By Edward Levinson (aka Edo 恵道) hot water bottlememories of motherwarm me 湯たんぽや母の思い出暖めるyutanpo ya, haha no omoide, atatameru My earliest months living in Japan were in Kyoto. It was late fall and getting colder every day. Slowly I got used to the chilly (soon to be frigid) old wooden Japanese houses. One winter morning I …Read More
Author: John Dougill (Page 6 of 45)
An appreciation by Yuki Yamauchi On the afternoon of January 7th, many news outlets such as Gigazine and Oricon News reported the death of Hajime Fukuma, a 51-year-old electronic musician and composer. This followed the official announcement on his website that he had died, aged 51, of an aortic aneurysm on the first day of …Read More
Book Review by Rebecca Otowa OF ARCS AND CIRCLES: insights from Japan on gardens, nature, and artby Marc Peter Keane (Stone Bridge Press, 2019) The first thing I noticed about this book is that it is made up of essays, similar to Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard, which …Read More
On Sunday Dec 22 twenty two members tuned in for WiK’s first ever Zoom social event. The bonenkai 2021 saw out in style what has been a difficult year in many ways. Our annual bonenkai bash is not only a way of dispelling the demons of midwinter but of showcasing WiK’s multifarious talents. This year there was …Read More
by Robert Weis The most pleasant surprise when I moved to the city from the countryside was to discover that, just five minutes’ walk from my home, there is a wood, hidden and nestled in a small stream valley, miraculously escaped from the frenetic urbanisation that is rampant in these parts. I had often wondered …Read More
The Memoirs of a Japanese Nurse on the Western Front (pt 2) Hajimeko Takeda’s Notes by a Japanese Nurse Sent to France Translated by Paul Carty & Eiko Araki, edited by Freddy Rottey & Dominiek Dendooven In Stand To! 122 (April 2021), the introduction, context and postscript of Hajimeko Takeda’s memoirs as a Japanese nurse …Read More
The Poetry of Pain and Its Meaning in the Age of COVID-19 by Michael Freiling and Shelley Baker-Gard (This article first appeared in Frogpond, official journal of the Haiku Society of America, issue 44-3, Autumn 2021.) In late 2017, Shelley Baker-Gard was presented with a manuscript of poems, all in Japanese. They were brought to …Read More
THE SHORT STORY COLLECTIVE: 13 TALES FROM JAPAN by Andrew Innes Available from Amazon in paperback and ebook formats Review by Rebecca Otowa This collection of 13 short stories invites the reader to join the author in a challenging navigation of the seas of reality and fantasy. There are twists, turns and illusions galore, and …Read More
by Malcolm Ledger A ’phone call brings the unexpected and sad news of the death of a long-time friend … “— melanoma – in the right armpit. By the time it was removed it was already seven millimetres deep. They tried chemotherapy, but it began to spread over the right side of his chest…and after …Read More
From Japan’s Kumano mountains to Luxembourg’s Mullerthal forests by Robert Weis “I got lost even though I know where I am” – these words, from Rebecca Solnit’s intriguing memoir, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, echoed in my head as I continued my solitary walk through the deep forests of the Kumano Mountains. The Kohechi …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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