Travelling North by Simon Rowe Uramoto was short, in his thirties, with a buzz cut and a smile that practically broke his face in half. At eight p.m. he fired up his Fuso and told me to jump in. We would be carrying a consignment of senbei to Kōfu city in Yamanashi prefecture, he said. …Read More
Category: Featured Writings (Page 6 of 14)
Featured writing
ANOTHER PLANE by Ken Rodgers One day, when he [Chan master Zhaozhao] was about to leave for the Five-Peak Mountain, a monk spoke this verse: What mountain anywhere is not sacred? Why go to the Five-Peaked Mountain with a walking stick? Even if a lion with the golden mane manifests …Read More
Eric Bray Lyrics – Some Blues Some Happies a Bachata Unlike the CD these songs are arranged more or less in chronological order, with “This Day” and “Another Day” coming first, and “Cada Flor” coming last, as I wrote this song 30 years ago after coming to Japan from Mexico (hence the Spanish). I don’t …Read More
Ryoma! The Life of Sakamoto Ryoma: Japanese Swordsman And Visionary By Shiba Ryotaro Translated By Paul McCarthy And Juliet Winters Carpenter. (526 pages) Reviewed by Ian (Josh) Yates For the first time the bestselling historian Shiba Ryotaro’s most epic tale will be translated for an English readership. Shiba spent many years, eight volumes and thousands …Read More
For the past few years Australian Jann Williams has been a valued supporter of Writers in Kyoto, while researching her magnum opus on the effect on Japan of the elements, whether physical or in the form of the Chinese and Buddhist five elements theories. At a lunch discussion on Oct 28 with a group of seven …Read More
red-breasted, wings dull blue picking the way before me bird I cannot name grey clouds, grey water egret spreads grey wings to fly the evening settles calligraphic sky – soft pinks, grey pastel smudges the lake reflecting smell of fresh cut grass – the crushed stems sweet as summer …Read More
“Recalling a Light Moment” Amongst zen masters the moon mutant metaphor reflected in water a teaching apart from origin we world-wide witnesses myriad waves possessed of lunar largesse but obviously no moon seen in sea or tear to grasp nor mineral moon above only sunlight permits perception the reflected moon merely many waves like words …Read More
Author’s note: I am attempting to write a short novel (entitled The Seven Forms of Infiltration) that takes its inspiration from manga, Japanese comic books; the excerpt below is the first few pages of this novel. The heroine is a young woman who is training to be a ninja. For artistic effects, I use actual …Read More
My Kyoto Cats (Davd Duff) Kuma and Kinta were my first Kyoto cats, both blazoned with that distinctive tabby ‘M’ arched above their soft green eyes. Both had the same mother but different fathers so Kuma was a short hair while Kinta sported fluffy long hair. We shared a traditional Japanese home together and savored …Read More
Edward J. Taylor writes: ‘As John Dougill, the editor of this Writers in Kyoto webpage, has been posting about Korean Shamanism at his blog Green Shinto, I thought that I’d submit a travel piece about a two-week meander up Korea’s east coast in 1997, playing connect-the-dots with the country’s sacred Buddhist and Shamanistic peaks, which …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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