Writers In Kyoto

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Writers in focus

WiK’s 5th Anniversary

April 19, 2020
Launch party with Amy Chavez on April 19, 2015

To celebrate WiK’s 5th Anniversary Celebration today, here is a list of all the activities and talks we have had over the past five years. There have been fun events like our bonenkai showcase of members’ talent, and there have been serious events such as the Heritage and Tourism symposium held together with the Agency of Cultural Affairs. In addition, we have run a website and Facebook pages, as well as hosting best selling and internationally famous authors who have included such luminaries as Karel van Wolferen, Robert Whiting and Richard Lloyd Parry. Over the years there have also been a variety of events, talks and presentations, and our heartfelt thanks go to those who have participated, in particular to all the speakers who contributed their expertise and time. A big thank you too to our committee of Paul Carty (finance/co-chair), Karen Lee Tawarayama (competition), Marianne Kimura (membership), Amy Chavez (social media), Mayumi Kawaharada (Japanese liaison), and Jann Williams (Anthology editor). From small beginnings WiK now has over 50 members and with their support we hope to weather the present Corona crisis and emerge in even better shape.

(NB Just about all the entries below were written up for the WiK website, so by entering the name in the search box, you should be able to locate the report. This listing has been updated to include recent activities held after the 5th anniversary.)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS 
Launch with Amy Chavez on writing in Japan at Roar Pub on April 19, 2015

Robert Whiting on gangsters and culture at The Gael, April 24, 2016 

Robert Yellin on a life with ceramics, The Gael  April 23, 2017

Eric Johnston on Kyoto Matters, The Gnome April 22, 2018 

Richard Lloyd Parry about his books, Omiya Campus Ryudai May 12, 2019

(Online) Jeff Kingston on Japanese politics May 23, 2020

Eric Johnston launches the first Writers In Kyoto Anthology

WEBSITE AND FACEBOOK
– interviews with members
– coverage of WiK talks and events 
– Kyoto-related writings
– members’ current projects
– new publications and book reviews

ANTHOLOGIES
* Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology  (ed. Eric Johnston, 2016)
* Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 2 (ed. John Dougill, Amy Chavez and Mark Richardson, 2017)
* Encounters: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 3 (ed. Jann Williams and Ian Yates), 2019

ANNUAL COMPETITION (run by Karen Lee Tawarayama)
– several prizes for winning entries
– publication on the website
– publication in the WiK Anthology

Alex Kerr discussing Heritage and Tourism

EVENTS
Words and Music twice a year (June and December) featuring amongst others Mark Richardson, Mayumi Kawaharada, Rebecca Otowa, Ken Rodgers, James Woodham, Ted Taylor, Robert Yellin, Lisa Wilcut, Kevin Ramsden, with improv musicians Gary Tegler and Preston Houser

May, 2015 – meeting with Eric Oey, head of Tuttle
June 12, 2016 – launch of the first WiK Anthology, ed. Eric Johnston
July 25, 2016 – WW1 Readings to commemorate the Somme 
Oct 2, 2016 – Alex Kerr’s book launch of Another Kyoto
Oct 28, 2016 – Basho Colloquium with Robert Wittkamp, Jeff Robbins and Stephen Gill
Nov 13, 2016 – Book launch of Marianne Kimura’s The Hamlet Paradigm
Nov 18, 2017 – Book launch of Zen Gardens and Temples of Kyoto by John Dougill and John Einarsen
April 2018 and 2019 – Meetings with Eric Oey, head of Tuttle
June 22, 2019 –  Launch with Jann Williams of Encounters: Anthology 3 Umekoji Park, Midori Buil. 
Nov 8, 2019  – Heritage and Tourism Symposium with Alex Kerr, Amy Chavez, Murakami Kayo and John Dougill
Nov 24, 2019 – At Home with Chris Mosdell
Nov 15, 2020 – At Home with Malcolm Ledger (book launch for The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper, Kyoto 100 Sights, and Kyoto: A Literary Guide)

Dinner with Karel van Wolferen (middle right)

LUNCH / DINNER TALKS
Dinner with Karel van Wolferen (Nov. 8, 2015)
Drinks with Bernie MacMugen on book printing (Dec 11, 2016)
Dinner with Judith Clancy at Papa Jon’s (Feb 12, 2017)
Dinner with Mark Teeuwen at Cafe Maru (March 11, 2017)
Dinner with Norman Waddell (May 21, 2017)
Dinner with Juliet Winters Carpenter at Rigoletto (May 27, 2018)
Dinner with Micah Auerbach ‘Zen in the 1930s’ (March 3, 2018) 
Dinner with Jonathan Augustine (Oct 7, 2018)
Lunch with Jann Williams at Khajuraho Restaurant (Oct 28, 2018)
Lunch with Venetia Stanley-Smith at La Tour, Kyoto Uni (Nov 11, 2018)
Lunch with Yumiko Sato on music therapy, Mughal (Nov 24, 2018)
Dinner with Vahina Vara and Andrew Altschul at Kushikura (Dec 2, 2018)
Lunch with Stephen Mansfield at La Tour, Kyodai (Sept 28, 2019)
Dinner with Mark Schumacher at Ungetsu, (Oct 4, 2019) 
Lunch with Rebecca Otowa at Ume no Hana, (March 14, 2020)

Mark Schumacher summing up his lifework over dinner

PRESENTATIONS
Poetry by Mark Richardson and Mark Scott at The Gael (June 21, 2015) 
David Duff and David Joiner gave readings at The Gael (Oct 11, 2015)
Allen Weiss reading at Robert Yellin’s gallery, shakuhachi by Preston Houser, (Dec 18, 2015)
Brian Victoria at the Gael on Zen terrorism in the 1930s (Feb 28, 2016)
Allen Weiss reading from The Grain of the Clay at Robert Yellin’s gallery (Dec 4, 2016)
Justin McCurry, Guardian correspondent, at Ryukoku Uni. (May 26, 2017) 
Amy Chavez on blogging at Omiya campus, Ryukoku (Oct 1, 2017)
Jeff Robbins lecture on Basho at Ryukoku University (Oct 28, 2017)
Mark Richardson on Robert Frost at Cafe Maru (Jan 21, 2018)
Reggie Pawle ‘Zen, Psychotherapy, and Psychology’ Ryudai (April 14, 2019)
Hans Brinckmann on Kyoto in the 1950s Ryukoku University (Feb 3, 2019))
Robert Wittkamp on Santoka at Ryukoku Uni. (Jan 25, 2020)
Matthew Stavros zoom session on his translation of Hojoki (Nov 22, 2020)
Alex Kerr zoom interview about Finding the Heart Sutra (Nov 29, 2020)

Judith Clancy dinner talk at Papa Jon’s
Mark Richardson reads poetry at The Gnome
David Duff holds up WiK’s first anthology (now out of print)
Robert Whiting preparing to talk to a packed house at The Gael
Allen Weiss presenting at Robert Yellin’s gallery

The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper

April 18, 2020

The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper And Other Short Stories
Rebecca Otowa
160pp

A Personal Response by Ian ‘Josh’ Yates

Though I have read a lot recently, I have written very little. I could blame any number of things, from the noise of my children to the gloom that doesn’t seem to disappear even when the clouds dissipate. Possibly I am lacking a sense of purpose in getting on my commute every morning for the nearly 16 years I have spent being an adult and being in Japan (basically those times overlap perfectly). 

Reading has been my escape and my damnation of late. Picking up the news just emphasizes the things that hover over me, but picking up my books gives me chances to escape (without endangering my children anyhow). 

However, even my escapes are interrupted, by the before mentioned children, and by my own thoughts, and so I have set up a schedule, where I will read for about 20 minutes, then clean or do something of obvious benefit and then come back to reading. I have found that I am not alone in having to limit the amount of time I am reading into these small chunks, as it has been brought up in many Goodreads comments and even in the recent Japan Times article on recommended books. (Japanese Books to Get You Through the Lockdown)

So, these self-obsessed ramblings were just to bring me to this point: It’s a hell of a good time to read short stories. 

And so, my purpose, at least at this moment, is to tell you about a great book of short stories: Rebecca Otowa’s The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper.

Many readers will be familiar with the author’s previous published work, At Home in Japan, all about her centuries old family home near Kyoto. That book, while not short stories per se, was a collection of vignettes. Along with her new work, Otowa shows herself to have mastered the 20 page story. 

So, what is the book about? 

Story-wise, it could be said to be about anything and everything: ghosts, family, history, chocolate, Kyoto…

However, thematically it is obvious that the author has some larger ideas in mind and they pop up throughout, joining together the wide array of story subjects into a personal view of the world. 

Possibly the largest theme here is the contemplation of what it means to grow older, with this theme stretched just a little more at times to look at what it means when you stop growing older. 

Many of the short stories found here beautifully express the sadness and pain, as well as the wisdom and acceptance of becoming older. However, Otowa’s true skill is not simply in expressing these aspects, but in never forgetting that this point of view is not singular. The sympathy shown for the young characters, who often misunderstand or fight with elder ones, brings true power to the writing. Sympathy for older people doesn’t mean that youth is merely folly. 

‘The Turtle Stone’ stretches across more than 60 years to show the rise and demise of a family’s sweet shop. The reader follows Taro from a young man trying to help with the business to an old man who can’t much remember the things he has learnt, let alone how to get home.  However, the stages that Taro lives through appear to stretch beyond him to represent stages that we all go through, each one important, even if we tend to forget the ones we have stepped past. It is empathy, the old for the young, and the young for the old, that can bring us together.

This sympathy continues in what might be said to be the other major theme of this book, the possibilities inherent in women. As many of Otowa’s characters pass through the cycles of life, it is undeniable how these are different for females. The author presents completely realistic portrayals of times when the burden of duty weighs specifically heavy on the shoulders of females.

In ‘Gembei’s Curse’, Sachiko begins as the put-upon housewife domestically tortured by her father in-law, only to become the torturer of her own daughter in-law, Shinobu, as the cycle of life comes round. Will this just continue on forever? It will, unless something is able to stop it, like a simple apology: “Excuse me. I’m sorry I shouted at you. You do so much for me. I am grateful”.

This small apology results in putting a stop to generational abuse, but also to the abuse that women at times put on each other. One can imagine if the story were to continue it would lead to an even more understanding relationship when Shinobu grows old. 

So, overall this is a work about age, the young and the old, and about the power of women and indeed all humanity unstrained by the bindings that are often thrust upon us. It is a thoughtful work, but not heavy and just perfect for someone looking for a quick escape. 

To end I wanted to add a small quote that I found comforting in a time that has been uncomfortable. In the story ‘Rachel and Leah’, the former says in the midst of depression: “Gardens are forgiving places, there is always another chance next year.”

I found that a consoling idea, that up until this spinning, winding, ride of life is over, there is still a chance for something a bit better. Here’s to a beautiful garden, even if it takes a while to grow.  

Writings about Kyoto, whether by Japanese or foreign observers

Truman Capote on Kyoto

April 16, 2020

Truman Capote on Kyoto, The New Yorker, November 2, 1957. The extract is taken from a lengthy interview with Marlon Brando in The Miyako Hotel during the filming of Sayonara. https://www.newyorker.com/…/11/09/the-duke-in-his-domain

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“Below the windows, the hotel garden, with its ultra-simple and soigné arrangements of rock and tree, floated in the mists that crawl off Kyoto’s waterways—for it is a watery city, crisscrossed with shallow rivers and cascading canals, dotted with pools as still as coiled snakes and mirthful little waterfalls that sound like Japanese girls giggling. Once the imperial capital and now the country’s cultural museum, such an aesthetic treasure house that American bombers let it go unmolested during the war, Kyoto is surrounded by water, too; beyond the city’s containing hills, thin roads run like causeways across the reflecting silver of flooded rice fields. That evening, despite the gliding mists, the blue encircling hills were discernible against the night, for the upper air had purity; a sky was there, stars were in it, and a scrap of moon. Some portions of the town could be seen. Nearest was a neighborhood of curving roofs. The dark façades of aristocratic houses fashioned from silky wood yet austere, northern, as secret-looking as any stone Siena palace. How brilliant they made the street lamps appear, and the doorway lanterns casting keen kimono colors—pink and orange, lemon and red. Farther away was a modern flatness—wide avenues and neon, a skyscraper of raw concrete that seemed less enduring, more perishable, than the papery dwellings stooping around it.

[…]

Downstairs, the Miyako’s lobby was deserted. There was no one at the desk, nor, outside, were there any taxis in view. Even at high noon, the fancy crochet of Kyoto’s streets had played me tricks; still, I set off through the marrow-chilling drizzle in what I hoped was a homeward direction. I’d never before been abroad so late in the city. It was quite a contrast to daytime, when the central parts of the town, caroused by crowds of fiesta massiveness, jangle like the inside of a pachinko parlor, or to early evening—Kyoto’s most exotic hours, for then, like night flowers, lanterns wreathe the side streets, and resplendent geishas, with their white ceramic faces and their teal looping lacquered wigs strewn with silver bells, their hobbled wiggle-walk, hurry among the shadows toward meticulously tasteful revelries. But at two in the morning these exquisite grotesques are gone, the cabarets are shuttered; only cats remained to keep me company, and drunks and red-light ladies, the inevitable old beggar-bundles in doorways, and, briefly, a ragged street musician who followed me playing on a flute a medieval music. I had trudged far more than a mile when, at last, one of a hundred alleys led to familiar ground—the main-street district of department stores and cinemas.”

Writers in focus

Lafcadio Hearn’s Kyoto stories

April 14, 2020
Hearn with his wife and first born (Wikicommons)

John Dougill writes…

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a most remarkable writer, at home in a range of genres. While a journalist in the US, he wrote sensational crime stories and lurid accounts of the grotesque, ranging from macabre incidents to graphic descriptions of a slaughterhouse. Later in Japan he showed himself to be adept as a folklorist as well as a writer of travel pieces, religious explications and detailed studies of insects. He was also a notable letter writer. One of the facets of his writing for which he has won particular praise is as a reteller of tales, particularly the ghost stories for which he won fame with the collection in Kwaidan (1903).

Hearn’s fourteen years in Japan saw him reside for different periods in Yokohama, Matsue, Kumamoto, Kobe and Tokyo.  He never lived in Kyoto, though he visited on more than one occasion. He came in 1892 for the first time and was pleased by the broad streets with their astonishing array of temples, shrines, silk works, kilns, gardens and parks. He wrote of wanting to plunge into study of Buddhism, but then the enchantment wears off, perhaps because of temple-satiation, because of the rain, or perhaps the incipient signs of Westernisation such as the sight of a church spire at Doshisha. Only later does he decide it’s because he misses the ancient ways and untouched customs of his beloved Matsue where the ancient gods live on in the hearts of the common folk.

Later Hearn was to write of his visit in 1895 for the celebrations for the 1100th anniversary of the founding of the city and the opening of the newly built Heian Jingu. Not surprisingly, several of the stories he loved to retell are set in Kyoto, and these are identifiable in A Lafcadio Hearn Companion by Robert L. Gale. They include: ‘Kimiko’ (p.132); ‘Common Sense’ (p.134); ‘Story of a Fly’ (p.135); ‘The Reconciliation’ (p.200); ‘The Screen Maiden’ (p.200); and ‘The Sympathy of Benten’ (p.201). In addition, ‘Yuko: A Reminisce’ (p.177) reaches its dramatic highpoint in Kyoto, though much of the story takes place elsewhere. In our ongoing series of Kyoto-related writing, we plan to cover all of these.

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For coverage of three of Hearn’s Kyoto stories, see here for ‘Common Sense’, here for ‘The Sympathy of Benten’, and here for ‘Screen Maiden’.

For Hearn on Izumo no Okuni, whose statue stands at Shijo Bridge, see here.  For Hearn on art and shadows, here, on Higashi Honganji here, on Pontocho here, and for his visit to Kyoto for the opening of Heian Jingu in 1895 click here.

Writers in focus

Greenhouse Blues (Simon Rowe)

April 9, 2020

Greenhouse Blues
by Simon Rowe

Last month a fortuitous thing happened. I discovered a large greenhouse beside the university where I work. It is used by the Faculty of Pharmacological Science to grow medicinal plants for research and is tended by a retinue of elderly men in powder-blue overalls who water and weed and keep the insects in check.

The good thing about March is that there are no university classes; the researchers are all off in Borneo or Guatemala, or wherever it is that they go to study medicinal plants, give medicinal presentations and try the local ‘medicine’ (for medicinal purposes only), which left myself and the powder-blue people to enjoy this cedar pollen-free paradise in peace.

When I first stepped into the greenhouse, the outside temperature was a big fat zero; inside it was a lush twenty-five degrees Celsius, which had me loosening my collar and humming “April Sun in Cuba” while I settled down to read my lunchtime paperback. It was Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office”, a winding yarn about a guy (himself) who skives off during working hours to go gamble on horses, drink, chase women and write bestsellers.

The powder-blue people disappear every lunchtime, so after a few weeks I started to feel a little lonely sitting in this jungle all by myself. To remedy the situation I sent out an invitation to my long-time friend, Smokin’ Joe Matsumoto, the old kitchen gardener who lives up my street. I asked him to join me. I thought he might enjoy sitting around and telling yarns about ‘old Himeji’ beneath the Piper longum (peppercorn) bush, Tamarindus indica (tamarind) tree, Cymbopogon (lemongrass),  Zingiber officinale (ginger), jasmine and orchids, but I’m yet to hear back from him.

I wanted to show him the Rauvolfia serpentina (Indian snakeroot) which, I’ve since found out, contains two hundred known alkaloids and is used as a traditional antivenin to treat snake bites in India. A little more reading and I discovered that Alexander the Great used it to cure Ptolemy of a poisoned arrow injury; Mahatma Gandhi also took it as a sedative. Snakeroot contains reserpine, an antipsychotic, antihypertensive alkaloid, which was once used by Western medicine to treat high blood pressure and schizophrenia. It is still one of the fifty most used plants in Chinese medicine.

I knocked on Smokin’ Joe’s door—he has a bear-like tendency to venture out in late March when the fragrance of the plum and cherry blossoms carries on the gusting Haru-Ichiban—but there was still no reply.

Then I had second thoughts; I feared our little ‘green-ins’ might attract attention. If other administration staff found out they could take their coffee breaks in the tropics, it might get a little too hot in there. I had to be careful.

The other day, I finished the Charles Bukowski book and searched my shelves for the next thing to take to the greenhouse. I passed over Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (too dark), Spencer Chapman’s soldiering-in-Malaya memoir The Jungle Is Neutral (too long), and Peter Matthiessen’s missionaries-in-the-Amazon adventure At Play in the Fields of the Lord (too much drama). In the end, I picked out an old favourite, Eric Hansen’s Stranger in the Forest, about his journey on foot from one side of Borneo to the other.

So, with coffee and book in hand, and whistling Guns ‘n Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle”, I returned to the greenhouse yesterday.

Only to find it locked.

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You can read more notes from the Good Hood of Himeji here: https://www.mightytales.net/seaweed-salad-days

Writers in focus

Love in the time of COVID 19

April 3, 2020

Below are two more villanelles from Preston Keido Houser. A villanelle is a fixed-form poem consisting of five tercets and a quatrain which follows a specific rhyme scheme using only two different sounds. It originated as a form of ballad and took its name from a 1606 poem by Jean Passarat, coming into fashion in the nineteenth century. As can be seen from the poems below, the first and third lines are repeated in the subsequent verses, coming together at the end with added significance.

Coming closer towards stifling straits
Humanity oscillates behind sterile walls
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

The earth at the mercy of teutonic plates
Hope resonates as the sky faintly falls
Coming closer towards stifling straits 

Pollution, radiation, population—none abates
Hubris exacerbates diplomatic brawls
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

No romance but calculated measures and weights
Science extrapolates as exuberance stalls
Coming closer towards stifling straits

Doomed demand less from elitist debates
Devotee advocates calm while Darwin calls
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

Amid a diaspora of decimated states 
Compassion creates as the heart crawls
Coming closer towards stifling straits
Left to ponder what landscape awaits

Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace
Enriching the rich and impoverishing the poor
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place

Energetic normalcy that prompted the modern to chase
After treasure now demands an end to ravenous rapport
Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace

Since mercenary machines have become the master race
Perverted polis transformed to an automated killing floor
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place

A weary world must needs resist the temptation to retrace
The patterns that generated an egregious esprit de corps
Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace

No return required to a socially toxic interface
But fare forward away from a system the majority abhor
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place

Predestination and promised contagion keep apace
Adherence to a phony fate too ignoble to ignore
Reincarnation yet another beleaguered fall from grace
Conditions that caused the collapse in the first place


NB How to Read a Villanelle
Like Japanese haiku, a villanelle is instantly recognizable by its verse form: five tercets followed by a concluding quatrain.  While the metric line is not fixed, the rhyme scheme and refraining lines are established. Traditionally, themes are external and obsessive, meaning that the poet tends to concentrate on a single social theme and uses the refrains to underscore the thematic inferences, in this case responses to the COVID 19 virus. Since villanelle topics tend to be non-psychological, the writer avoids personal pronouns (although pronouns are often implied as in Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night”). Spiritual content may be present but the social and political focus tends to occupy the foreground of the poem, the spiritual consigned to the background. Again, like haiku, the villanelle poet is likely to present, say, 70% of the topic, allowing the reader to fill in the lacunae, make the connections, and bring the poem to conclusion.

Twenty Villanelles by Preston Keido Houser is available in print and kindle versions at amazon.com. (For those in Japan both versions are available here.) For a previous villanelle by Preston, see here. For a selection of four poems here. For his witty Zen limericks, click here and here. For an improv poem, see here.

Writers in focus

Catherine Pawasarat

March 19, 2020

Catherine Pawasarat: Self-Introduction for Writers in Kyoto

The Clear Sky Retreat Center in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, founded by a group of expats in Japan (all photos courtesy Pawasarat)
Catherine Pawasarat

It’s a pleasure to join Writers in Kyoto. I appreciate the warm welcomes and it’s heartwarming to see some old familiar names and faces.

I grew up in Kansas City, U.S., and always dreamed of traveling abroad. I started studying foreign languages as a way to help me do this. A friend at Columbia U talked me into studying Japanese with him, even though I had virtually no interest in it. He dropped out and mysteriously I stuck, even though I found it impenetrable. I was impressed by how committed my Japanese professor was to our success: he held extra study groups every week, the only prof I had who did this.

My major was Spanish and English Comp Lit, and on graduation I dreamed of traveling around Latin America. But I was broke and a young woman and had no idea where to go or what to do, none of which boded well. My Japanese prof suggested I go to Japan, teach English for a year, and then travel around Asia. It seemed like a good idea. I went to the library and there were two photo books on Japan: one of Kyoto and one of Tokyo. The photos of Kyoto looked like paradise, so I decided to go there. I jumped on a plane in 1989.

Catherine’s old neighbourhood, the Kita Kannon Yama

For my first year in Japan I felt I’d been duped. Kyoto looked nothing like the photos I saw in the book. I was too busy teaching English in Osaka, paying off exorbitant deposits on apartments and phone lines in bubble-era Japan, to visit Kyoto temples and gardens.

As a lit major, I longed to write. I got a job copywriting at an ad agency in Osaka. Futurist Alex Steffen persuaded me to take his job as a freelance regional correspondent at The Japan Times. I loved getting paid to write about things that interested me, and there was always so much of interest in Kyoto.

I also wanted to get serious about Japanese so decided to go to Japanese school full time. I didn’t think I could support myself as a part-time journalist. Through serendipity (and not surprisingly former Kyoto Journal editor David Kubiak) I was offered a free place to live. It turned out to be a empty, sprawling historic traditional home with an enormous garden, in downtown Kyoto. It looked like the photos in that book! Four of us young gaijin lived there, and since we had no money we also had no furniture, so we were unintentionally very Zen. I learned the hard way to live with the seasons, and why the Japanese bath is heaven on earth.

Most relevant here, one day I ran out my front door and bumped into a gigantic wheel as tall as I was, lashed to timbers with rope. A bunch of Japanese guys paused for about two seconds to blink at me, then carried on with their rope and timber lashing. I had to get to Japanese school. By the time I came back Kita Kannon Yama was adorned in all its glory. I had no idea what it was, so started with the basics. I walked around asking Japanese men, “What is this?” and watched them try to come up with a response.

The statue of the Minami Kannon Yama, part of the Gion Festival

I wrote two articles on the Gion Festival that first summer, one on the controversy around women’s participation and the other on its internationally valuable textile collection. My Japanese was decent but I still walked around with my Japanese-English dictionary in hand, leafing through it after speaking to people, and as I tried to read the Japanese-only signs. There are lots of words in the festival that aren’t in even the best dictionaries, so I quickly learned to spend time listening to people who knew things. They turned out to be relatively small in number. Getting to know them and participating in the ancient oral tradition of the Gion Festival has proven to be one of the great joys of my life.

After a nine-month stint studying plant medicine in the Brazilian Amazon in the late 1990s, I realized I needed to learn to meditate. Ironically my karma led me to Doug Duncan, a Canadian-born meditation teacher who’d been invited to teach in Kyoto. After meditating for 10,000 hours, all those Kyoto temples took on a very different meaning.

There are temples everywhere in Kyoto of course, but around the year 2000, because of the Om Shinryikyo scandal no one wanted to let foreign strangers do retreats there. So as a group, with my meditation teacher and now partner, we founded the Clear Sky Retreat Center in Canada, in the wilds of the BC Rockies. Leaving Kyoto broke my heart but I’ve found much freedom that I hadn’t realized I didn’t have. Last year, based on years of teaching and training together, Doug and I self-published Wasteland to Pureland, a manifesto for transforming suffering into spiritual liberation.

It’s been a wonderful challenge to reconcile spending time in B.C.’s wild nature with spending time with the Shinto kami of the Gion Festival. Working to develop a sustainable organization in Canada has given me much food for thought about the sustainability of the Gion Festival, and the role tourism can play in that. Mostly, though, my meditation practice and experiences in the Amazon helped me to connect with the Gion Festival’s very profound spiritual dimensions. They are available to those who are seeking.

Catherine particularly likes the ‘byobu festival’, when heirlooms are displayed to the public by families and local companies.

After years of enjoying the Gion Festival I realized that it wouldn’t be right to keep it all to myself. Some years back I created Gion Festival.org as a guide to the Gion Festival labyrinth, and I’ll be self-publishing the first English-language guide to the Gion Festival in summer 2020. Since the Gion Festival is dedicated to deities that bring or guard against epidemics, working on the book during this Covid-19 outbreak has given me much to ponder.

Heartfelt thanks to WiK members for your support in this undertaking from across the ocean. Hope to see you in Kyoto.

Historically many people would watch the festival from second storey windows, out of which they would call out to the float musicians.
Kyoto crafts are evident in many aspects of the festival, such as the specially designed yukata for the different floats.
The ‘ondotori’, or float drivers, play a vital role in the skill of corner-turning

Lunch with Rebecca Otowa

March 17, 2020

Lunch with Rebecca Otowa
reported by Lisa Wilcut

WiK members gathered on the misty afternoon of March 14 for a lunch talk with Rebecca Otowa at Ume no Hana near Karasuma Oike. The congruence of season and venue hinted at the deep connections with time and place that are a hallmark of Rebecca’s works, which are heavily influenced by the cycles of nature, of seasonal activities, and of family. Her three books were published by Tuttle, the latest due out next week. She’s also started a blog (rebeccaotowa.com) where she continues to write about life in the countryside, Japanese culture, and psychology.

The talk started with the surprise showing of a hidden treasure: Rebecca’s handwritten, hand-illustrated manuscript of the first version of what would undergo a significant transformation and become her first book, At Home in Japan (2010). That original manuscript is a collection of essays about daily life in Japan, arranged by season, each one accompanied by Rebecca’s charming and detailed drawings, and is quite a different creature from the published version.

The cover of Rebecca’s second book was illustrated with her own paintings

Her second book, My Awesome Japan Adventure (Tuttle 2013), is the diary of the home-stay experience of an 11-year-old boy. The setting is again rural Japan, and a sense of the season during his four months from autumn into the new year is a strong presence.

While her first two books were explanatory and expository, her third book is a work of fiction that is often grounded in her life. Some of the stories in The Mad Kyoto Shoe Swapper and Other Short Stories (Tuttle, March 2020) were inspired by people she knows and events that happened in her village. Others are works of pure imagination.

Process
In at least one case, Rebecca had an idea of the arc of the story before she started, but for others, she says that her characters usually determine the story, and that they create the situation. She likened her process to a quote from Stephen King, that writing fiction is like following a multi-colored string through the grass.

Unlike King, however, Rebecca says she doesn’t force herself to keep a strict writing schedule. She writes for herself and lets her works take shape organically rather than forcing them into a mold. When once asked during an interview who her intended audience was, she replied, “Well, me! Is that bad?”

Rebecca shares a moment with Lisa Wilcut

On publishing (and persevering)
Reflecting back to her beginnings as a writer, some years ago she had the thought “If I could just publish one book. . .” and along the way, that one book has become three. Rebecca emphasized the power of visualization. When the first book was in the works––a process of several years––she went to bookstores and visualized her book there on the shelves. She says that kind of vision and mindset is very important, and that it’s no use worrying about whether or not your book will sell.

Getting that first book into print started with a connection born from a network. When she was ready to put her manuscript out into the world, someone she knew in Tokyo knew two people who had been published by Tuttle. Meetings were arranged, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Rebecca says her experience with getting her first book published was not the story of countless rejections so often heard about young writers trying to break into print. Although Tuttle rejected the initial version of her first book, they did like the idea of the book itself, and guided it into a different direction. Rebecca says that in reshaping the book, she had to choose between the art and the content. The first version includes a number of delightful and meticulously drawn sketches for each essay. However, she chose to focus on the writing, which she expanded in the process of reshaping the book.

Like Rebecca, John Dougill has also had three books published by Tuttle. Both reported that the experience with each book was different from the last. In some cases, Tuttle had a vision for the book that was quite different from what the writer had in mind, though for other projects, the publisher and/or editor had a rather light hand.

What’s Next?
Plans for the future may include a work on the “Japanese psyche” something Rebecca has been considering for a long time and about which she has pages and pages of ideas waiting in the wings. It was suggested that this might be particularly successful as a work of fiction, followed by the realization that she may have already dipped her toe into those waters with the situations and character sketches in her forthcoming book. She’s been asked about audiobooks and television adaptations of her published books, possibilities that she has not entirely dismissed.

An appreciative group plus special guest, Ted Taylor’s daughter Sora

Featured writing

Six Zen Limericks

March 14, 2020

by Preston Keido Houser

There once was a monk from Tangier
Whose prayers left him nothing to hear
But by embracing the violence
Of interminable silence
Did a mantra appear to his ear

There once was a monk from Bayonne
Who was blind to the beam he was shown
But by loving his eyes
Did he thus realize
There’s no way of knowing the known

There once was a monk from Ecuador
Who death and decay did deplore
But looking out from within
To the sign on the skin
Saw the body at best is metaphor

There once was a monk from Seville
Who set out to eradicate evil
But he learned all too soon
That one kills to consume
And the devil lives on in the angel

There once was a monk from Queens
Who demanded to know what it means
The mind when it’s one
Sees the two turn to none
And the real revealed in the seems

There once was a monk from Changchun
Whose disciples were eager and young
They called at his door
Like waves to a shore
Or like bells that have yet to be rung

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For a Villanelle by Preston, see here. For Improv Poetry, here. For a selection of poems, here. To hear Preston talk about shakuhachi and Zen, and to hear him play, please listen to the following podcast:
https://www.ancientdragon.org/podcast-library/

Featured writing

Your Inner Witch

March 12, 2020

Meet Your Inner Witch in Just Five Easy Steps
by Marianne Kimura

Introduction: I’ve had to find out a lot about witches in the course of writing academic pieces about Shakespeare’s plays with witches, such as Macbeth, or in which some sort of magic occurs, like The Winter’s Tale. From my gleanings, I wrote this brief and handy instructional how-to guide for those of you who wish to meet your inner witch quickly and without extensive study. (Note: “witches” include male, female and any other gender. I’ve used “she” as the main pronoun but please feel free to take it only as a syntactic placeholder carrying no semantic information, and to change it in your mind while you read.)

*****************

All you need for making moon water (pic by John Dougill)

Witchery is all the rage. Witches are resurgent, witches are among us, witches are here, there and everywhere. Thus it behooves you, a mortal, to hunt for your own witch within you, not to set her on fire but to explain to her what you intend to do and to ask for her witchy advice.

Step-the-first. Contact your witch. Close your eyes and visualize a hill. See her clambering up a slope of sliding and rolling stones. As her foot steps on one stone, it gets loose in the sandy dry soil and falls or rolls away down the mountain, but your witch stays just ahead of the crumbling path, and this is how she makes progress. Thus you shall know her by her desperation and by her energy. She is unmissable. A figure on the hill, a tiny point, a speck, but you will know her, certainly, all the same.

Step-the-second. Cast a spell. It is a requirement that you cast a spell. This is for the purpose of initiation and to gain the trust of your witch. Some see spells as mere love song lyrics or just the noise of sparrows, but do not be fooled, do not be dissuaded. Stand facing the wind and the rain and imagine your seed corn is in your palm, then throw it north or south or east or west, or into a bucket of moon water*, depending on your desires and your necessities. There! Now you have done it, now you are initiated, you are one of us she will say. Welcome to the coven. You have met her face to face. Do not, I say, do not pull her ears at this point. Not yet.

  • moon water is made by leaving a container of water outside under the full moon

Step-the-third. Tell your own fortune. Already you have journeyed so far along this path, you have gotten this far, so you should be able to see clearly now some of the landscape features around you, whether they are mountains, rivers, trees, daffodils, bridges, or so forth. But yet, your inner witch knows, and you know too, that some features remain hidden behind vaporous, swirling mists or voluminous flowering bushes, or they are obscured by being too distant. You can use tarot cards to see behind the bushes or through the mists. Also, two tarot cards, when rolled up cylindrically, make a fine pair of binoculars to see the distant future. But I jest. But I do not jest. Logic suggests to us that jesters never tell the truth, but witches always tell the truth. Except when they are jesting, or only when they are jesting.

Step-the-fourth. Determine your witch-name. Yes, your witch has a name and this name will patently, obviously be different from your “real” name. How to find this name? Imagine that the universe is revealing this name to you in some innocuous places: the words in songs, such as the sun, snow, fireflies, stars, walled medieval city, whiskey; or the types of birds you have seen in the skies, whether swallows or hawks or starlings; or even the colors of various extraordinary watercolor paints, such as azure, cyan, sandpaper, February pink, chestnut. Eventually, from many whisperings and mutterings and clamourings, from a chorus of many possibilities, one special word, like the sound of a bell, will emerge as the victor and claim your soul. With a mysterious smile, whisper your witch’s name while gazing out of a window at either dusk or dawn. This window and its twilight reflection will symbolize your interior perspective on your new identity as a witch named ―?––.

Step-the-fifth-and-last. Find a familiar to help you. The orbit of Venus around the sun relative to the Earth famously makes a perfect and beautiful five-pointed star, also known as a pentagram. Even the Ancients knew it. Five, the goddess’ number, is therefore the hallowed number, signifying the fifth and final step. Your goal is therefore within sight, like the five fingers on your left hand. Your familiar may already be familiar: the brooding huntsman spider on your wall, the devious moths fluttering out from your clothes drawer on the summer solstice, a shadowy black cat in your garden, a tiny ribbon snake in your tea cup. It is recommended that you look everywhere for your familiar, but do not rush. As you look, be cosmic, be circumspect, be magical, be wise, be yourself. (That’s five). Also, learn to interpret what those beautiful crow feathers mean when you see them on the road before you. And please, do buy a broom (unless you already own one), but a pointy hat is only optional.

Now you have presumably met your inner witch. You may pull her ears, or your own ears (by now they are the same), but not too hard, and only in jest.

*****************

More by Marianne Kimura here or here or here or here or here or here. The pieces concern thoughts on Shakespeare, goddesses, ninjas and a prize winning entry for the Writers in Kyoto Competition.

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