Writers in Kyoto held its Words & Music open-mic style event on July 16, 2023, in a return to an in-person format. The date was, of course, yoi-yama, the eve of the Gion Festival’s first procession, and we enjoyed that atmosphere at the event venue, the Gnome Irish pub. A number of participants came dressed in yukata.
Above: photos from WiK’s Words & Music open-mic event at the Gnome Irish pub on July 16. (Click images for larger views.)
The show consisted of 11 acts by 14 performers. It was a characteristically diverse field of poetry, music, short stories, song, talk and a Buddhist chant.
A few of the performances were videotaped and they are planned to be released on the members’ Facebook page. Members who were unable to attend this round of Words & Music are encouraged to prepare a presentation of their own that can be shared on Facebook in the same spirit. Work doesn’t have to be original; cited writings that will be of interest to members — and perhaps tickle their creativity — are also welcome.
Thank you to performers and attendees for bringing this event into being.
There were exactly eleven houses on this road that had no name. Everyone called it Uchida Road because most of the people who lived there bore the name Uchida. There was a connection, an invisible chain that linked the houses because they were shinseki, relatives. The link began long ago and was forever complicated by marriage, birth, and death, and in one case, adoption. Now, in 1969, it had all become vague, but still there was connection.
So begins Karen Hill Anton’s elegantly subdued debut novel, A Thousand Graces, a story that charts the lives of a diverse cast of characters held in place by expectations and rules that are so commonplace they have no name. On the brink of immense social change in 1970s Japan, this is a story of entanglement, of the invisible bonds tying the characters inextricably to the past, to family, to class division and gender disparity, to unspoken dreams and thwarted desires. Although set in a fictional tea-producing enclave somewhere on the island of Honshu, the story is one that strikes a universal chord. It will resonate with any group of people facing a sea change in social order who remain unaware of what awaits. They only sense the presence of something more, something beyond their ken.
Chie, whose name means “a thousand graces,” is at the heart of this novel. Mrs. Uchida, Chie’s mother, had wanted to name her daughter Yuri, or Lily, after her favorite flower. But Chie’s grandfather asserted his privilege to bestow her name, and “a thousand graces” she became. This slight anecdote, presented early in the novel, encapsulates so much of the tension that the story navigates: the rights of the patriarch, the importance of legacy, the grip of tradition, the usurpation of the female voice, and the bitter irony that a girl whose name suggests limitless blessings encounters nothing but limits.
In her late teens when the novel starts, we follow Chie as she leaves her close-knit farming community to attend a junior college in the fictional town of Takaizu, itself hardly a bustling metropolis. Strikingly beautiful, yet unassuming and quiet, Chie is a young woman with places to go. Her mother has encouraged Chie’s studies, refusing to allow her to work in the family tea fields, determined that with her two-year degree and fair skin, Chie will be able to marry above her class. Chie is a fierce reader and eager to learn but momentarily disconcerted when she meets her new college professor, the charismatic and darkly handsome New Yorker Carl Rosen. Eager to escape the emptiness of a broken marriage and start anew, Carl has relocated to this small city on the edge of the tea fields. Here he teaches courses devoted to women writers like Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, and Doris Lessing and expects his students to write papers in English about their feelings and articulate their opinions, a task Chie struggles to meet. Resolved to broaden the horizons of his female students, Carl wants the sheltered women in his classes to aspire to something more than marriage. And, Chie does.
Carl is sponsored at the college by Toshinaga Sakai, professor of Japanese literature and program director. Toshi, as Carl calls his friend, has lived in the United States and prides himself on being open-minded and far more of a supportive family man than his own father had ever been. For example, he indulges his wife, Yoshiko, in her interests, encouraging her to pursue tastes as varied as cha-no-yu and jazz, the latter indulgence she enjoys with Carl.
Here we have the essential cast of characters, four intelligent individuals, thoughtful and sensitive, but frequently painfully blind to the larger implications of their actions. It is these implications, then, that form the forward momentum of the novel. In ways unbeknownst to them, their lives become intimately, and in some cases, tragically entwined. Although as readers we are able to anticipate the direction of the narrative, Anton is such a skilled storyteller, that our anticipation never gets in the way. In other words, we know what will happen because it has to. But we want to read how it will happen for the sheer delight of savoring Anton’s luminously poetic prose.
A Thousand Graces is set during the early half of the decade of the 1970s, a tumultuous time the world over but particularly in Japan. The 1970s saw dramatic economic growth in Japan alongside staggering oil shocks, political scandals, deadly protests, terrorist plots, a literary suicide, and the “return” of Okinawa, but of all of these, the event with the most lasting repercussions—and certainly most significance to this story—is the women’s movement. Nurtured on postwar political gains (such as the right to vote), greater access to higher education, and the proliferation of time-saving household appliances (the “three sacred treasures” of a washing machine, refrigerator, and television), women began to aspire to life trajectories that exceeded the role of housewife. Second-wave feminism emerged in Japan in the 1960s and was fully entrenched by the 1970s with magazine debates on female sexuality, lectures on equality in the labor force, and the rise of vocal women writers.
At least academically speaking.
It would take more time for these attitudes to filter into the everyday lives of ordinary people, people like Chie and Yoshiko and the men who encircle them. Both of these female characters are deeply unhappy within the limited frames of their lives. They want more but either they do not know what they want and how to get it, or they are too afraid of the explosive reactions should they act on their desires. Fundamentally, neither Chie nor Yoshiko have role models other than their own mothers or the chimeras they find in films, books, and music. They do not know how to want what they want.
The tragedy at the heart of A Thousand Graces is that the men who love these women, who feel responsible for them, and who believe they are protecting them, are the ones who ruin whatever chance at happiness the women (and even they themselves) may have had. The men, for all their ostensible sensitivities, are too devoted to their own happiness, their own reputations to recognize the damage they have wrought, particularly so for Chie. A truly gifted young woman, she nevertheless lacks the experience or the vocabulary (in either Japanese or English) to advocate on her own behalf. The men positioned as her guardians and mentors—her father, her teacher, her advisor—fail her at every turn. Likewise, the women in her life remand her to the path of the past.
A Thousand Graces is a tragic story but the heartbreak is mitigated by the sheer beauty of Karen Hill Anton’s prose. Hers is not a showy style over encumbered by long expositions on “Japanese traditions” and such. Rather with a light and shimmering touch, she paints a compelling portrait of life in 1970s Japan, of the countryside, the family gatherings, the twin longings for past and future, and the seasonal beauty of the moment. Hers is a magical world of a distant time in an imagined place that will linger with the reader long after the last page.
“Omigod!”, I exclaimed in a slightly theatrical, artificially loud voice to my husband Satoshi and shoved my phone in his face just as he was about to bite into a shrimp-flavored rice cracker. “Wha..?” he mumbled idly. “Japan’s debt is like 220% of its GDP! It’s the worst one in the world!” Without answering, he tossed his rice cracker into his mouth and washed it down with green tea while judging me with dismay, as though I had just ventured to do an impromptu performance as a manzai comedian that could have been a lot funnier. Across the subdued peach-colored living room, my father-in-law raised his head from the game of shogi he was playing with my teenage son, and peered narrowly at me. I should tell you that my father-in-law is an economics professor at a large and famous national university, so I was secretly delighted that he had decided to rise to my challenge. My point in bringing up the issue wasn’t because I actually gave a damn about the national debt crisis but because I always thought that Japanese families, when they gathered together, tried overly hard to avoid fractious debates on current events. I wanted to remedy that. I wanted things to be like back in the States in my own family, where we screamed and yelled a bit more about politics, where things got a little hysterical, and frankly more than a little annoying. For some reason, I missed the needling, the noise, the dramatic tears, the baiting and the passive-aggression. I know that sounds crazy, but the drama and the boisterous, generation-gap-fueled excitement of ridiculous political debates en famille, though much derided in the western press around the time of American Thanksgiving, was starting to seem to me, thanks to living so long in Japan, like a sport I’d not appreciated enough in my youth. “I’m sure you know”, said my father-in-law, calmly leaning back in his comfortable beige armchair, “what a koma, a spinning top, is.” I nodded, and he continued. “A spinning top doesn’t suddenly explode or burst into flames as it comes to a stop, does it? No, of course not. It spins more and more slowly. It winds down. To do that, it needs some space to spin. That’s just natural.” I couldn’t very well disagree with him about things like this, which were just basic physics. So I just sat there silently. “The Japanese government is just giving it the space it needs. Of course, to you that maybe looks like some odd and treacherous game. Some trickery. But the actual opponent is our planet, also a spinning top of a kind, not any human entity. We, here in Japan, play out the game in our own way. We don’t care about following stupid human rules. This game is not a matter of human things only. Or rather, we can say that we humans are not just human.” With that cryptic comment, which seemed to gently amuse him as a private joke, he gave me a brief and encouraging conspiratorial smile, as though surely I had grasped his elusive metaphor. Then he turned and resumed the game of shogi. With an undisguised look of concern on her face, my mother-in-law quickly filled up my cup with freshly brewed green tea. I thanked her with a mild, mechanical nod, and with that, the calm and quietly harmonious atmosphere of the cool and collected peach-colored living room returned. In a last-ditch effort to avoid defeat, and also because my mother-in-law had gone back to the kitchen so she couldn’t watch me like a hawk, I hissed at my husband, “But surely, he doesn’t publish stuff like that in scholarly journals, does he?” Satoshi only shot me a brief, pained look and I gave up, concealing my humiliation by leafing through a tabloid magazine to which my mother-in-law subscribed. The well-known periodical was filled with reports of every sort of political scandal, both domestic (the deputy culture minister had purchased 20 cases of fine amontillado sherry with public funds) and foreign (Trump was in there), and a lot of sensational gossip related to the dalliance between a female Korean pop singer and the handsome, but married CEO of a major Japanese tech company (they had been seen together at a moon-viewing party). Even the graphics were loud and splashy. Clearly, though my in-laws had a very peaceful living room, they didn’t mind these graphics and dramatic stories. I sensed a deep disconnect, some disruption, an awkwardness, or even an impropriety under the decorous surface, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was only a magazine, after all. Picking my way through the thicket of kanji, understanding some but not all, I began to feel sleepy and nodded off on the peach-colored sofa until Satoshi gently shook my shoulder and said “it’s getting dark, let’s go home.” The magazine had slid off my lap and was open on the floor, exposing the midriff of an elegant fashion model dressed in a sequined bra, fur boots and a leather mini-skirt, a few downy swan feathers stuck gracefully (but how on earth?) in her long tresses of hair. For some reason, seeing her, the phrase my father-in-law had tossed off, ‘That’s just natural’, popped into my brain. But how ridiculous! I swatted away the offensive idea. The model was just all artifice, make-up, hair-dye, photos retouched to a fare-thee-well. Nevertheless, the same phrase taunted me that night after we’d returned to our apartment a long train ride away across the city. Looking out through our bedroom window at the midnight sky, where hardly any stars were visible due to all the lights, I heard it again.
From the Judges: “As it is so often with writings set in Kyoto, “Trying to Understand” depicts a journey of inquiry and discovery. Many of us hope our experiences in the city will lead to a deeper and more profound understanding of life. This is something that everyone in a foreign place, looking for answers to life’s conundrums, has felt. This piece shows us how to listen to the subtle music of Kyoto which imparts a message of inspiration. Kyoto is particularly fertile ground, providing so many venues and moments for subtle reflection. Kyoto trains us to read between the lines and reveals metaphors for a more mindful life, a lesson effectively captured within.”
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Trying to Understand
I am trying to understand life but I am failing
In Kyoto I thought I would find answers
I wanted to see how I’ve made my mistakes I wanted to learn how to avoid making more
But in trying to understand the past, the depth of it overwhelmed me
So I walked the gardens and I learned that where the path is precarious, one should slow down
I learned that there are times along the way when one should stop a while to appreciate their surroundings
I partook of the tea ceremony and I learned to take the bitter with the sweet
I stayed in a machiya and I learned that allowing light into the center illuminates the whole
I am beginning to understand
Photo Credit: Kirsty Kawano (at Murin-an)
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Kirsty Kawano is an Australian who has lived in Japan for a couple of decades. She works as a translator, editor and non-fiction writer and joined Writers in Kyoto five years ago, after moving to the city from Tokyo. Although she swore off writing fiction about 15 years ago, being part of the group has nudged her toward it.
THE KIMONO TATTOO by Rebecca Copeland (Brother Mockingbird, 2021)
Review by Rebecca Otowa June 2023
Many themes come together in this complex novel about a famous kimono, the design of which is transformed into a tattoo inscribed on a beautiful woman, the daughter of a famous kimono-designing family in Kyoto. The main character of the story, an American woman with a tragic event in her childhood in Kyoto as the daughter of missionary parents, comes upon the story of this family and how it went off the rails. Earlier, she translated a Japanese novel about a kimono that was seemingly cursed and responsible for several deaths. Suddenly she becomes involved with the story in a much more intense way, and also confronts the tragic event in her past.
The themes include: the lineage of kimono design and creation in Kyoto, along with the problems of traditional family heritage and what happens when it is disrupted; the related theme of gender equality and what happens when it is discounted; the role of woman in Japanese society as supplier of heirs and what happens when a woman who subscribes wholeheartedly to this role is torn away from it. It is evident that the author feels strongly about these themes, and at the center is the question of the continuation of an old and respected family — to what extent are the men, and especially the women, of this family prepared to continue with its traditions?
There is also the motif of the blending of reality and fiction, with the book-within-a-book which has been translated by the protagonist turning out to shed light on the story of the traditional kimono-designing family. There is also plenty of detail about kimono and tattooing, not to mention the city of Kyoto itself, with a wealth of geographical detail especially about the area around Okazaki, Nanzenji and the Philosophers’ Walk. It is easy for anyone familiar with this area to imagine the action. A look at a map of Kyoto will readily be the source of visualization for others. The author makes sure that the reader will see the scenes in the mind’s eye.
The writing is rich in details; from these it is evident that Rebecca Copeland has lived a life in Kyoto very similar to that of her protagonist. Exquisitely described scenes such as an evening walk home through little streets and alleyways — “I could smell the dinner preparations in the houses I passed along the way… Here and there I caught a whiff of mosquito smudge or heard the splash of water being readied for the evening bath.”
This is a book with many characters. There are the “real” characters surrounding the protagonist; the fictional characters within the novel she translated; and even some historical ones from the rich tradition of kimono making in Kyoto. I myself had to stop and make notes to keep them straight, but that is probably not necessary for everyone; the story line carries us along, now dipping into the everyday life of the protagonist as she goes about her work in a translation company, her meals and relaxation, now telling us snippets about such things as traditional tattooing or the breeding of the ferocious Tosa fighting dogs of Shikoku.
The tragedy at the center of the protagonist’s early life is unravelled, taking center stage toward the end and revealing some surprising connections. Some broken relationships are repaired and other new ones blossom, all in the shadow of the central, etherically beautiful kimono and its superbly wrought tattoo.
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Rebecca Copeland is a writer of fiction and literary criticism and a translator of Japanese literature. Her stories travel between Japan and the American South and touch on questions of identity, belonging, and self-discovery. Her academic writings have focused almost exclusively on modern Japanese women writers, and she has translated the works of writer Uno Chiyo and novelist Kirino Natsuo. Copeland was born to missionary parents in a Japan still recovering from the aftermath of war. As a junior in college, Copeland had the opportunity to spend a year in Japan, where she studied traditional dance, learned to wear a kimono, and traveled. Afterwards she earned a PhD in Japanese literature at Columbia University, and she is now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The present work, The Kimono Tattoo, is her debut work of fiction. More information may be found on her website, rebecca-copeland.com.
Around seven years ago, at a shaonkai (a party held for teachers by students the evening before graduation), Professor Eriko Furukawa, a specialist in Gothic literature, and I were balancing tiny plates of fried shrimp and canapes in a corner of a posh party venue filled with fairy lights, near the Okura Hotel in Kyoto’s Oike Street. “Aren’t you lonely living so far apart?” Eriko teasingly queried when I told her that I was living with my children here in Kyoto, while my husband was in Ibaraki Prefecture, where he works for a large public university. “No”, I found myself saying honestly, “I’m all right. I’m so busy, and he visits occasionally as it’s not far. It’s fine.” Eriko cracked up, eyes sparkling like the champagne in her glass, and I recalled that she was living and working in Kyoto while her husband and grown son were residing in Nagoya. “You’re just like a Japanese woman!” she exclaimed, “we love to have the house to ourselves and relax on our own in total freedom!” I laughed, feeling like my suspicions had been confirmed. I’d known several housewives in my younger housewife days who had expressed a sense of freedom when their husbands were gone on business trips. “The kids and I just eat chips for dinner when he’s gone!” Mrs Yamamoto had told me gleefully. I knew implicitly that Eriko was referring to tanshinfunin 単身赴任 (tan=single; shin=body; funin= taking up a post). Tanshinfunin traditionally means that the wife stays with the children in a house while the husband is sent by his company to different places to work. The custom goes back to the Edo period and the policy of sankin kotai. Each daimyo, or local feudal lord, was required to move periodically between Edo and his fief, usually spending a year in each place. His wife and heir were required to live in Edo as hostages while he was away. Maintaining several stately residences and paying for large processions of retainers, soldiers and assistants to travel was expensive, and was calculated to leave the daimyos too financially strapped to stage armed rebellions against the Shogunate. One more reason the Shogunate implemented sankin kotai was because the thousands of travelers required roads, inns and other facilities which spurred economic activity. Over almost 30 years of living in Japan, in many different places, I’ve known several people who were tanshinfunin. There was the young mother of a baby girl named Kaede-chan living in a small house near ours in Yamaguchi back in 1998, whose husband disappeared for weeks on end, and I guessed from his clothes that he was working on construction projects. But it was in 2002, when we moved to Tsukuba, a relatively new and planned city, that I started to understand tanshinfunin culture more deeply, because it was not uncommon among both male and female professors there. The university provided inexpensive one-room apartments in large high-rises for people who lived alone. It was an easy, and even an expected, choice to make, for it was a place with excellent transportation networks and close to Tokyo. My husband explained to me that tanshinfunin was desirable since kids could stay in the same school or perhaps the spouse already had a job or family connections back home. I didn’t think my husband and I would ever be tanshinfunin, however, but then the huge earthquake and nuclear accident occurred in 2011. Our son was only six years old, and my husband was concerned about the Fukushima reactor exploding. “Why don’t you take him down to Yamaguchi and stay there for a few days?” he suggested. Yamaguchi was an old and traditional place nicknamed “the little Kyoto of the west”, where we’d lived for five years before we moved to Tsukuba, so we had many friends there. Sitting beside the river, I found myself feeling comfortable and happy to be back in Yamaguchi, a town I loved so much, and which, to be honest, I hadn’t wished to leave. A friend let us stay in her house for free, and I began to visualize myself on my own with the kids, tanshinfunin. Besides the radiation, I had another reason to leave Tsukuba, for what I most wanted to do was work on my research into Shakespeare and fossil fuels. I had started questioning why people felt it so necessary to build gigantic roads and fill them with cars. Then one evening, about a year before the huge earthquake, I noticed the word “coals” in the first line of Romeo and Juliet. And since that time, I have dedicated myself to sleuthing out why Shakespeare mentioned fossil fuels at the start of his most famous play. When I told my husband of my plan to stay and work in Yamaguchi, he reluctantly accepted my idea, and I’m sure that the concept of tanshinfunin lay behind his acquiescence. As I’d be working a few part-time jobs, my salary was lower, but there were no meetings to attend, and everything was cheaper and more low-key. It was the old, traditional town with its tiny streets which had first inspired my research on fossil fuels. I spent as much time as I could working on my articles, and after three years in Yamaguchi I had published enough articles to apply for academic jobs. That’s how my two children and I ended up moving to Kyoto in March 2015. A couple of years after the shaonkai, I started noticing news articles in western media about a new trend called “Living Alone Together”, abbreviated as L.A.T. It is exactly what it sounds like: the couple remains married, but chooses to live in different homes. I gathered that for the most part artists and professional couples chose L.A.T., so I thought it might be associated with economic privilege. And a number of articles suggested that it was often the wife, not the husband, who initiated the decision, and terms like “independence”, “autonomy”, “identity” and “freedom” were associated with the concept. I also gathered that the rise of L.A.T. was associated with the demise of the patriarchy, and commentators associated with conservative religious groups were opposed to it. In the past, in the West, separate marital living arrangements might have seemed shameful and hinting at marital problems. But really, L.A.T. has tossed all that out the window. Reading about the trend, I couldn’t help but remember Professor Furukawa’s observation that it was the “freedom” of tanshinfunin that appealed to Japanese women. She was in her 60s, and her generation would have had a different view of things than young women now, who might find tanshinfunin lonely or difficult with small children. And that is completely understandable. My point is just that happily married women in Japan have been living on their own for centuries without shame being attached to them or their spouses. Of course, in the West various situations involved couples living separately, such as military personnel, academics employed at different universities, or professionals working far from each other. But in my opinion, until L.A.T. came along, it has been seen as second-best, a poor substitute, something that should be corrected as soon as logistically possible. Tanshinfunin on the other hand seems to have assumed from the start that a woman could manage on her own, that she was capable and independent. In that way, it normalized female autonomy. As a researcher who studies and critiques the patriarchy and knows the value of women’s independence, I’m a fan of tanshinfunin culture because I also have benefited from it.
From the Judges: “Nascent love is the theme of this vignette. In the end we find out where this love took the writer, and the reader can appreciate how the memory is cherished years later in a home away from Japan. Each sense of place blends into the other, creating a whole. Kyoto is a city in which one catches a glimpse of many couples. “A Foreign Visitor” speaks to the romance of the city and its gentle whispers of love and serendipity. Well-envisioned and communicating lovely images, the mood is simple and flowing, with the couple’s budding affection embraced by Kyoto’s atmosphere.”
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A Foreign Visitor
It was the end of September. I wandered with my new friend who was visiting Japan from Ireland, inside the Higashi Honganji – simply because it was the nearest temple to the Kyoto station.
The late-summer light slanted my friend’s shadow across the stone pavement, as he purified his hands with a ladle of water. It was the moment before good-bye; we did not know when we would meet again. We went up the stairs into an open balcony, opposite the main temple, and sat down on a low wooden railing – four feet apart. I took a photo of my friend. An old man, possibly a janitor, shuffled by. “You’ll fall if you are not careful”, he warned. I smiled at him thinking it might mean “fall in love” and pressed the shutter button again, balancing my bottom on the railing. As the warm wind brushed my bare toes, I had a feeling of being watched.
I remember the calm in the air, the people sitting on the tatami praying in silence, my soles touching the wooden floor, my friend’s openness; a visitor in a foreign land. The clock ticked steadily towards the time of the last airport bus. As we reached the exit gate, a couple stopped us. With a lovely smile, the woman said she had taken our photo.
Five years later, the photo sits over our fireplace in Dublin, like a foreign visitor; round roof tiles like fish scales, horizontal balcony like a solemn procession, upright wooden pillars, calligraphy framed on the wall and me photographing my husband – both of us captured in that moment of uncertainty.
Photo Credit: Haruka Ota
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Mai Ishikawa is a Japanese theatre translator. She has lived in three different countries; US, Japan and now Ireland. The plays she has translated include “Necessary Targets” by Eve Ensler, “Cyprus Avenue” by David Ireland, “Dublin by Lamplight” by Michael West in collaboration with the Corn Exchange and “Once Upon a Bridge” by Sonya Kelly. She is currently writing her own play with the support of bursaries and the Arts Council.
For the full list of this year’s competition winners, click here. For the original competition notice (with prize details), click here.
‘The Nature of Kyoto: Writers in Kyoto Anthology 5’ was launched in style on the grassy banks of the Kamogawa in Kyoto on Sunday, May 21st. In keeping with the theme, the riverside setting was perfect to celebrate this captivating collection of prose and poetry. Many of the 30 contributors to the Anthology were able to attend, some with family members. The presence of the co-editors, Lisa Twaronite Sone and Robert Weis, based in Tokyo and Luxembourg respectively, and Rick Elizaga, who designed and published the Anthology, created an extra special event.
Above: Photographs tell the story of a stimulating and uplifting meeting of writers, in Kyoto, that continued until after dark. Contributing photographers are Karen Lee Tawarayama, Kirsty Kawano, Alessandro de Bellegarde and myself.
Lisa Twaronite Sone was the mastermind behind the outdoor, picnic-style occasion — the ‘WiKNiK’ as she named it. Her superb organisation ensured a wonderful time was enjoyed by all. Several members were meeting each other for the first time after the lifting of the extended COVID-induced isolation. The creative energy among the group, enhanced by the natural surroundings, was electrifying. The feeling of camaraderie generated by the launch and of a job well done bodes well for Writers in Kyoto.
The Anthology is available through Amazon in a number of countries. The Foreword by Pico Iyer sets the scene for varied interpretations of the nature of Kyoto, several with a contemplative theme. Responses to change, both local (loss of old houses) and global (the changing climate), permeates a number of contributions. The less benign aspects of nature also receive attention. Initial feedback has been highly positive. So if you haven’t done so, place an order now.
It has been a pleasure to be involved in the production of this important literary work.
Edited by Lisa Twaronite Sone & Robert Weis Foreword by Pico Iyer
The city of Kyoto has inspired awe in generations of travelers, writers and poets alike. In this anthology, 30 contributors explore the nature of the old capital: its gardens, mountains, old shrines and temples, but also the inner nature or the soul of the city.
“The minute you step into Japan’s thousand-year capital, it’s hard not to start putting things into words. Yes, the train station where you arrived is a wild 22nd century labyrinth and the streets are dizzy with streaking lights and high-rise ‘pencil buildings.’ Nowhere is more madly in love with the latest and the fashionable. Yet everywhere, it’s not difficult to see, are spirits alive in the hills, and around the sixteen hundred temples, as close to you as the winter chill on your neck.”
Pico iyer
Contents
・Foreword: The Rain upon the Rooftops Pico Iyer
・Kyoto: Different Forms of Hypnosis Stephen Mansfield
・The Pocket Garden Rebecca Otowa
・Lotus 蓮 John Einarsen
・Love on a Low Flame Amanda Huggins
・The Graveyard of Homyo-in Everett Kennedy Brown
・Sudden Tsukimi C. Greenstreet
・For Love of the Octopus God Elaine Lies
・Peeks on Danger Edward J. Taylor
・For the Visitors Felicity Tillack
・Nature is Trying to Kill You Fernando Torres
・Restaurant Boer Hans Brinckmann
・The Nature of Kyoto: 1006 vs 2006Hamish Downie
・The Revived Waterway Iris Reinbacher
・Kyoto: City of Fire and Water Jann Williams
・Vignettes, Interrupted John Dougill
・Food for Thought and for the Thoughtful Julian Holmes
・Recollections of Nature, Neighbors, and Nibbles Karen Lee Tawarayama
・Local News Ken Rodgers
・Nashinoki Shrine Makes Lifestyle Changes Kirsty Kawano
・Summer Rain Lisa Twaronite Sone
・Sudou Shrine Malcolm Ledger
・The Watcher Maria Danuco
・”Keywords” of Kyoto Mayumi Kawaharada
・The Hills of Kyoto Patrick Colgan
・Kyotoyana Preston Keido Houser
・Thinking Kyoto like a Mountain Robert Weis
・Kyoto Time Stephen Benfey
・The Promise Tetiana Korchuk
・Sound Travels Tina deBellegarde
・Kyoto’s Nature versus My Apiphobia Yuki Yamauchi
Please visit this page in the future for related reviews and other coverage. For press-related inquiries concerning The Nature of Kyoto, please contact Writers in Kyoto through our online form.
From the Judges: “This is a masterly collection of artful vignettes concerning food and the relationship between an aging mother and her daughter, which also harmonizes life with nature. An iconic structure provides a loose backdrop for a warm, emotional glimpse at the closest of relationships. A central image is oyakodon (literally “parent and child”) — a rice bowl meal made with chicken and eggs. The shadows of aging and dementia are simultaneously woven as dark threads, contrasting the silver and golden threads of moon and eggs. The relationship is multi-layered and bittersweet, spanning years and the bridging of cultures, and finally coming full circle.”
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Togetsukyo Bridge in the Rain
We met at a restaurant by the Katsura River, ordered hot yudofu served in donabe pots, and spoke in hushed tones, spilling breath. It was late afternoon. The air pulsed, soaked and running over with light flakes of snow, slipping in the feeble sun. This was rain in its entirety—trees, flowers, sifting air. I watched my mother spoon matcha into a porcelain tea bowl.
She stopped recognizing me months ago, and yet, I couldn’t let go.
I sat across from her, browsing through dishes of wagashi. Sometimes she called my name, her voice a taut thread, as though the word musume would snap it in half. But it held firm—an anchor.
Moments passed. A waiter brought oyakodon on bamboo trays. My mother nodded—you-me bowl, she used to call it, meaning mother and daughter, or yummy, but always pronouncing yumi, my name.
We lingered in the restaurant, watching the falling rain hit the river in gleams. I asked my mother to write something in Japanese, a language I had let wash away during my years abroad, a language that sounded like water hitting the belly of a barque.
I watched her pen as it stirred, a dark shape, and her fingers, shading the page. I watched the picture letters turn silver, carrying the weight of snowflakes whisked wayward, the window of pure falling—words made from meaning: yuki, she wrote. Snow. Happiness.
Months later my mother slept alone on a bed as white as snow or fresh-cooked rice. I sat beside her. Our hearts throbbed, our eyes closed. Words rose like loaves of bread, growing lighter with every passing breath—aging.
Seasons gathered back up into the calendar. I thought of the moon crossing bridge: the full moon of a gold egg yolk, intensely flooding us—
Mother and daughter as Oyakodon.
Photo Credit: Ryutaro Tsukata
＊ ＊ ＊ Isabelle Wei is a writer and literary editor. She loves poetry, pastries, and painting, although not necessarily in that order. In her spare time, she enjoys writing and reading stories that reflect her love for the natural world.
For the full list of this year’s competition winners, click here. For the original competition notice (with prize details), click here.
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