by Lisa Twaronite Sone I used to volunteer at a nursing home . I would sign in at the front desk and then walk from room to room with my infant daughter, chatting with anyone who wanted to talk to a visitor. One day, I wandered into the full care wing of the building. I …Read More
Author: WiK (Page 8 of 13)
Yuki Yamauchi Lafcadio Hearn, as John Dougill points out here, visited Kyoto and retold stories set in the city. The Greek-born literatus never took up abode in the city, whereas one of his children did. It was Hearn’s second son, Iwao Inagaki.
by Malcolm Ledger Ohigan – the autumn equinox – when the light fades and the bones begin to grow cold. A day for the Japanese to remember their dead. Outside my window, overlooking the little temple graveyard, a large black spider sits motionless between two pines, at the centre of a gigantic web, spread wide …Read More
Book Review of The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (560 pages) Reviewer: Rebecca Otowa Readers of this website may remember that I wrote a piece called “Insight on a Rainy Day” in August 2022, largely about the Heart Sutra (Hannya Shingyo) and its central message, “Emptiness is none other than form; form is …Read More
By Robert Weis Time has stopped at Wachi Station, where my companion and I are waiting to meet our host, Mr Yamada. I watch the tiny movements of a swallow patiently building its nest under the roof of the grocery shop where we drink coffee. Delicious. My thoughts wander as I follow the comings and …Read More
An Edited Funeral Service Talk in Osaka, Japan, 2022-04-29by Reggie Pawle (For reasons of confidentiality, the name of the deceased has been changed.) Master of Ceremony: As other people have said, exactly one year before Richard received his diagnosis, he lost his beloved wife (through a very unexpected tragedy). They were married for over twenty …Read More
by Stephen Mansfield This essay originally appeared in German as one of six contributions to, then Japan-based German photographer, Hans Sautter’s large format book, ‘Japan.’ Each contributor was assigned a theme to write about, in my case, the Japanese city. This month sees the English language version of the book from an American publisher. In Maurice …Read More
by Cody Poulton “About suffering they were never wrong,The old Masters …” Auden, Musée de Beaux Artes On the wall of the little sitting room in our Kyoto house is a reproduction of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs, one of those delightfully busy portraits of a host of peasants up to no good. An …Read More
by Rebecca Otowa Like many of you, living in Japan has meant I have a special relationship with the Hannya Shingyo (“Heart Sutra”), that one-page piece of writing that is said to summarize the teachings of Buddhism as taught in many sects, including Zen. In my student days, while studying Japanese Buddhism at Otani University …Read More
By Simon Rowe Stands to reason that in tough economic times, people spend less on luxuries and more on small pleasures—like beer, cigarettes, and Uniqlo underwear. A new rooftop beer garden opened in Himeji last week (two floors above Uniqlo), affording more skyline drinking space for the hard-working denizens of this town; another place for …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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