Greetings to the WiK community! Please allow me to introduce myself as yet another member of the group who has fallen head over heels in love with the beautiful city of Kyoto. I joined the Writers in Kyoto group because of my passion for writing, as well as my eagerness for networking with others who inspire me deeply, while feverishly trying to balance all of my interests as a full-time working mother.

A U.S.-born resident of Japan since 1999, I had previously experienced an extended period as a global nomad in India, Kenya, and Israel. However, my journey to this inevitable destination began with a book that my mother picked up for twenty-five cents at a local consignment shop when I was about five years old. Within the covers of Children of Many Lands (authored by Dana Bruce and Elizabeth F. McCrady) were stories of the everyday lives of children in traditional settings around the globe, but I had a particular affinity for little Matsu, who eagerly awaited her “Honorable Father and Mother” to take her to the shop for a new doll for the Girls’ Festival, and also described the “Festival of Flags” for her younger brother, Taro. Little did I know that at this point in my life, I would be going to the shop to buy koi-nobori (carp banners) for my own Japanese son. Now, more than ever, I have a strong belief that life flows on in its own rhythm, carving a distinct path for each of us. I feel a sure sense of destiny, especially when walking in Kyoto’s open spaces such as Kamogawa Park, being surrounded by mountains and hearing the rushing of the waterfalls along the way, and watching the long grasses on the banks of the river waving in the breeze on a sunny day.

Perhaps, thanks to Children of Many Lands, I am a cultural anthropologist at heart. My subsequent experiences as a childhood actress developed my love for stepping into the shoes of another and examining the world and “ways of being” from other perspectives through the required embodiment of various characters. It is in this spirit that my love continues for speaking with others and learning what makes them tick. To find commonalities as well as differences, and in my current setting to learn more about what constitutes the Japanese mind and lifestyle. I’m naturally drawn to talking to people, sharing stories, and either finding common points that bind us together, or variations that create a deeper, more sympathetic understanding of the diversity of human nature.

My current memoir in progress is a book not only meant to synthesize my profound experiences in various countries and explore the path from small-town Pennsylvania to Kyoto, but as an Intercultural Educator by profession, I’m also fascinated by the critical moments one encounters over time which develop intercultural competencies.

I’m also in the process of launching a new website, Kyoto Faces (http://kyotofaces.com) which aims to bring those who live abroad closer to the people of the city. In my spare time, I enjoy speaking with international visitors (and introducing them to my son!). Many of them comment excitedly about the beautiful historic sites, the famous Japanese punctuality, the cleanliness, the uniquely “Kyoto” cuisine, and the kindness and politeness of the Japanese residents they come into contact with. However, many of those residents are working specifically in professions that deal with visitors (i.e. hotel staff, tour guides, etc.) While many Kyoto residents are able to use English, their shyness makes them a little less accessible. And those that speak only Japanese are not likely to have any deep conversations or true heart-to-heart communication with short-term visitors who do not yet have skills in the local language.

Kyoto Faces aims to share the stories, the whims, the dreams, the everyday lives, and the recommendations of the city’s residents to those abroad, in English, for the purpose of creating a greater understanding of “people in the neighborhood”. I encourage you to follow the website as it develops and hopefully grows to serve as a bridge between Kyoto and the world. At this point, only an introduction to the site, my profile, and a blog post has been added, but there is more to come soon! (The other day I spoke with a wonderful 80-year-old man while enjoying my morning coffee.) I would be delighted to receive your comments and feedback as time goes on.

よろしくお願いします。

The Australian Hal Stewart (1916-1995) left an indelible mark on Kyoto literature with his By the Old Walls of Kyoto (1981), a year’s cycle of landscape poems with prose commentaries.  The poems were inspired by the Jodo Shinshu faith, and many of the prose pieces are insightful investigations of Kyoto history.  In one such piece he gives a series of stunning interpretations of Ryoan-ji as seen through different lenses (Daoist, numerological, aesthetic, symbolic etc).

Before coming to Kyoto, Stewart had achieved notoriety for his invention in 1943 with fellow-poet James McAuley of an imaginary poet named Ern Malley.  Malley had supposedly just died, and his fictional sister wrote to Max Harris, an ambitious editor, enclosing poems by her dead brother.  Harris was completely fooled by Stewart and McAuley’s tongue-in-cheek poems and declared he had found Australia’s modern poetic genius.  The hoax took in many other leading literary figures too.

Stewart visited Japan in the early 1960s and converted to Shin Buddhism.  He moved permanently to Kyoto and became an expert in the city’s culture and history.  He also collaborated on translations of Buddhist classics.

The following comes from an article by Barry Leckenby, a former Ph.D. student at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who wrote a dissertation on the metaphysical journey of Harold Stewart.

Keeping the Faith: The Narrative Metaphysical Poems of Harold Stewart by Barry Leckenby

Australian born poet and Buddhist scholar Harold Stewart loved Kyoto; it was his spiritual home. He lived in Japan’s ancient capital for the last twenty-nine years of his life. During this time he collected Buddhist art, including the mandalas representing the Larger, the Smaller and the Contemplation Sutras….  Harold was writing poetry influenced by Taoism and Zen some twenty years before Zen had beach headed on to the North American continent. Mahayana Buddhism influenced his poetry from the beginning of his poetic career in the 1930’s and lasted a lifetime. His ‘independent uptake’ of Pure Land Buddhism began in earnest during the 1960s after he was drawn to Kyoto. The depth of his Buddhist knowledge gave him acute metaphysical insight, making him one of the most outstanding Eastern-influenced spiritual writers of the twentieth century.

His spiritual journey is poignantly recorded in By the Old Walls of Kyoto (hereafter referred to as Old Walls). He wrote Old Walls in celebration of Kyoto and Amida. It is the poetic soul’s ‘lonely planet’ guide to Kyoto, providing a testament to how he overcomes his spiritual doubt. The thirteen narrative poems, each accompanied by an expositional essay, capture the essence of the Pure Land teachings, following the poet amongst the temples, through the quiet lanes at sunrise, up the mountains and across the fields of Kyoto in search of Amida’s Pure Land – the land of ultimate happiness beyond this cycle of birth and death. In a fleeting moment of transcendence he briefly envisions such a paradise in the fields of Ohara: a farming district north of Kyoto, noted for its traditional Japanese thatched roofs and waterwheels. When witnessing the glory of the Pure Land here on earth he asks somewhat incredulously:

My dusty journey ends in joy today:
I see a hundred butterflies at play
About the vagrant flowers by fields of rice.
Can I have drunk the elixir by mistake,
And stumbled unawares on paradise?

As only two thousand copies of the book were ever published, it is not surprising that just a small number of people are familiar with the literary riches of Old Walls. It is difficult, but not impossible, to find a copy (try the Internet), and worthwhile tracking one down as it is an immaculate source of Buddhist wisdom filled with the sort of compassionate observation that goes straight to the heart of spiritual reckoning.

Harold, like Old Walls, is not well known outside a small circle of friends. This lack of recognition is indicative of his private nature and not an adverse judgement of his work. He never overtly sought public attention but worked to cultivate the inner light and life of Amida as he maintained a global network of friends. The words of Confucius rightfully apply to him: ‘I will not be afflicted at men’s not knowing me; I will be afflicted that I do not know men.’

Harold is now ‘safely dead,’ passing during Obon in 1995 – the celebratory time in Japan when the spirits of the dead return to their living descendants. During his ‘evening years of gold’ in Kyoto he dedicated his life and poetry to the Name as he practiced the Dharma. Though as he alludes to with his declaration: ‘This irreligious world renounces me,’ the possibility of following a religious faith without ever transgressing its principles becomes increasingly difficult in a world that neglects spiritual possibilities for the more tangible and instant rewards of material pursuits.

In Poem Four Harold outlines how the workings of the spirit can subtly pervade our thoughts and clarify our spiritual equivocation. After suffering a long hot sleepless night in the stifling humidity of Kyoto’s summer, tortured by his own existential doubts and trapped in the reductive dead-ends of subjectivity, he hears the solemn boom of the bell at the Honen-in:

Hours later: in the huge and sultry gloom
A temple bell has tolled with solemn boom:
Its lingering overtones profoundly steep
The distant stillness, where it still resounds.
Again the heavy pole is swung, and pounds
Its tongueless dome, whose bronze vibrations vie
In their sonorous hive, and humming deep
Pervade the hush that holds the earth and sky.
The damp air breathes, lifting the slightest sigh:
A little windbell, hung beneath my eaves,
Instantly rings its lightly trilled reply.

I wake at once out of a lifelong sleep:
My being’s inmost solitude receives
A summons that dissolves its sombre spell,
The Heart’s reverberations rise and swell
Till lips and tongue spontaneously exclaim:
‘Amida Butsu!’ – Buddha’s sacred Name.

The lingering overtones of the temple bell ‘steep the distant stillness’ and their humming pervades ‘the hush that holds the earth and sky.’ At this profound meeting point the still damp air breathes: nature itself is resuscitated after a choking night of ignorance. A sudden breath of air rattles the poet’s windbell, replying to the sonorous boom emanating from the Honen-in. This meeting of sounds at once delivers the blessing of Enlightenment. He awakens from ‘a lifelong sleep’ of doubting. His Heart rises as the sombre spell experienced by his ‘inmost solitude’ dissolves into joy and the Name is exclaimed. The poet’s night of meditation is brought to perfect pitch by the beautiful chorus of bells. He gives thanks for Amida’s blessing as he is filled with spontaneous joy.

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

A large demonstration which coincided with the opening of the event called for freedom of speech and pointed to the importance of words, not war.

WiK’s summer solstice poetry reading, in keeping with the year’s longest day, was an engaging event which brought high quality English-language poetry to one of Kyoto’s most traditional areas, the Gion geisha district.  The occasion was given an auspicious start by a large and energetic anti-government demonstration which passed along Kawabata Street in front of The Gael Irish Pub.  Inside were over twenty people, from as far afield as Kobe and Nara.  One had even come from Australia, on a reporting mission to cover Japan’s publishing industry which will include reference to WiK.

Mark Richardson reads as Mark Scott looks on

A pleasing feature was the mix of people, with WiK members augmented by friends of the two poets.  This allowed for some fruitful interaction and new contacts to be made.  Afterwards a Japanese violinist and concertina player struck up solstice style Irish folk, with an improvising keyboard player joining in.  The sound of poetry gave way to the sound of music.

The concept behind the event was the friendship of two WiK members, both of whom teach at universities in the area: Mark Richardson at Doshisha and Mark Scott at Nara Joshi Dai.  It has resulted in a joint work entitled “Poems of Two Friends”, in reference to a book jointly authored in 1860 by (American poets/novelists) John Piatt and William Dean Howells. The disarmingly short preface, as Mark (Richardson) notes, is quite charming.

The two friends in question here are both men of distinction; one a distinguished scholar of Robert Frost, the other twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Their poetry was highbrow but peppered with humour and references to popular culture and contemporary events.  The walls of The Gael must have been astounded, for the poetical rendering was far from the usual banter of the pub.  Indeed, poetry had been banned altogether for some seven or eight years after the last such event ended in a fist-fight.  Happily, yesterday’s event only ended in smiles all round.

(Those interested in copies of the poems presented at the event, which will shortly be published, should contact one of the Marks through the WiK address. Meanwhile, the two poets have kindly agreed to supply the poems below for the enjoyment of readers.)

Jesus’s Wife (Scott)

The disciples said to Jesus,
Your wife, your mother, your disciple—as you wish.
Mary’s worthy, Jesus said.
We get it.
And she lives with you, if anybody asks.
And she lives with us. We’re good with that too.
But she’s my disciple.
Whatever you say.

 

Five Years After Dodd-Frank (Richardson)

“Je suis Charlie.” ––George Clooney, at the Golden Globes

Here we are, half a decade later,
And carnage ensues. Makeshift
Memorials are so core to what we do.
I’m sorry, Chris, but you bleeped out.
There hasn’t been much torture polling;
Our madcap gondola’s still in the shallows.
Sociopaths get as real and un-foundational
As Cary Grant. But there’s no big data
To say we can’t evolve on this;
Evolving is also core to what we do.
Send a makeshift memo up the daisy chain
Until it moans in the Office of Legal Counsel.
Make no mistake; cut on the door-slams;
That’s editing 101. And as for how
You can be more impactful, well,
Excuse me while I throw up
Steve Kornacki’s hands. The system
Doesn’t not work; the system isn’t not
Broken in. A lawless branch exfoliates
In the skylounge––pro-growth forests
Of exotic spreads, risky giveaways,
Pissing-contests, and bail. Christ, I’m late
For donor class. I’m the boss here; you can get
Your Kalashnikovs out. Wretches hang
That grand jurymen may dine. I am Charlie,
Still squatting in the bush; I am Charlie
Company, humping it in the desert
And jay-hawking loosies,
Five years after Dodd-Frank.

 

Duration (Scott)

Duration comes up constantly.
It isn’t discussed.
It’s raw.

The heart doesn’t seem to be in it.
Zipless fuck, lesbian bed death, marriage, jackrabbits:
Sex can too be boring.

I don’t think there have been any good studies.
But it’s a great empirical question.
And I can swallow that pill.

A stable relationship.
I don’t think there have been any.
None of the practitioners have come across one.

I don’t know about other desire drug trials,
But when I say “Show me a stability,”
You pick up a rock from Ecuador

And say it holds lots of energy.
This is not how I see myself.
Everyone raises a mix of tears.

In the long term all partners fail.
The debate goes on.
I want to settle the question.

Logic teaches me to feel.
We are also taught by rule.
To prove it, you get the genital blood to flow at a baseline state.

Strangers make it jump. I infer.
Inference is getting strange.
Here, smell my tee-shirt. Take that home with you.

 

Blurb (Richardson)

This deeply
Bold, masterfully
Nuanced, compellingly
Immense, meticulously
Unnerving account of
Charles Portis has an excellent nose
With gooseberry aftershocks.
A must smell. Riveting, un-
Flinching, epoch-making
Prose. Nothing more
Need ever be done
By anyone.

 

The Tragic Era (Richardson)

Untorn by ambition, taking pleasure
Alike in rod, gun, and horse,
Mine was a happy life before the war.
This bad feeling behind my eyes, where did it come from?
There, in the middle of the stairs,
Going up to the third floor from the second,
Look: a room in an apartment, burning.

Blood drains from the body,
And when you return, all is nothing;
All is already was, and panic.
I slept out with the pigeons that night,
Riding the edge of the wheel-glass.

And when I woke, amazed, I moved
As in some guise of snow-country––
As in some memory of watching Twin Peaks––
Cooking sweet purple rice and mung beans.

Trees grew into a paper map of the village,
A strangely benevolent oligarchy
Where the slaves are prim and content,
And white-gloved trains hit all their marks.

Strawberry-patterned guardian angel of the year,
Do you not shop? Please, by all means,
Let’s go to the show. By season’s end
It’ll all be a heap of leaves anyhow,
Reminiscent campfires of men in faded grey.

I laugh at this lonely New Year’s Eve,
Tilting cups of sake, swollen thick
As a 500-yen coin. I look outside:
The temple of rain is beautiful, a piece of memory,
An excuse not to work, mung beans lovely as jade.
The temple of rain is beautiful,
Its umbrella-stand full of boots.

Photo by Micah Gampel

Edith Shiffert has lived in Kyoto since 1963 and published some twenty books of poetry.  She is currently 99 years old and resident in a rest home.

Below is Dennis Maloney’s introduction in John Einarsen’s beautifully illustrated tribute to Edith, Kyoto: The Forest Within the Gate.

I first met Edith Shiffert in Kyoto in the spring of 1973 when I was a student and beginning poet. At that time, there was a group of Japanese poets who wrote in English and published the journal Poetry Nippon. When I read in the journal that they met at Edith’s house, I telephoned her and asked if I could join them for their next meeting. We spoke afterwards and subsequently met many times that spring. Edith had lived in Kyoto for a decade by then, earning her living as a teacher, first at Doshisha College and later at Kyoto Seika University. I was inspired during my stay in Kyoto to establish the literary publishing house White Pine Press, now entering its fortieth year, to publish poetry and literature in translation. Edith was one of the first poets we published, and we are still publishing her work today.

While she would probably never refer to herself as a feminist, she was certainly a woman who chose her own path at a time when very few dared to do so. Born Edith Marcombe in Toronto, Canada, in 1916, she spent most of her youth in upstate New York before moving to Redondo Beach, California, in the mid 1930s. In 1938, at the age of twenty-two, she traveled alone to Hawaii, first to Honolulu and then to the Big Island. There she met and married her first husband, Steven Shiffert, with whom she homesteaded on the Big Island during the war years. After the war, she and her husband moved first to Washington, where they constructed a log cabin near North Bend, and then moved on Alaska for several years. After she and her husband separated, Edith, at age forty, enrolled in the University of Washington to study poetry with Theodore Roethke. She remained there from 1956 to 1962. Her first two books of poetry, In Open Woods and For a Return to Kona, were published in 1961 and 1963. She has subsequently published a number of volumes of her own poetry, along with several volumes of translations. In 1981, she married Minoru Sawano, a retired teacher, and they shared an active life together, traveling in Japan and abroad until his passing in 2004.

The poems below are taken from Kyoto Journal 70 (with thanks to John Einarsen)

Sunset
At Honen-in
the day-end bell is struck
and the low rays of the sun
flow blindingly between the autumn’s scarlet leaves
while the hiyo birds screech with joy and excitement
as the bell sounds again, again.

Honen-in afire
with November leaves, its bell
at sunset loud, loud! Clear, clear!
deep, deep!

Walking
Walking very straight
in his best suit
the old man
enters the park across the road
but in a moment
changes his mind and goes down
the business street instead
hesitating a little
but continuing on.
Later he comes back
but before he reaches his own door
turns and goes off again
while relatives, neighbors,
and men whose profession it is
prepare the house
for his wife’s funeral.
A few wet snowflakes are falling
and he doesn’t have his overcoat on.

Praying for the Flowers
To ease the spirit of the flowers
young children with golden ornaments on their heads,
in pink and green gauzes over red and violet,
with tulips, carnations and irises in their arms,
circle in the great hall
far under the ceiling’s painted dragon,
past the high Buddhist altar
where the lacquer trays hold rice cakes and oranges.
They follow after the abbot’s russet brocades
and between priests in light and dark purples
circling as they chant a sutra for the spirit of the flowers
for the brevity of their springtime,
fallen petals like the silk
banners hung from the high log beams of the open walls
over the children so soon gone
and their glad parents watching,
and the hums of the chanters and the sound of gongs
lost just a short distance
beyond the enclosing square of the polished veranda,
to be gone like the fragrant incense smoke
between the open branches of pine trees.

Name: Les Sackett
Email: Lcsckt@embarqmail.com
Comment: Thanks so much for the latest news about Edith Shiffert. I had the pleasure of knowing her while I was teaching part time at Seika Daigaku and until I left Japan in 1993.
I feel sad that she is not with us in some ways. But, that profile photo of her is beautiful.
Les Sackett (Taught at Kyoto Sangyo Daigaku 1973 – 1993.  Now living in Florida, USA)

For the inauguration meeting of Writers in Kyoto, held in late March, we invited Any Chavez to enlighten us on her experience as a journalist in Japan. She is well-known amongst foreign writers here, though not many of us have ever met her as she lives on a tiny island in the Inland Sea. With e-mail now so prevalent, we can reside anywhere and conduct a near normal life.

She spoke at length about her early days trying to be a writer, especially one working for newspapers and magazines. It was not easy. Her suffering was great. Though spared beatings and gunshots in the night, she was shot down countless times by pink rejection slips from the press gang. She persevered. And eventually won a position on The Japan Times.

All good and rewarding, and interesting to us. But for me, there was something missing. As writers, we all pretty much know about rejection, and perseverance, and rewards. However, how about writer’s block? We all know about handling rocks tossed our way, wiping spit off our shoulders, dousing flaming faggots dropped at our doors. But I am sure each of us have a different technique for getting over writer’s block, which is a large part of our lives.

So, I want to relate my experience, and one of the surest ways to get over it. I attended a very progressive, four-year high school. They offered a post-graduate program even, and I oped for it, feeling I was not yet ready for university. Of the courses offered, I chose Theater, Radio/TV Workshop, and Creative Writing. Each subject has served as one of the pillars my life has been built upon.

The Creative Writing class especially gave me some nice tools. But the one I recall vividly, and to this day use in my printmaking studio and teach to my students, is how to move over the dreaded block. The teacher (I do not remember his name at all) told us we should just sit down before our typewriter (if you do not know this word or machine, I pity you) and type any word, without thinking. Hit the space bar and type another word, again without any thought. Continue this for usually only 5 or 6 words. Suddenly, the door which was closed in your head, will open and the ideas in that room will spill out. What you find may not be related to the words you typed. No matter. They only served as keys to that door. The idea or theme or story will now be at the front of your mind, and away you go, typing like a pro up to the end of the piece.

I use this same technique in the woodblock studio. The student, or me, has no idea for the next print. So, just sit down with a blank sheet of white paper, a B-pencil and eraser on the table. Move the pencil around the sheet without thinking, just drawing lines, or curls, scribbles, or anything without a thought. Inevitably, only after a few seconds, the scene, the view, the person or animal or mountain or building will appear in your mind, and off you go filling in the blanks as it were. It never fails.

What we want to write or draw is already in our consciousness; it’s in that dark, closed room we all own. We need the key to open the door. Turning off our “attention” to let the hand connect directly with the brain will open the door. In seconds, too.

It never fails.