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
Author: John Dougill (Page 12 of 45)
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
This is the second part of an extract by David Joiner from his work in progress. For Part One with an introduction by the author, click here. (NB Because of WordPress rules, the formatting has been changed.) *************** The Shirasagi Express felt longer going back to Kanazawa. Sedge and his friends had turned a row …Read More
(Editorial note: Due to WordPress formatting, the extract below is indented differntly from the original and may have lost clarity in the transposition.) David Joiner writes: ‘The following is a draft of the first chapter of a 260-page novel I wrote in three weeks, and which now requires much revision to develop more depth, specifically …Read More
A traditional Japanese neighbourhood is a lot like a small fiefdom; it rolls with its own rules and rosters, elects its own committees, demands that its denizens perform seasonal duties such as river cleaning and shouldering a portable Shinto shrine at festival time, and is usually presided over by a big kahuna and his/her sidekick, a treasurer.
by Preston Houser There once was a monk from Great Plains Who was stunned by Love’s cryptic claims. Love liberates from bondage Lonely hearts taken hostage And sets the free in chains. There once was a monk from St. Klaus Perplexed by love because Unlike the shadow it casts It’s fun while it …Read More
LOVELY!A short story by Tina deBellegarde A buffeting wind shakes the display window and Aki looks up from the register. Outside is a tall young man, certainly a foreigner, his back to the window, reading off of a scrap of paper in one hand, holding the handlebar of his bicycle with the other. The wind …Read More
After Act by Stephen Mansfield I’m reading a short story by Michael Moorcock, in which the narrator describes his time in Hamburg, among friends who believed they were “descendants of those who had perished when Atlantis was destroyed by atom bombs dropped from flying saucers.” At any other time, in normal circumstances, that is, I …Read More
An Evening Arrival in Kyotoby Natsume SōsekiTranslation copyright Richard Donovan (Originally published in Translating Modern Japanese Literature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.) Swift as a shooting star, the steam train has traversed 200 leagues of springtime landscape before shaking me off at Shichijō Station. As my heels strike the platform, sending up a chilly echo, the …Read More
Considering Sōseki’s「京に着ける夕」”Kyō ni tsukeru yūbe” as a haibunBy Richard Donovan In the first part of Natsume Sōseki’s account of a visit to Kyoto in the spring of 1907, the author and his hosts run their rickshaws ever further north. At the same time, Sōseki and his thoughts rush onwards across the psychological terrain of memory and …Read More
Kyoto 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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