters before my little room in the hotel are pushed away; and the morning sun immediately paints upon my shoji, across squares of gold light, the perfect sharp shadow of…
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Tanizaki’s ‘Bridge of Dreams’
The following is taken from the website of Ad Blankestijn. Please see here for the original. It concerns a house Kyoto residents may be familiar with, namely the one in which Tanizaki lived next to Shimogamo Shrine…
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Richardson on Frost (Jan 21)
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…
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Short Short Stories
Driven by social media and falling concentration spans, the trend of recent times is for shorter and shorter fiction. Twitter is a prime example, with writers challenged to fit something meaningful into 140 characters. This…
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Competition runner-up 2017
The deadline for this year’s WiK Short Shorts Competition will be on March 1, and just a reminder that this year we are offering a top prize of ¥30,000 plus several other smaller prizes. The…
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Kyoto poems in Japanese
Our attention has been drawn to a useful resource in Japanese of poetry about Kyoto. It’s part of an extensive website called Japan Note, covering various aspects of history and culture as can be seen…
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Hearn’s Kyoto Stories 2: Sympathy of Benten
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…
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WiK Anthology 2017 Book review
Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 2017 edited by John Dougill, Amy Chavez and Mark Richardson Writers in Kyoto (2017) ISBN-13: 978-1387479115 Review by Harry Martin in the Japan Society Newsletter, UK (March 2018) (See here.) Founded…
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Mark Teeuwen on Gion Matsuri (March 11)
A lively and informative dinner talk for WiK members was held on March 11 featuring Dutch academic, Mark Teeuwen, who is on leave from the University of Oslo as a research fellow at Kyoto University…
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Third Prize 2018 Competition (Harukaze)
The third prize this year went to “Harukaze” by Anna Quinn (Pittsburgh, USA). Judges were impressed by how within 300 words the author introduced three generations of women with their strong and weak points. The…
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Sword Dancer (Rowe)
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…
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Japan and the Beats (ToPoJo vol 5)
Review of TOKYO POETRY JOURNAL VOL. 5: ‘JAPAN AND THE BEATS’ There’s something deliciously cool about ToPoJo 5. There’s a handwritten poem on the front cover by Nanao Sakaki, with GWOOON BALI BALI! crying out…
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Kyoto – elemental city (Williams)
Kyoto – an elemental city Text and photos by Jann Williams Kyoto has a remarkable dimensionality inspired by the elements. In his cultural history of the city, John Dougill conceived Kyoto as eleven different ‘cities’…
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Hal Stewart in Kyoto
The following extract is taken from a longer biographical piece of Harold Stewart (1916-95) for the revolvy website. Click here to see the full piece. *********** [Hal Stewart] visited Japan in 1961 and then again…
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Second Prize 2018 Competition
The judges felt that this description of an outing to a temple in Ohara combined interesting historical background with an intriguing personal encounter. There is a lightness of touch in the way that the narrator…
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First Prize WiK 2018 Competition (Tengu)
This year’s winning entry was by Terin Jackson, an American living in Kyoto who writes a blog for his private tour company. The competition took him out of his comfort zone, forcing him to cut…
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White Day and Spring Breeze (Kawaharada)
“A white day” Fluffy white motifs Decorate a hospital window— Evanescent art Mountains and cars Wearing white caps— Frosty morning A cup of coffee At the hospital room— News of snowstorm Cars…
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Oharano and Kyoto’s poetic past
It’s on the outskirts of Kyoto. It’s in spacious woodland. It dates back to the eighth century and pre-Heian times. It’s little-known, but once it was counted amongst the top 22 shrines of Japan. Oharano…
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Kyoto’s purple mountains
Sanshi suimei – purple mountains and crystal streams So runs the epithet about Kyoto which the nineteenth-century historian Rai Sanyo used as the name for his study by the banks of the Kamogawa (the thatched cottage still…
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Mike Freiling self-introduction
Mike Freiling Mike was born in San Francisco and attended USF as an undergraduate, where he first became interested in poetry at readings by Allen Ginsburg, Gary Snyder and others of that generation. At USF…
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Cid Corman coffee shop
Mayumi Kawaharada writes… Do you know the American sweets cafe called CC’s coffee shop in Kyoto, which was established in 1974 by the American poet and editor Cid Corman? When he and his Japanese wife…
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Teeuwen on Ise Jingu
Leading Shinto scholar Mark Teeuwen, has written several influential books on matters related to Japan’s indigenous faith. He’s known in particular for disputing the idea that there was such a thing as ‘Shinto’ in Japan’s…
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Fernando Torres (self-introduction)
1) Could you tell us a little bit about your background and your connection with Japan? My first connection to Japan was through the Suzuki method. I was two and a half, and they had…
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Kirsty Kawano self-introduction
Kirsty Kawano: Interview 1) Could you tell us about your background and connection with Japan? I first came to Japan on a one-year student exchange directly after high school. I had always been interested in…
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WiK Poetry and Improv 2018
It’s not easy to draw crowds to poetry events, but WiK managed twenty plus customers last night packed into the Gnome for an evening of great variety. Each performer had five minutes to display their…
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Wit and wisdom (Preston Keido Houser)
Gnome Poetry and Improv Evening (24/6/2018) There once was a monk from Madrid Who declared that his good deeds were hid. Not thinking a thought Nor seeking the sought, His doing was nothing he did.…
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World Cup Watching (Edward J Taylor)
The summer that Japan hosted the World Cup was one of the highlights of my many years there. By day I was hitchhiking the 33 temples of the Kansai Kannon pilgrimage, while at night I’d…
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Hearn’s Kyoto Stories 3: ‘Screen Maiden’ (Sokulski)
Those familiar with the rich heritage of artwork in Japan will be aware of numerous stories about painted figures which are so life-like that they come alive and step out of their frames, like the…
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Kyoto in July (Torres)
July in Kyoto means the Gion Festival, the city’s premier event which stretches over the whole month and provides tourists with an array of glittering photo-ops. The piece below is an excerpt from “Kyoto Souvenir,” a…
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