Writers In Kyoto

Page 43 of 65

Writing retreat in Shikoku (May 17-19)

March 9, 2019

The following piece below is extracted from a website giving much fuller information. Click here to see it…

Full title for the book on which the retreat is based is

The Abundance of Less: Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan
The Abundance of Less: Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan

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For the first time in twelve years, in May of 2019, professional writing teacher, author of The Abundance of Less, and winner of the 2017 Nautilus Award in Sustainable Living, Andy Couturier, will be leading a small group of travelers to the mountains of Japan–the beautiful village of Kamikatsu on the southern island of Shikoku.

Using writing as a tool for self reflection (“non-writers” welcome), we can understand the forces–internal and external–that pull us way from the truly satisfied life we know we can live.

The journey will combine time for writing and reflection with encounters with some inspiring Japanese people who are pioneering a new way of living.   They have rejected the commercialism and status-consciousness of mainstream Japanese society  and live lives of deep contact  with the natural world.

There will be time for slow walks in the mountains, visits to Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and daily baths in a rural hot springs by a rushing river.  And every day we will go deeper into ourselves and into our experience by using writing to help us discover “The Good Life” for ourselves.

Instead of “the cornucopia approach” that many tours to Japan take, this journey will be slow, rich, centered in order to support personal reflection, connection with nature, and community building among group members and villagers.

Instead of zooming all over the country, we will stay in one beautiful village for ten days so we can deepen into our internal reflection, and have plenty of time to write.

We will stay at hot spring with an inn beside a rushing river for most of the ten days, with an overnight trip to the sacred Shinto Todoroki waterfall complex (over eight huge waterfalls) with an overnight by the ocean and a visit to temple on the Buddhist pilgrimage.

Lodging will be modest but comfortable, in line with the theme of simplicity and respect for the natural world. Meals will be primarily vegetarian and incredibly delicious.

Dates:  May 17-27,  2019
Location: Kamikatsu Village, Tokushima Prefecture   

This is a journey for people who have read The Abundance of Less and who want to go deeper. By meeting people profiled in the book, Atsuko Watanabe, (chapter 3) and Osamu Nakamura, (chapter 2), and by guided writing experiences, you will find the tools to bring your life more in line with your values–individual, environmental and social.

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For details of the price, application process and style of retreat, please see this link.  For a review of the book on which the retreat is based, The Abundance of Less, please see this link by Edward J. Taylor.

Writers in focus

Free ebook limited offer

March 6, 2019

Free ebook of the WiK 2017 Anthology now available from amazon. Contributions by Alex Kerr, Amy Chavez and Eric Johnston, amongst others. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction and stunning illustrations by John Einarsen of Kyoto Journal fame.

This campaign, which closes Sunday, is to advertise the Writers in Kyoto Competition of 300 words about Kyoto, the deadline for which is March 31. ¥30,000 first prize, and Kyoto crafts for runners-up. Details of how to enter and examples of previous winners can be found on the writersinkyoto.com website.

After clicking on the link below, choose the right hand purchase button for ¥0 rather than the Kindle Unlimited version which amazon seems keen to push…

amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Writers-Kyoto-Anthology-2017-ebook/dp/B07JJ4WRVV/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=writers+in+kyoto&qid=1551904476&s=gateway&sr=8-1

amazon.jp
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Echoes-Writers-Kyoto-Anthology-English-ebook/dp/B07JJ4WRVV/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551904817&sr=8-1&keywords=writers+in+kyoto

 

CONTENTS

About Writers in Kyoto

Preface (Alex Kerr)

 Three Poems (A.J. Dickinson)

 On Childraising in Japan: Expanding into Interdependence (Karen Lee Tawarayama)

 Dateline: Kyoto – Western Journalism from Japan’s Ancient Capital (Eric Johnston)

 Poem: At Koryu-ji (Ken Rodgers)

 Lafcadio Hearn and Basil Hall Chamberlain (Joseph Cronin)

 Hearn, Myself and Japan (John Dougill)

Haiku Cycle (Mayumi Kawaharada)

 Three Old Men of Kyoto (Alex Kerr)

 Sprawling City, Sacred Mountain (David Joiner)

 Writers in Kyoto Competition: 2017 Winners
1) The Joys of Silence and Bewilderment (Jane Kramer)

            2) Palm of the Hand Story (Mark Cody)
3) Yamaguchi-san (Florentyna Leow)           

Basho’s Appreciation for Women: 15 Poems of Female Experience (Jeff Robbins)

 Tokonoma Lessons (Paul Carty)

 Pride of Place – Saké Vessels (Robert Yellin)

Equivocal Ceramics (Allen S. Weiss)

Chieko’s Story: First Love at Daimonji (Isil Bayraktar)

Under the Light (Edward J. Taylor)

Six Poems (Mark Richardson)

 Return to Goat Island (Amy Chavez)

Writers in focus

Zen for Foreigners (Micah Auerback)

March 6, 2019

Micah Auerback with his copious research notes

At a dinner talk on March 3, Micah Auerback introduced us to research he is doing on the first outreach by Zen practitioners in Japan to Western foreigners. Currently on sabbatical from the University of Michigan, Micah is a specialist in Japanese religion and author of A Storied Sage, about the changes in depictions of the historical Buddha in Japan.

On this occasion Micah told us of the events at Enpuku-ji in the city of Yawata in the 1930s. Apparently the idea to reach out to foreigners was the brainchild of the head priest, Kozuki Tesshu (1879-1937), former abbot of Myoshin-ji, who believed in spreading Zen to Westerners by giving them a feel for the religion without subjecting them to the kind of rigorous regime demanded of Japanese. Western beds, for example, along with Western food and comforts. Although Kozuki did not speak English, he was aided by Ogata Sohaku (1901-73) who did, and who was attached to Shokoku-ji.

In an article of 1935, Ogata wrote of two types of Westerners with an interest in Zen. The first group were motivated by disillusionment with Christianity, prompting Ogata to note that Buddhism was a superior and more rational religion. Other Westerners were said to be motivated by a love of the Orient, and Ogata has some cutting remarks about them…

For people of this variety, simply to visit a Zen temple, far from the dust of the world, is itself already a great joy, and they feel limitless satisfaction at having a cup of tea with a Zen monk who wears rough garments on his body, but who dons silk in his mind. Sitting together with unsui, [practitioners of Zen] silent in a soundless hall, they come to feel as if they too have renounced the world, and when they walk through the spotlessly swept gardens of the training temple, they feel just as if they have transformed into a figure in an ink-painting…  To arrange soup, bread, and butter on the dining table – and when it’s time for the meal, to hear the calm sounds of the sutra – is, they say, much more introspective and noble than beginning a dinner party with music in the Western style. Thus what these people want seems to be a lifestyle and a mode of sensibility that are purely Oriental….   while we are evaluating whether Westerners could possibly understand Zen, a letter arrives from their homelands, written by a blue-eyed foreign monk who wears a haori jacket and sits on tatami, saying “Amongst the Japanese I think that the unsui in the training hall and the geisha girls are the most impressive. They are always alert and on guard everywhere.”

The provision of a hostel for Westerners at Enpuku-ji provoked a short news item in the New York Times, noting that it had been ‘specially built for foreign comfort’ with electric heaters, running water and foreign plumbing. It also noted that the sermons of head priest Kozuki would be translated by Daisetsu Suzuki, who had lived in the US and had an American wife.

Among the copious handouts Micah kindly presented the group with was a fascinating list of contents for a yearbook published by the Osaka Mainichi for 1932-33. Amongst such featured items as ‘Olympic [sic] and Japan’, ‘Japanese Women as Lawyers’, and ‘Geisha Becoming Dance Minded’ is a full page article on a ‘Zen Hospice’ with the subtitle ‘Unique Attempt in Japan to Propagate Zen Teaching Among Foreign Devotees’. One of the most striking items is a picture of the Meditation Cave, which summons up thoughts of asceticism and Bodhidharma. In fact the cave was specially built for the exclusive use of foreign students with consideration for their comfort and fitted with tatami and heating.

Micah tells us he still has loose ends to follow up before he completes his picture of what went on exactly, and that eventually his research will end up in an article or articles about the Enpuku-ji experiment. We look forward to seeing the result and reading more of this intriguing tale.

Writers in focus

WiK 2017 Anthology (Yellin)

March 4, 2019

One of the pieces in the Second WiK Anthology (Echoes, 2017) was by Robert Yellin, international expert on Japanese pottery and owner of the Yakimono Gallery. The following piece is an extract only; the full article is in Echoes: Writers in Kyoto Anthology, which can be obtained in print or Kindle ebook versions through amazon. Following this general introduction, Robert goes on to describe three of his favourite pieces (one of which is the Iga flask to which he refers). An indication of his eye for beauty can be seen in the striking photographs that he has given us permission to reproduce below…

For an account of Robert’s talk for Writers in Kyoto, see here.

(The 2018 WiK Anthology is expected out in June.)

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Drinking saké in Japan is an art when done with the right vessels. The history of saké vessels—collectively called shuki in Japanese—dates back millenniums and the variety of shuki found throughout Japan is as varied as there are clouds in the sky. For me, collecting shuki was my introduction into the Japanese pottery world as a young twenty-something in 1984 who couldn’t afford an expensive imported California Cabernet Sauvignon and so I thought better to go local, and that of course meant saké.

Almost all potters in Japan make shuki and they are avidly collected, often the first items to sell-out at exhibitions. Some of the earliest pieces I bought are shown here and have taught me quite a lot about Japanese history, regional styles, the joy of functional art, and of course the immense pleasure that comes with using fine vessels at the table, something the Japanese call Yo-no-Bi or Beauty through Use.

Iga is one of Japan’s ancient high-fired unglazed stonewares named after the town it was made in, as often is the case for Japanese styles. [Take this] Iga tokkuri, or flask, by the celebrated potter Shiro Tsujimura. At first I didn’t ‘get it.’ Look, the neck is leaning, there’s grit all over it, the base has a fused bit of clay on it, the glazing is uneven! In most western traditions—and certainly at art schools—this would have been a failure piece, yet here in Japan it’s the epitome of good taste. The reason being we find nature and man working together without one wanting to totally control each other or the process, yet letting intuition, passion, experience, and letting go take over. Meaning the beauty of this Tsujimura tokkuri is of course the clay he dug, processed and formed, yet also his willingness to let the process also have a say in the outcome, in a sense what we might call the ‘Beauty of the Imperfect.’ Kind of like you and I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Featured writing

2016 Competition Winner

March 3, 2019

As the deadline nears for the 2019 Writers in Kyoto Competition (March 31), we turn back the clock to look again at some of the winning entries from years past  to see if there is anything that might serve as inspiration for those thinking of entering. (Full details of how to enter can be found by clicking on the link to the right.)

The following piece was submitted by Peter Mallet. The judges felt this got under the surface of life in Kyoto by revealing something of the feelings that lie beneath those elegant kimono. Moreover, it seemed an opportune and appropriate subject matter, given the importance of Nishijin weaving and the prevalence of kimono-wearing females in recent times on the streets of the city.

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Kimono Memories

Mothballs. The odour of naphthalene hit her nose as she opened the chest. She unwrapped and took out the carefully folded kimono – the formal black one, the one she would need. Beneath it, the autumn kimono with its pattern of maple leaves she’d worn for her daughter’s shichi-go-san ceremony at the Kitano Temmangu Shrine, in the Nishijin district where the silk for the garment had been woven.

Layers of a life: her history entwined with the fabric.

At the bottom of the pile lay the exquisite furisode kimono she’d worn for her engagement ceremony. She stroked the soft silk lovingly, admiring once again the shibori embroidery. Such fine work: it had cost her parents dearly. A necessary expense, however, to ensure a good marriage into a suitable Kyoto family.

An expense for an item she never, of course, wore again once the marriage negotiations were settled. She’d hoped her daughter might wear the long-sleeved kimono when she became of age but patterns and colours had changed and Megumi refused to contemplate a 25-year-old hand-me-down.

Had it been a ‘good’ marriage? Hiroshi had certainly been eligible – a doctor with his own clinic in downtown Kyoto. She’d enjoyed the privilege of his status, the material rewards of high salary. He’d denied her nothing. Nothing but the one thing she’d wanted.

As her mother-in-law demanded, she pretended to be ignorant of the betrayals, his string of infidelities. The traditions of this city had bound her as tightly as the obi she’d tie around her waist for the ceremony tomorrow.

The black kimono would still smell of mothballs in the morning. How could she have prepared it for her husband’s funeral? Who could have expected him to die of a heart attack, aged only 56, in such a compromising situation?

Writers in focus

Award-winning novelist (Wataya)

February 27, 2019

Risa Wataya

From Wikipedia

Risa Wataya (綿矢 りさ), born February 1, 1984, is a Japanese novelist from Kyoto. Her short novel Keritai senaka won the Akutagawa Prize and has sold more than a million copies.  Her work has been translated into German, Italian, French, Thai, Korean, and English.

Biography

Wataya was born in Kyoto, Japan. Her mother was a university English teacher, and her father worked for a clothing company. At age 17, she told her parents that she was working on her university entrance exams, but she was actually writing her first novella, titled Insutōru (Install). Insutōruwon the 38th Bungei Prize in 2001. It was later adapted into a 2004 film of the same name, starring Aya Ueto.

After graduating from Murasakino High School in Kyoto, Wataya attended Waseda University, where her thesis focused on the structure of Osamu Dazai’s Hashire merosu (走れ、メロス Run, Melos!). In 2004, while a second-year student at Waseda, Wataya received the Akutagawa Prize for her short novel Keritai senaka (“The Back You Want to Kick”). Wataya shared the prize with Hitomi Kanehara, another young, female author. At the age of 19, Wataya became the youngest author and only the third student ever to win the Akutagawa Prize.[6]An English version of Keritai senakawas published 12 years later under the title I Want to Kick You in the Back.

Wataya did not immediately write more novels after winning the Akutagawa Prize, but rather worked several jobs in Kyoto, including selling clothes in a department store and serving as a hotel waitress.[8]She returned to writing with her 2007 book Yume wo ataeru (Give Me a Dream), and in 2010 her novel Katte ni furuetero (Tremble All You Want) became a best-seller in Japan. In 2017 a film adaptation of Katte ni furuetero, directed by Akiko Ooku, premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival and won the festival’s Audience Award.

Wataya moved back to Kyoto in 2011. In 2012 her novel Kawaisou da ne?(“Isn’t it a pity?”) won the Kenzaburo Oe Prize. Wataya announced her marriage in 2014. Her first child, a son, was born in late 2015.

Writing style

Wataya’s early work focused on strong female protagonists in high school settings.[13]While her writing addresses gender and youth sexuality, media coverage of Wataya’s first two books tended to portray Wataya as more conservative than Hitomi Kanehara, her contemporary and co-winner of the 130th Akutagawa Prize.

She has said that Junot Díaz, Osamu Dazai, and Haruki Murakamiare some of her favorite authors.

Film

  • 2004 Insutōru (Install)
  • 2017 Katte ni furuetero (Tremble All You Want)

Books in Japanese

  • インストール (Install). Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing Co., 2001.
  • 蹴りたい背中 (Keritai senaka, The Back I Want to Kick). Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing Co., 2003.
  • 夢を与える (Yume wo ataeru, To Give a Dream). Kawade Shobo Shinsha Publishing Co., 2007.
  • 勝手にふるえてろ (Katte ni furuetero, Tremble All You Want). Bungeishunju Ltd.,2010.
  • かわいそうだね？ (Kawaisou da ne?, Isn’t It a Pity?) Bungeishunju Ltd.,2010.

Selected works in English

  • “from Install“, trans. Katherine Lundy, Words without Borders, 2012
  • I Want to Kick You in the Back, trans. Julianne Neville, One Peace Books, 2015

Kamishibai (Sydney Solis)

February 20, 2019

Sydney and husband at a WiK workshop

WiK member Sydney Solis has a longstanding interest in kamishibai, the Japanese art of picture story telling. She has created and published six titles of her own which can be found here. One of them was based n a Japanese folktale about the Grateful Crane.

Last year, following her move to Japan, she did a performance of her own creation, Storytime Yoga, at an English language cafe in Osaka. It was through her interest in the art form that she came to make contact with the International Kamishibai Association of Japan and participate in the event described below, courtesy of NHK….

(To learn more of Sydney’s personal story, and her interest in myth and yoga, please take a look at this page.)

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“Kamishibai” Picture Theater Promotes Peace Message

NHK link: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ondemand/audio/plugin-20190131-1/

January 31, 2019
Two women have begun to use “Kamishibai” picture theater to depict the tragedy of the atomic bombings and spread the message of peace. One of them is an American whose grandfather was a prisoner of war of Japan during World War ll. The other is a Japanese woman whose grandfather was also incarcerated because he sounded a warning that his country would be defeated.

The Japanese woman, Eiko Matsui, produced “Never Again,” Kamishibai on the importance of peace.

Eiko Matsui (left) instructs Sydney Solis (right) how to perform Kamishibai.

Sydney performs the English version of “Never Again” in front of a Japanese audience.

1950s Kyoto (Hans Brinckmann)

February 4, 2019

Guest speaker, Hans Brinckmann

What was it like in Kyoto in the 1950s? You hardly ever saw foreigners, for one thing. If you did, you stopped to say hello. That was the Kyoto a banker from Holland called Hans Brinckmann got to know and love. Though he lived in Kobe, he visited whenver he could at weekends. As he got to know the town, he fell in love with it.

Hans Brinckmann arrived in Japan in 1950 to work in a bank in Kobe. He started learning Japanese despite the warnings of his sub manager that it would damage his mind. In 1954 he was transferred to Tokyo, where he missed his outings to Kyoto, so he was glad to get back to a post in Osaka. His favourite places included the bamboo grove in Imagumano Shrine; Tofukuji where he made friends with a monk who complained of ills from the rigorous regime of the Zen monastery; and a ryokan called Takeya, which he got to like despite the austerity of conditions there and the perishing cold.

Like others before him, he went though cultural conundrums about how to reconcile East and West, coming out on the Japanese side of things. The world was not simple black and white, right or wrong, as the Western ego insisted, but a more modest grey made up of maybe, sighs and silences.

One key event was attending an exhibition by Paul Reps of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones fame. He had done wonderful freehand calligraphy of whimsical words on Japanese ‘washi’ paper. “Drinking a cup of tea, I stop the war,’ was one of the verses.  Later Hans got to know him in his Ohara home. (Reps is now considered one of America’s first haiku poets.)

 

A more important friendship was with the poet Shimaoka Kenseki, who introduced him to all manner of artists, potters and monks. One of the most colourful was a poet and personality called Ichida Yae san, an heiress who wore her kimono in defiant mock Heian style and was known as the second Ono no Komachi for her beauty. She is said to have been the model for one of Tanizaki’s heroines.

Hans was closely involved in setting up Kyoto’s first Dutch restaurant, though alas it went out of business after two years. He also took part in the English edition of a Japanese poetry publication called New Japan Pebbles, but it too only survived six editions. All the while he enjoyed networking with Shimaoka, who was not only a poet, but a teacher and columnist with a wide range of friends – a gynecologist, an obi maker, a building contractor. One person Hans befriended was the potter, Katoh Sho, who dealt in tea ware.

A rapt audience hanging on to the well-crafted words of Hans Brinckmann’s memoirs. (Photo Ken Rodgers)

But the most significant of the encounters in Kyoto came through an unexpected and unrequested omiai he had, with just two hours’ notice. It turned out the couple shared the same literary and pottery tastes, and when she happened to brush his arm he ‘flexed his banker’s biceps in acknowledgement’. The pair married and spent a happy life together until her death in 2007.

Hans has published many articles and books, covering poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Asked about his writing process, he said it was different for each genre. Fiction he could see unfurling in his imagination, non-fiction required constant fact checking. He confessed to being a slow writer, though the volume of publication would suggest he’s a hard worker.

And what does the great lover of Kyoto think of the city now? You hear more Chinese than Japanese in the streets, he says. It’s difficult to even recognise some of the areas. But notwithstanding he remains a strong admirer of the city and its people because of their modest dignity and pride in upholding tradition. For personal reasons Hans now lives in Fukuoka, but he still makes an effort to revisit the city he fell in love with all those years ago.

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For a listing of Hans Brinckmann’s work, both in English and Japanese, take a look at this amazon page.  Of particular note here is the collection of short stories, The Tomb in the Kyoto Hills.. For the website blog of Hans, with videos and his writings, see here.

Hans Brinckmann in white shirt and his translator, Hiromi Mizoguchi, left in white shirt

Books by Hans Brinckmann (with thanks to Deep Kyoto)

The Magatama Doodle
Part personal memoir, part professional flashback, part socio-cultural commentary, this title chronicles the author’s experiences during his twenty-four years (1950-74) of living in Japan as a reluctant banker. It also touches on some of the significant changes that have taken place in Japanese society since the mid-Seventies.

 

Noon Elusive
 An American architect in Paris, a Balkan parachutist, a Dutch diplomat in Japan, a New York heart surgeon, an English undertaker-the characters are as colourful as they are diverse. What they have in common is that they are all in the throes of personal crisis, mild and manageable, or severe and harrowing. Consciously or not, they are all in search of the high noon of life.

Showa Japan
Japan’s Showa era began in 1926 when Emperor Hirohito took the throne and ended on his death in 1989. The formative age of modern Japan, it was undoubtedly the most momentous, calamitous, successful and glamorous period in Japan’s recent history. Today, Showa is a beacon for nostalgia that is memorialized yearly in a national holiday. An era of growth and prosperity, it saw Japan go from an isolated, embattled nation to a peaceful country holding the exalted position of the world’s second largest economy.

The Undying Day
A widowed water bird in an Amsterdam canal… abandoned villages ‘flitting fitfully by’ as he rides the Eurostar to Paris… the sun, ‘averse to setting, extending the you-filled day’… such are the diverse sources of inspiration for Brinckmann’s poetry.
Unconstrained by locale or subject matter, his lines celebrate the marvel of love and ponder life’s irretrievable losses. He is no stranger to whimsy either, nor to the search for life’s ultimate meaning.

The Tomb in the Kyoto Hills
A striking and highly engaging collection of stories. The offerings include A Leap into the Light, the compelling tale of a Dutch businessman’s secretive life with the young daughter of his late Japanese mistress; Kyoto Bus Stop, about the chance encounter between a visitor from Europe and a mysterious young French woman in Kyoto; Pets in Marriage, which chronicles a Japanese married couple and their respective preference for cats and dogs, which comes to a head at the foot of Mt. Fuji; Twice upon a Plum Tree, an exploration of a Dutch diplomat’s ambivalence about a Japanese woman he once loved; and the title story, The Tomb in the Kyoto Hills, about a Chicago-based lawyer who moves his family to Japan to find the truth of his origins once and for all.

In the Eyes of the Sun
Peter van Doorn, dreams of life with a camera. His leftwing father, Eduard – a journalist and former WWII photographer – at first supports his son’s ambition and even gives him his wartime Leica. But when Peter tries to save someone from a fatal accident instead of “capturing the moment of violent death,” Eduard decides that his son lacks the guts for “real” photography, the kind he practiced during the war, the only kind of photography “worthy of a man,” even in peacetime. He forces Peter into overseas banking instead. Starting in 1953, Peter’s exotic career takes him from his native Holland to Singapore and on to Chicago where he marries a socialite. But his dream never dies, and at last, in 1978, he sacrifices his stable career and family to embark on the life of a freelance photographer – in New York.

Featured writing

Travelling North (Rowe)

January 26, 2019

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. As we pulled out of Himeji under stormy skies, I imagined the accident scene—the cops, ambulance crew, everyone standing around munching on prawn crackers while the victims bled to death.

The night was a dirty one; rain hammered down all through Kakogawa, Akashi, Kobe, and even beneath Osaka’s neon glow, the heavens did not close for the night. My thoughts turned to other travellers also heading for Tokyo. How many of them were hitchhiking? How many of them were hitchhiking in a truck? How many of them were hitchhiking in a truck filled with prawn rice crackers? The thought made me peckish.

We fell in with a convoy of other long-haul drivers, and soon the night was filled with a constellation of heavy vehicle lights, swarming and swirling like fireflies about us. Uramoto worked his gear stick like a one-armed bandit, barrelling us in and out of tunnels, pinballing us over flyways, slowing only at toll gates to toss in some coin and sniff the air. Day belonged to the commuter; night belonged to Uramoto and his rig of rice crackers.

I caught glimpses of other truckies—the most unlikely faces you’ve ever seen: young men who looked barely old enough to drive, women with makeup and trinkets in their hair, others resembling moonlighting rocket scientists, all Coke-bottle glasses and lantern jaws, lit by the eerie glow of dashboard lights.

Uramoto was single. He had a girl somewhere down south, near Fukuoka. On this subject he laughed nervously and lit one cigarette with another. Then our conversation dried up and I went to sleep. Rain beat down on the Fuso’s cab and Ladysmith Black Mambazo sang ‘Homeless’ on the radio.

A little after midnight we pulled into a roadhouse. The rain had subsided leaving the night mist heavy, the mountain air chilled and calm. Dozens and dozens of trucks lined up in the parking bay, all of them idling, their drivers dozing, exhausts bubbling oily fumes in the cold night. I went in search of a snack.

Uramoto had kept his pedal to the metal; we were in Yamanashi and closer to Kōfu than I had thought. Somewhere in the Kōfu Basin we pulled in at another roadhouse. This time we drank some beer, and in weary silence, reclined our captain’s chairs and fell asleep to the caress of the Fuso’s faux-lace curtains.

At six a.m., I awoke to Billie Holiday’s ‘Stormy Weather’ and we cruised into Kōfu with its wide, mist-filled streets, deserted save for the old-timers pacing the sidewalks in their Uniqlo sweats.

High over the city, the mountains of the Kōfu Basin loomed large wrapped in their blankets of mist. I said farewell to Uramoto—thanking him for the ride, bidding him safe travels. He slipped me some rice crackers for my onward journey. Then I bought a one-way ticket to Shinjuku and jumped aboard the next local train.

Icy mountain streams gushed from valley sides each side of the rail line. Traditional wooden houses perched impossibly above them. On the balcony of one, I glimpsed a housewife in the midst of hanging out her laundry. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a thousand years. She had fallen asleep in the morning sunlight, peg and clothes still in hand.

Then I too was asleep, rocking and rolling with the motion of the train, following a river to a great city, with a rice cracker in hand.

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For a previous short story by Simon, see https://archived.writersinkyoto.com/2018/03/sword-dancer-rowe/

For Simon’s account of marketing his self-published collection of short stories, see here

 

Writers in focus

Words and Photos (John Einarsen)

January 12, 2019

Some Words and Photographs

By John Einarsen

The words attached to a photograph can radically alter how we “read” or understand it. Words give context, intended or unintended. One’s experience of an image often depends on the words that caption it.

My approach to photography is perceptual, which means that my focus is on the direct experience of “seeing.” Therefore, my images never require titles; I want the viewer to experience the image as I experienced it. I don’t want to add a filter (words, in this case) to create some impression, fact or concept. That said, on some occasions I might list the location of where the image was taken, since the one question people inevitably ask about a photograph is: “Where was it taken?” But this is more out of convenience. I make images that are meant to be experienced without words.

That said, an image can also be an inspiration for words. On June 9th of last year, Rebecca Otowa kindly invited me to show some of my Miksang photographs in a SWET-sponsored workshop on Flash Fiction.  I made several small prints, and the seven participants chose ones that intrigued them and then inspired to write something. Here are a few:

The Easel

Nearly an hour had passed, and she lay on her back on the kitchen floor unable to get up. It had struck as she’d begun to chop leeks for the lunch they always shared around noon. Gazing upward now at the clock, she realized she could no longer read it. Were those numerals? They must be.

How much longer would it take him, engrossed in the painting upon his easel… how much hunger to realize that she hadn’t called him? To walk the few steps from his adjoining studio. To find her supine on the checkered linoleum, angrily bleeding inside of her skull?

—Stewart Wachs

 


Haiku

Once I had a form.
The world was too much with me.
I’ll melt away now.
—Rebecca Otowa

To be honest, I find the visual world to be much more vivid than language, which exists for the most part inside our heads. That is why I am a photographer and not a writer. Belonging to a writer’s group is a bit ironic.

Last spring, I held an exhibition of photographs entitled “The Universe at My Feet” in the KG+ section of the Kyotographie International Photography Festival. None of the photographs were titled, but a text provided vital information about my approach and how the images came about. It was important and I include it here:

The Universe at My Feet

Last summer I found myself following a gutter for several blocks in a residential neighborhood in a small town in Colorado. It was a pleasure to discover what the last rain had left. As small children we exist close to  the ground. It is our world, a realm full of wondrous things. Smooth pebbles, mysterious weeds, puddles, mud, asphalt. This is where we learn to navigate reality.

As a child, I loved the gutter on the street in front of our house; in winter, it was here that I collected thin, delicate crystals of ice, placing them carefully in a cigar box that I brought to my mother to keep in the icebox freezer, which existed in another realm far above my head. Those small slivers of ice were treasures, beautiful transformations that I wanted to preserve. As we grow older and enter adulthood, the ground from which we discovered so much slowly recedes from our awareness and memory.

Yet it is always at our feet, an ever-changing universe rich in form, space, texture and delicate formations. Evocative symbols materialize and fade; puddles appear like portals to parallel worlds before evaporating; and then there are scattered leaves. My teacher, Julie Dubose, writes about why they resonate so deeply with us:

“… there is no more pervasive and accessible metaphor for the delicacy and tenderness of our lives and all things in our world that are born, that live and grow old, and then die. Leaves are blown about by the wind, flung far from the tree of their origin, to land helplessly wherever their fate determines…”

At our feet we are able to encounter the continuous undirected activity of our universe and deeply experience the fleeting nature of existence.

—John Einarsen

I have taken more photographs since that exhibition and include a selection of recent work along the same theme. Please enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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John Einarsen recently published Small Buildings of Kyoto Volume II. Proceeds from sales support the printing of Kyoto Journal. (https://kyotojournal.org/blog-highlights/small-buildings-of-kyoto-is-back/)

Together with Mitsue Nagase, John will hold a Miksang Contemplative Photography Workshop from May 8th to May 12th in Kyoto. (https://kyotojournal.org/blog-highlights/miksang-contemplative-photography-workshop-in-kyoto/)

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Writers in Kyoto (WiK) is a group of English-language authors working or living in the city, or admiring it from afar. It is run on a membership basis and its purpose is for writers to help each other by creating opportunities for promotion, book launches, readings, the exchange of information, and social events. Read more

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