Andrew Innes came to Himeji in 2002 when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and the Hanami parties were in full swing. He now works at three universities in Hyōgo and edits the online journal, The Font, where extracts from his book can be found. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and traveling. 

Spider lilies. Everyone who lives in Japan, especially in an area with rice fields, is familiar with the clouds of red (and, occasionally, pink and white) knee-high blooms that suddenly appear, most often on the verges of rice fields, around the Autumnal Equinox – in fact, their name in Japanese, higan-bana, refers to this time of year. Higan refers to “the other shore” and this is a time for reflection upon the relationship between this world and the “other world” of enlightenment. This unusual lily (Lychorus radiata) comes up year after year in the same spot, from underground roots, and is gone within a few weeks. 

In English, the name “spider lily” has a distinctly creepy sound. It’s really nothing to do with spiders, unless you count the hairlike projections that ring the central blossoms, which make it look a little tingly, as though it would brush the back of your neck similarly to a spider walking along there. Arachnophobia is a major fear for millions of people, and this feeling of irrational creepiness is inherent in the word. 

One thing that is decidedly creepy about these lilies is that they are poisonous, especially the roots, and they can be used in the garden as a deterrent to pests (as long as you don’t make a habit of touching them!) In the first story in this book, “Spider Lilies”, some of the facts and legends surrounding this flower are recounted. Among them is a story that the poisonous quality of the flower is responsible for another name for the flower, () hand rot (probably referring to the idea that you shouldn’t touch the flowers or bring them into the house). 

Readers of this website may remember The Short Story Collective; 13 tales from Japan, by the same author, which was reviewed here (2021, by John Dougill). These stories are modern, for the most part, dealing with various facets of life in Japan, from pachinko parlors to the world of J-pop singing groups, and the scenes are modern too, from uninhabited buildings in the city to small night open food stalls. There are, as usual, a number of references to smartphones and other modern technology. But what struck me in these stories was the theme of women’s rights and opportunities vs. the (in many cases) antidiluvian powers-that-be in Japan, both urban and rural, and how this affects both high-class art and ordinary lives. Many of the major characters in the stories are women trying to live their dreams (and often being punished for it). 

The men who appear in the stories may be organized crime personalities or affiliated with them; they may be accused of sexist crimes; they may be offhand with women trying to pursue what have traditionally been men-only pastimes; they may be helpful. Some of them come to sticky ends, some are protected by their position. Some are motivated by alcohol, others by their innate place in society, which makes it, in many cases, a no-brainer to discourage women. 

The stories are quite involved, and require some concentration to keep characters and plot straight. But all are entertaining, and deal with scenes and happenings that shed light on various aspects of Japanese society in the age we live in. They are creepy too. 

Edited by Ken Rodgers and John Einarsen (Tuttle, 2025)

This beautiful work, in hardback with a color photo spread and many black-and-white photos and drawings throughout, is dedicated to Ken Rodgers, who died suddenly last year at his home. The dedication reads:

This book is dedicated to the memory of Ken Rodgers (1952-2024),
poet, farmer, impresario, pilgrim, doting grandfather, and managing
editor of the Kyoto Journal for nearly forty years.

We all miss Ken, and are glad that this book will bear this dedication, and all our thoughts of him and his life’s work as a very knowledgeable pillar of Kyoto’s ideas and feelings, go with this volume.

The book contains eighteen stellar essays on the subject of ma — the list of contributors at the back is a compendium of contemporary writers, artists and photographers on the subjects of Kyoto and Japan. Each, in his or her own way, has thrown some light on this quality of Japanese aesthetics — some academically, others artistically.

The collection opens with an Introduction by Alex Kerr, “What is Ma?” in which he says, “this collection is perhaps the most definitive book yet published on the subject.” He enumerates three kinds of ma, according to a play-turned-novel he is working on, inspired by his friend and late admired Japanophile, David Kidd: Primal, Artistic and Cultural Ma, and provides tongue-in-cheek descriptions of the three. It is an excellent and readable introduction to this in many ways formidable topic. I myself eagerly look forward to this novel.

The second essay, by Gunter Nitschke, “Ma — Place, Space, Void” (three translations of the word into English), gives a comprehensive view of the character ma 間 as it is used in various words, with their origins and meaning, explained as The Domain of Objectivity, the Domain of Subjectivity, and the Domain of Metaphysics, each divided into several realms.

I won’t enumerate the content and thrust of each essay here, except to say that the essays deal with the concept of ma in such disciplines as tea, martial arts, the Heart Sutra, calligraphy, gardening, photography, and more.

My own experience of ma, in the Japanese discipline I know best, the tea ceremony, is my favorite moment: the sudden cessation of sound occasioned by the pouring of a ladle of cold water into the hot water of the kama (kettle) at the end of the last part of the ceremony, that of usucha (thin tea). As a matter of fact, this part of the total chaji (tea gathering) which also includes a meal, sweets, and koicha (thick tea), could be seen as a way of rejoining the ordinary world after having one’s awareness raised above it by previous experiences in the chaji. The deep and spreading silence of the cessation of the whisper of boiling water (that sound referred to as matsukaze, “the wind in the pines” which has unobtrusively accompanied activities throughout the chaji), occasioned by the addition of cold water, serves to remind us, as we come back down to the level of regular life, that this august realm is always available through encounters with the most ordinary material things. This is the essence of ma, which encompasses both the spiritual realm and the material one. At least this is how it has always seemed to me.

Another aspect of ma dear to my own heart is the phenomenon of yoin 余韻, an aesthetic word describing the carefully timed short silence at the end of performances, be they music, dance, or drama, to name a few, after the last motion has been achieved, or the last note has died away. This is ma at its finest, in my opinion.

As you can see from these examples, for me ma is intimately connected with silence, freely given, noticed or not, which is indeed a form of space. I guess I am a silence aficionado. Ma is essentially a wordless idea. We human beings do require words in order to approach this wordlessness, however, and this review is no exception.

This book provides many different aspects of ma, and those of us who live a long time in Japan have our favorites. In the end, ma is an experience shared between oneself and the material world, which cannot be put into words, and this book is a very well-written introduction, including many visual examples, which to me are essential for developing the concept in the mind. It is indeed, as the book’s superscription says, “an invitation to awareness.”

Mike grew up in San Francisco, and attended USF as an undergraduate before earning his PhD in Artificial Intelligence at MIT. While there, he helped co-found MIT’s literary magazine Rune and studied poetry under David Ferry at Wellesley. In 1977, he was named a Luce Scholar with an appointment to Kyoto University. Mike and his wife translated They Never Asked, a collection of senryu poetry written by Japanese-Americans incarcerated during World War II, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in 2023. Mike’s most recent book is a translation of the Hyakunin Isshu, published by Tuttle. Mike has been an active member of Writers in Kyoto for some years.

A New Year’s holiday evening in the 90s, and in our home, a Hyakunin Isshu tournament is in progress. The drone of my mother-in-law reading the poems and repeating the all-important last two lines; the silence as the card is searched for; the slap of the card as it is taken from the floor; the barks of triumph and the moans of defeat. I listen to the familiar sounds from the kitchen where I am washing dishes. My upper-elementary-school-age son, who is in the card team currently being coached by a local priest, is involved in the game. This traditional New Year pastime, called One Hundred Poems in Japanese, involves, to win the game, taking more cards with the last two lines of the poem printed on them than your opponent. The poems are in the traditional waka format, 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per poem. To be really skillful means memorizing the first half of the poem so that you can find the card with the last two lines quickly. In our house, the “answer” cards are splayed as for the card game “Concentration,” but in a real game between experts, such as one sees on TV at this time, they are lined up between the two contestants, who sit facing each other. It’s really a two-person game, but anyone can join in, the way we play. I used to try, but it is really too hard for me to read the archaic hiragana script of the cards, so I mostly just listen.

One Hundred Poems from Old Japan would be a welcome addition to any Japanophile’s bookshelf. Handsomely illustrated with Edo-period woodblock prints specially commissioned from artistic masters Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi and Kunisada, each opened page consists of an illustration, the number of the poem, the author and sometimes court title (from the Emperor’s court during the Heian period, around the tenth century), the English translation, the Japanese original, and the romaji (alphabetic rendering) of this last, arranged beautifully over the space.

Michael Freiling came to Kyoto in his youth, and his big project as a Henry Luce scholar in 1977 at Kyoto University was translating the One Hundred Poems into English, several of which graced the pages of the 4^th Anthology of Writers in Kyoto, Structures in Kyoto. As one of the co-editors of that anthology I was glad to see his translations of other poems as well, the complete work in fact, in this book. I knew that these poems can be read on many levels, and it was interesting to see how the translation, in many cases, included nods to these various levels. For example, my favorite of the collection, No. 66, ends with the lines, hana yori hoka ni / shiru hito mo nashi (“No one sees the blooming of the mountain cherry except the flowers themselves”), which is one level, that of a natural scene; another is a lament by the author, the former Archbishop Gyoson, for his loss of status; as translated by Freiling, “…for both of us [me and the blossoms]/ no other friends are left.” It is true that these levels of meaning have not been, by and large, arrived at by asking the poets themselves, but by inference through information about their lives and preoccupations provided by their friends, later commentators, etc. But it is interesting to be aware of them. The levels are arrived at naturally using poetic words and images which have more than one meaning in this poetic framework. It would be interesting and educational to see translations of the poems from the viewpoints of some of these several levels in the same place, for comparison purposes.

The Introduction, which is fascinating, covers such themes as “Court Life in the Heian Period,” “The Merry-go-Round of Love,” and a very interesting portion which lists localities in modern Kyoto which are associated with the poems, “Modern Kyoto and the Hyakunin Isshu,” as well as short biographical notes about some of the more well-known poets featured in this collection. The Ogura Hyakunin Isshu collection was originally made by Fujiwara no Teika, a member of the very important court family Fujiwara. Works of several members of this family, who were poets as well as public figures at that time, can be found in the collection, including a poem by the compiler himself, No. 97. It is to be noted that many of the included poems were written by women, including Sei Shonagon and Lady Murasaki, women being a very important part of the literary and cultural life of the Heian court. Lady Murasaki Shikibu, particularly, is famed for writing the novel The Tale of Genji, which sheds much light on the court as it was at the time of these poems.

The illustrations are full of life and wonderful in design, which one would expect from such experts in the field of woodblock printing and artistry. I confess that I was a bit confused at first by the juxtaposition of the illustrations and the poems – “what are they supposed to be illustrating anyway?” I thought. I should have read the Introduction first, which states, in the words of the author/translator, “The … illustrations… are from the series The Ogura Imitations of One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Ogura nazorae Hyakunin Isshu)… The print series was made specially to illustrate this volume of poems, and the imagery in each print is based on scenes from Kabuki theatre that relate to the theme of each poem.” Thus the illustrations, although all showing human beings, are not of the poets themselves (this was the initial source of my confusion), and sometimes the theme connecting the picture to the poem is rather difficult to grasp for a modern reader, but those that, for example, include the moon (No. 59), maple leaves (No. 24) or snow (No. 15), are self-explanatory. (The compendium of illustrations is described as “playful” by one Google commentator, not particularly serious that is, but one would have to be conversant with a lot of literature and literary figures to feel the playfulness.) It would be nice to know which Kabuki play and which scene are being referenced, but such information is not within the scope of this book. One also must keep in mind the discrepancy in period between the poems (around tenth century) and the illustrations (around eighteenth century). Still, the illustrations are impressive, and beautifully rendered.

This edition includes a link to free audio recordings of the poems at the end of the Introduction.

Amanda Huggins is the author of the novellas The Blue of You, Crossing the Lines and All Our Squandered Beauty, as well as six collections of short stories and poetry. Her work has been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Mslexia, Popshot, Tokyo Weekender, The Telegraph, Traveller, Wanderlust, the Guardian, and many others. Three of her flash fiction stories have also been broadcast on BBC radio.

She has won numerous awards, including three Saboteur Awards for fiction and poetry, the Kyoto City Mayoral Prize, the Colm Tóibín International Short Story Award, the H E Bates Short Story Prize and the BGTW New Travel Writer of the Year. She has placed in the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition, the Costa Short Story Award, the Fish Short Story Prize and the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and been shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Prize. 

Amanda lives in Yorkshire, England and works as an editor. She is a frequent visitor to Japan and a member of Writers in Kyoto.

The present novel, The Blue of You, is a romance set in the northeast coast of England, a small fishing village which is the hometown of the protagonist, Janey. She has come home after some years living in London, and is haunted by the tragic events that happened here one Christmas time long ago. She wonders if she can lay those ghosts to rest and follow a new love, which would mean she would get involved with projects that try to preserve tradition, in the form of fishing methods and others, at the same as they discourage the coming of strangers who would end up destroying what was originally picturesque about the place. In this way the author touches on a theme which has popped up all over the world in recent years: Is it more important to preserve tradition, or to go with the flow of human progress, watching many things change from traditional to modern, with the danger that all tradition will be lost? Can tradition and newer ideas exist side by side? Is it important that they should?

Janey ponders these questions as she wonders whether it is better in her own life to go back to an old love or to go toward something new, ironically in a place she knows best, her hometown. The story jumps to different times, different years, which are indicated at the beginning of chapters, which it is essential to notice when reading in order to understand what is flashback and what is happening “now.” The tragic events of that faraway Christmas blend with the present as Janey finds out various pieces of the puzzle from people that were with her then, and learns which of those people were her real friends.

As usual Amanda Huggins provides plentiful word pictures, often riffing on the title of the book by describing different kinds of blue, for example: “The was something mesmerizing and hypnotic about the rough purr of the engine, the gentle slap of wave after wave, the way the water curled and parted as we chased the horizon…the vast, infinite blue, the way the light changes, they way it dances on the water.” Or this: “I bought a tasselled blue suede jacket… I stood up to try the jacket on, twirling around … I could see myself in every mirror, reflected over and over again in an infinity of blue.”

Speaking for myself, I have only recently discovered the pull of the color blue in all its manifestations, and realize that this particular color has a romantic rhyme, “blue-you” unlike any other color name in English. The title is of a fictitious song that comes up periodically in the story.

Like most of Amanda Huggins’ writing, this book has a romantic cast, not very Japanese perhaps, but with a butterfly-light touch that reminds one of Amanda’s years-long love affair with the country.

We who have associations with Kyoto are familiar with Marc Peter Keane’s work. (Just as one example, I reviewed his book Of Arcs and Circles, Stone Bridge Press 2019, for Writers in Kyoto in December 2021.) Marc is a garden expert who has created many beautiful gardens, both in Japan and overseas, notably the Empty River garden in Honen’in Temple, Kyoto. His website may be found at www.mpkeane.com

This time Marc has written a novel, a lengthy one with a very interesting premise. Briefly, an epigeneticist working in a big facility near a big city experiences a life-threatening cosmic phenomenon which creates great anomalies in electrical power, meaning that the internet, etc. are no longer available as one example, and creates a temporary but devastating environment in which panic ensues and much life is lost. This woman, the researcher, manages to survive the ensuing weeks and to gather a group of fellow survivors with whom she travels into the countryside, knowing that is their only hope. Her research previously centered around the possibility of the electric field of eels being transferred through a virus to other life forms, and she injects herself with the virus quite early on to see what would happen, and later, some of the other survivors. The combination of this virus and the effects of the cosmic event result in a completely new form of human being.

Fast forward three hundred years, when the descendants of these survivors have formed their own civilization based on a kind of telepathy with other living things and each other, and learning about and caring for the cycles and infinite detail of the great Nature, not only visible organisms but also the great network of living things underground, that they find themselves a part of. 

Each chapter has both a section about that far-off future society, with inspiring passages about how Nature revivifies itself, and also a section about the way that it began: notes of the researcher at a university surviving a cosmic event, injected with a special virus that has vast consequences for this remnant of humanity, travelling with a group of survivors who formed the ancestors of that future society.  

Without going into too much detail, I can see that this visionary book carries us on two pathways, that of the survivors of the cataclysmic cosmic event and of their future descendants. As a person who lives in the countryside of Japan and has often lamented at the state of nearby mountains which were once so painstakingly cared for and now are nothing at all to the vast majority of the population, I rejoiced to read the accounts of people for whom every living thing, every cycle, are of great importance and must be observed meticulously, and for whom the richness of the land, and its gods, are living and important parts of the human beings’ lives.

The society created draws upon many taproots of our society as well as on its major system, that of Nature itself; the language of the descendants, which the author depicts sparingly, has a few words from other languages as well as Japanese mixed in, and it is a good mental exercise to imagine what the original word might have been. (I communicated with Marc on this subject, and he admits a fondness for books with language anomalies which must be figured out; but for non-Japanese speakers, he has created a lexicon, downloadable from the website, in a PDF file of words used and their ordinary English meanings. 

A quote from the researcher who has led the small group of survivors past an erstwhile nuclear power plant, the area around which is dusty and lifeless, a hellish landscape:

“… reminded me of the ancient chronicles … life and death, all the same thing. Two faces of the same coin. susanoo, the god of the sea, is unhappy and searches for hahanokuni, the land of his mother. to find it, he must enter yomotsukuni. the path to life is through death… this godforsaken place is not a mistake, or a challenge. it is none other than the very road we need to take.”

Marc Peter Keane has drawn on his considerable knowledge of Japan and Nature to create a very thought-provoking book of great breadth and depth. The book is divided into six parts, each of which begins with a Japanese seasonal word and illustration by the author, very evocative and beautiful. The cover is also his illustration.

Even the stories not overtly about mother and child have to do with familial obligations and resonate with tales of characters seeking fulfillment outside their responsibilities.

Kamata’s writing is visceral and vivid, her characters complex. The settings are various—urban and rural—but all are a slice of life. They leave us in the middle of a person’s journey, with no real resolution but often at an important juncture.  

The book starts with what I thought was a memorable opening sentence, but turned out to be a perfect opening paragraph.

Every time Savannah speaks, a thousand magnolias bloom in my head. Her voice is liquid and sweet, like honey drizzled in the ear. There is none of the redneck twang that fills up the pool halls and laundromats. Her voice is worth imitating, and as I drive home after my shift at the restaurant, the smell of grease clinging to my hair and polyester, I sugar my syllables and speak into the night. (p. 8)

A lyrical paragraph, it works our imagination with its rich descriptions and contrasts, and takes us from the ethereal and heavenly to the greasy polyester realities of this waitress.

“Day Pass” tells the story of a woman who befriends a resident of the Women’s Correctional Institute on a work release program. The narrator is obsessed with the young enigmatic convict, but the story goes sideways when our narrator realizes that she may be in for more than she bargained for. This is a gentle yet riveting tale.

But “Day Pass” is only one of many beautiful stories. Some of my other favorites include “Blue Murder” about a farmer who falls in love with a kingfisher. He is a husband and father who feels unnecessary in his household and unappreciated. When he discovers this bird, he finds joy and purpose. He is mesmerized by it and believes “…that this bird had been sent to him in this moment of difficulty to ease his pain.” (p. 32)

“Down the Mountain” is written like an epistle or perhaps even a story told around a hearth to a daughter, warning her to leave her mountain village and pursue life in the larger world.

An American woman teaching English in rural Japan is the subject of “Lessons.” She is successful with the businessmen and children, but the housewives are challenging. In the end the lessons are reversed and it is the women who make their mark on the teacher.

In “The Snow Woman” we have a legend blended with a story of a Japanese mother obsessed with her mountain climbing. It is about a daughter who tries to understand why her mother would “… love mountains more than her daughter?” (p. 102)

In “Julia in the Desert,” a woman on vacation in Las Vegas with her family wonders, “What if I drove off the road, into the desert?” (p. 122) The title of the story, “The Lump,” is self-explanatory, and is enough to scare a woman into re-evaluating her marriage.

I have highlighted just a few, but all of the stories are worthy and should not be missed. They are thought-provoking and artfully written. All the characters are memorable including a rock-climbing violist from Prague named Greg Samsa, and a woman who prefers her ant farm to the Girls’ Day display. These two teach us that desire is transformative.

There is a mental patient in love with all things French, as well as an anthropologist fascinated with maiden sacrifices. And there is a family who feuds over everything, from meals to the atomic bomb, but it is in an A&W fast-food restaurant where they finally find a temporary peace.

I mustn’t forget the titular story. “River of Dolls” is a poignant tale about a woman struggling with infertility against the backdrop of the Girls’ Day Festival and the dolls central to that holiday.

These stories are set mostly in Japan, and are written with a deep understanding and appreciation for Japanese culture, and yet they are saturated with American sensibilities as well. It is a fascinating blend.

River of Dolls is ultimately a social commentary about how women’s identities are forged and about how difficult it can be for a woman to be just a person and not a mother, a daughter or a wife. It speaks to the responsibilities and the compelling needs of others as they compete against a women’s own needs and desires. Both touching and unsettling, River of Dolls will stay with you long after you close the book.

I attended the launch in Kyoto of this book on November 22 last year, wrote it up (you can find the writeup in the newly refurbished website), and I agreed to write a review of the book as well. However, due to various matters especially the rituals of New Year, I was unable to write it until now. Apologies to Tina and others who were waiting.

This is a book of love, and it is also a murder mystery — I think in that order. The love comes from the love of a mother for her son who has chosen to live far away, and of that same mother for that place where her son lives. Tina mentioned at the launch interview that she chose the word “embers” because of the various fire festivals in Kyoto which the main character visited, which are depicted on a lovely map drawn by Elisa Tanaka (who also created the beautiful book cover), and also because the word “embers” gives a cozy feeling.

Bianca is the protagonist and detective, who moved to the small town of Batavia-on-Hudson, New York, and has forged her place there through two earlier novels, Winter Witness and Dead Man’s Leap (which were both nominated for the prestigious Agatha Award). She has a deep connection to the city of Kyoto, and her son has made his home there. This, the third book in the series, is set largely in Kyoto — the subtitle is “a Batavia-in-Hudson Mystery in Kyoto” — and many small details reveal Bianca’s, and the author’s, love for the city and familiarity with it.

This is a bold move — to juggle two scenarios at once, Kyoto (where the protagonist is visiting) and Batavia-on-Hudson (which she calls home, and where she has a budding romantic interest: the local sheriff, who happens to be up for reelection). There are many attendant problems to do with timing — for example, the time difference must be accounted for when planning telephone calls, etc. But in part thanks to the small size of chapters, the author manages this admirably. Each chapter helpfully notes the location at the top, so we can keep track of where we are as we read.

As a matter of fact, this book is helpful to the reader in many ways, which is one rather under-mentioned way to judge a book. Location tags, maps, illustrations, and lists (such as a list of characters, which Tina also helpfully provides at the front) are ways that authors can make it easier for their readers to enter and navigate the world of the book. Tina uses these in a masterful way. Kudos for that.

I noticed the love of family and the love of place, and felt that the actual mystery, the murder of a ne’er-do-well foreigner, was somewhat of an adjunct to the actual story, which deals with the protagonist’s identity search, and also the process of watching her son as he forges his own identity in Kyoto. The author says at one point, after connecting with the myth of the fox, who is a trickster and shapeshifter in Japanese stories, “… Bianca thought about how well mythology can capture the paradoxes of our personalities. How we were two people at once — maybe even several people. How sometimes we weren’t even sure which one was our real self — and how we tried these identities on for size over the years before we had a good sense of who we really were.”

This is true of everyone from outside who makes Japan their home, and is probably true of every person, especially those who find themselves thinking of somewhere other than their birthplace as home; identity search is part of every human being’s life journey.

There are dream sequences and live action, family and city and small-town relationships skilfully woven; there is something for everyone, but for me this will always be a book of love. Reading it, people who love Kyoto will find a wealth of detail about their favorite city, and they may also be tempted to sample the previous books in the series, as well as anticipating what will happen in the next one.

In both her critically acclaimed novel, The Baseball Widow, and her newest publication: Cinnamon Beach, Kamata’s signature multi-POV storytelling style deepens the narrative as we experience it from all angles. This results in a deeply emotional ride through The Baseball Widow, making it a haunting read for some. This is softened however in Cinnamon Beach thanks to the warm tropes of a romantic beach read. 

Crossroads and coming home

Cinnamon Beach is a story about moving on from heartbreak as experienced through the three POVs: protagonist Olivia, her sister-in-law Parisa, and her daughter Sophie.

Olivia has brought her two teen twins to the States in order to spread the ashes of her late brother, Ted. Burned out by a toxic work environment and her (secret) divorce, Olivia begins the story feeling like she has failed at everything, and is deeply uncertain of her future.

Returning home can be hard. Olivia, opines in the opening chapters how disconnected she is from much of the family updates, even the really big ones. Her old life in Japan looms large in her thoughts, but, as with any good beach read, a past romance promises to distract her and deliciously complicate everything.

Parisa, bereaved of her best friend and husband Ted, is faced with all the dangling responsibilities of her life with him. Decisions about the restaurant Ted built and the failing health of his parents compete with possibilities of building her small fashion business into something more.

Different people want different things from Parisa, but the question is what she wants from herself, now that the life she imagined is gone.

In comparison with the adults, Olivia’s teenage daughter Sophie starts her story happy to be away from home, in Tokushima, Japan. Home is comforting. It’s where her teachers, community and favourite festivals are. But thanks to her mixed genes, she is doomed to forever stick out. In addition, her deafness means she is often left out of her brother’s adventures. Embracing her invisibility from the first chapters, Sophie’s story branches off from the rest of the narrative as she enjoys her independence and a romance of her own.

Spice

The most comforting aspect of a beach read book are the fantasy love interests that inhabit them. Vicarious readers require lovers who are thoughtful, kind, blessed with a high density of muscle tone around the abdominal areas, and, most importantly, an unwavering and obvious interest in the protagonist.

Olivia’s story leans into the trope hard. An old flame from her college days has moved into the neighbourhood, only now he is a world famous musician. While he seems to be 100% on team Olivia, she has reservations and doubts that first need to be settled. Luckily, country & western superstar Devon has never had a biography written about him, giving Olivia plenty of opportunities to wield her tape recorder while asking more intimate questions.

Meanwhile, Sophie enjoys a sweet summer fling with Dante, a surfer boy who learns how to sign for her, and takes her to see the turtles. He is the perfect first love: respectful, curious about both the girl and her culture, and quick to text back. Through Dante, Sophie begins to navigate her first steps into adulthood.

Though less spicy than many modern romantic readers may expect, Cinnamon Beach brings warm fuzzies as the characters negotiate the tensions of their own will they/won’t they relationships.

An authentic touch

What makes Cinnamon Beach such a thoughtful read is how it synthesises Kamata’s realistic and relatable style of writing with more fanciful tropes expected of this genre. The feelings and emotions of all the characters come from a very real place, as do some of the events in the story. A truly infuriating section details the pervasive academic power harassment suffered in many tertiary institutions, for example. Olivia’s biography shares similarities with her author – a caucasian woman working in Tokushima, Japan, mother to two children, a boy and a girl, with a Japanese husband. Kamata herself is always quick to point out that her stories are fiction, but these insights into the world she has inhabited for decades gives her works a unique dimension.

Final thoughts

While Cinnamon Beach certainly touches on the pain of loss and the complexity of redefining one’s identity after grief, the novel balances this heaviness with the warmth of second chances and self-discovery. Kamata invites readers to connect with each character’s journey while delighting in the genre’s escapist pleasures.

The nostalgic seaside setting of Cinnamon Beach serves not only as a place for reflection but also as a subtle metaphor for the tides of change in each woman’s life. A backdrop that is both healing and serene. A place we all wish we could visit when at our own crossroads.

The fourth writer of this series is one who is likely to be familiar to readers who enjoy modern literature set in Kyoto. Two books from his Kamogawa Food Detectives series have recently been translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. You may remember that Matsuda Michio, the third author in this series, was a noted pediatrician. Interestingly, Kashiwai is also in the field of medicine as a practicing dentist. Is there something about the medical profession that encourages the art of writing? Kashiwai does not yet have an English wikipedia entry, but I’d expect one would appear soon.

Kashiwai’s fiction falls into the category of light reads and the beloved “coffee/cat/food” genre that readers around the globe are immersed in right now, judging from the number of translations coming out of Japan that fall into this category. But my initial purchases of his books were a few of his nonfiction books on Kyoto — of which there are more than you can imagine. Some are guidebooks, some are very specific guidebooks, some are essays and some are a combination of the two. They are very readable and his likes and dislikes come through clearly. If you enjoy learning about Kyoto, they are must-reads. I do not see that any of them have been translated into English. I hope that they will be.

Biography

Kashiwai Hisashi was born in Kyoto in 1952. As of this writing, he is still alive. He grew up in Kyoto and graduated from Osaka Dental University in 1976 and opened a dental clinic in the Kita Ward of Kyoto City. Biographical information about him is scarce, but a glimpse at a few websites for his dental clinics reveals that the Kashiwa family have been dentists through four generations.

He started writing a series of short stories that later were published as the Kamogawa Shokudō books in 2013. One can easily infer that he is a foodie. In 2016 NHK aired the stories from the first two books as a television series. In addition to his novels and essays, he writes mysteries under the name of Kashiwagi Keiichiro.

Books on Kyoto

Kashiwai is a prolific writer and with new books coming out in both October and November of this year (2024). I’m simply going to tell you about the books of his that grace my own bookshelf.

Fiction

Here are a few from his most popular series.

Nonfiction

I enjoy nonfiction more than fiction and I love reading about Kyoto and filing away tidbits of information. If you are this type of reader, Kashiwai has written and continues to write about every single corner of Kyoto that you can imagine. Here’s what happens to be on my own shelf. I look forward to the day when they are translated into English and/or other languages. They are meant for the average reader and are not particularly profound.

Resources

Kamogawa Shokudo – the Japanese wikipedia entry on the series. A very complete list of the books and stories and a listing of the particular dish that each story features.

Discover Japan articles – This is a link to the articles tagged with his name that he wrote on Kyoto for this journal. They include articles on travel, food, hotels, and traditions of Kyoto.

Entry point for the NHK dramatization – This is a Daily Motion link where I found the aforementioned series, subtitled in Chinese. Access may be limited by location, but I was able to view them from the USA. They are visually quite beautiful. They have that NHK feel to them.

The Kashiwai Dental Clinic – It looks like his son is currently in charge and he would be the fourth generation of dentists in this family. If you need a good dentist.…

For this third profile I’m veering away from novelists and writers actually born in Kyoto. Matsuda Michio is a transplant to Kyoto and he always qualified any writing he did about Kyoto by stating that he was not “Kyoto-born,” though his family moved to Kyoto when he was just six months old. It is evident that he developed an appreciation of Kyoto and he wrote a few books that expressed that. He may be an unlikely choice; none of his works seem to be translated into English, though it appears they’ve been translated into both Russian and Chinese. Matsuda doesn’t even merit an English Wikipedia entry. But when I first came to Kyoto in 1976, Kai Fusayoshi, a manager at the now defunct Honyaradō, plucked a copy of 京の町かどから(From the Corners of Kyoto) from the second-floor bookshelf and handed it to me, with the suggestion that I improve my Japanese reading ability by tackling some of the essays in said book.

I found it much too difficult to read and to this day I have not read all of this book. But I went on to read a few of this Kyoto-ish author’s other books which were intriguing to me due to their unexpected and sometimes bold content. For example there was an essay entitled “Women Have No Place in the Academic World.” This sounds dreadful, but if you read through the essay you realize that it is a bit of a click-bait title, because what he is actually saying is that academics must totally immerse in their studies and it would be impossible for any professor to do that if he didn’t have a wife at home taking care of and supporting his daily needs. Since women as a rule, don’t have wives (at that time) or that kind of support system, they would not be able to equally immerse; in this way it is an ode to the role women self-sacrificing-ly play in supporting others.

Biography

Matsuda Michio (October 26, 1908 – June 1, 1998) was born in Ibaraki Prefecture. However, his family moved to Kyoto when he was six months old, so he was thoroughly immersed in Kyoto life, at least outside of the home. He comes from a long line of physicians as it was the custom for doctors to inherit the family trade of medicine. His father was a pediatrician in Kyoto. Many of the medical doctors at that time were respected and prestigious as their practice was almost an act of charity. Matsuda followed in his father’s footsteps as a pediatrician, but also became a writer. His politics tended to be radical as he flirted with both Communism and Socialism, and in that sense I often think of him as comparable to our American Dr. Benjamin Spock. Both of them wrote bestselling books on baby and child care and had views that were ahead of their respective times.

During World War II, Dr. Matsuda was extremely conflicted internally over the practice of medicine in the war time system. He could not escape from serving the state that executed the war while his colleagues were exhausting themselves as they devoted themselves to working in the slums or in the laboratories.¹

In 1967 he left his pediatric practice to become a full-time writer. Though most of his books had to do with pediatrics, they were largely geared towards the average parent and reader, rather than fellow physicians or academics. Climbing the ladder to become an esteemed academic was never his goal; he was always focused on being a neighborhood doctor, good citizen and free thinker. Two of the books he wrote were written in the voice of the child and one of them, 私 は二歳 “Being Two Isn’t Easy” was even made into a popular movie, directed by Ichikawa Kon. You may be able to find it on certain movie sites or you can rent or buy a copy from Amazon etc. It is quite interesting, especially if you are intrigued by danchi life in the Showa period.

Should any student want to take on a complete examination of his life and works, there is a Matsuda Michio Collection at Kumamoto University that houses his personal book collection and other documents. Personally, I think he is a Master’s thesis just waiting to happen.

Books on Kyoto

The first book I mentioned that is solely focused on Kyoto is called 京の町かどから and is an unusual collection of his essays that seems primarily geared towards explaining the habits of the people of Kyoto to outsiders. Contents include an essay on the well-known bubuzuke (ochazuke) story where the Kyoto host politely offers bubuzuke to a guest which is really a signal that it is time for that guest to leave.

Another book of his on Kyoto is called 『花洛—京都追憶(岩波新書, 1975) and examines some of the historical anecdotes of Kyoto. It was retitled and re-released in 1995 as 明治大正 京都追 憶.

His other books, while not focused on Kyoto per se, offer anecdotes and thoughts about the people of Kyoto in the context of childrearing or academics or broadly on everyday life. His views on women and relationships are oddly both behind and ahead of his time and are interesting to read. He is not shy about addressing controversial topics.

He also had a best-selling book using the dagashiya or traditional Japanese candy store as a vehicle for talking about how to live one’s life. It’s meant as a starting point for discussions about the future and the past and what lessons are offered.

The counterculture intellectuals of Honyaradō gave me a copy of 自由を子どもに “Give Children Freedom” which was published in 1970. Matsuda seemed especially taken with the opportunities the children of Kyoto had for all types of play on the banks of the Kamo River based on what he himself enjoyed in his Kyoto youth. Imagine, if you will, that Matsuda, in the late 1960s was already bemoaning and writing about the freedom children had lost–-the freedom to explore on their own, cruise the neighborhood and beyond, and hang out without parents. He is probably turning over in his grave at the state of things today. I can’t help wondering what he’d think about the impact of smartphones and the like that we live with today. One almost wishes he was alive to share his thoughts.

Finally, I will add that the two books 私は赤ちゃん “I’m A Baby” and 私は二歳 “I’m Two Years Old” should be of interest to parents–and they are fairly easy to read.

Footnote

1. Nakao, H. (2024) Based on a personal email to Sara Aoyama, August 30, 2024 ︎

Resources Consulted

• 松田道雄 – Wikipedia — Japanese entry
• Being Two Isn’t Easy — English wikipedia entry on the film
• Matsuda Michio Collection — at Kumamoto University
• The Ideology of Matsuda Michio — An excellent and thoughtful examination of his life as it connects to his writings and action
• An Essay On The Thoughts Of Dr Matsuda Michio Concerning The Infant Education — From the Kyoto University Research Information Repository
• Personal Correspondence from Professor Nakao Hajime — Author and past president of Kyoto Seika University

In this second entry in the series, I’m introducing a woman writer, Yamamura Misa. She is well known as a mystery writer and a very prolific one at that. Many of her books have been adapted for television mystery series and a few of them have also been made into video games. She has been translated into Chinese, Russian, French etc. but I was unable to find any of her books currently available in English. While many of her books are set in Kyoto, she has also set her mysteries in other parts of Japan, both near and far. Additionally, there are a few of her mysteries set overseas in such places as Paris and Guam.

Biography

Yamamura Misa (August 25, 1934 – September 5, 1996) was born in Kyoto City proper. During the war, her father served as a principal of a college in Korea, so she spent some time there as well. After graduating from college with a degree in Japanese Literature, she went on to become a junior high school teacher in Fushimi. Upon marrying at the age of thirty, she retired from her teaching position. She took up writing a few years after that and quickly found success as both a novelist and a writer of screenplays and drama. But her mysteries were what she was most well known for and perhaps unique for the times, one of her favorite recurring characters was an American woman named Katherine who was the daughter of a fictional American vice president. The ‘Katherine’ novels were adapted for television quite frequently and the role has been played by both Japanese and Western actresses, the most recent being Charlotte Kate Fox, an American actress and singer from New Mexico, who also appeared in the NHK morning drama, Massan.

Yamamura was also well qualified in Japanese arts such as flower arranging, tea ceremony and traditional dance, and this enabled her to incorporate traditional arts into her Kyoto mysteries. She passed away of heart failure, leaving behind her daughter, Momiji, an actress. In her will she requested that Momiji be given a role in any future dramatizations of her work.

I was drawn to Yamamura Misa’s works purely for her Kyoto settings, but I wondered if I could really read a mystery in Japanese and be able to follow the plot lines and pick up on the clues. Yamamura is a clever writer and her success is due to her so-called tricks that she employs when she writes. But with an American character, I found it easy to relate to her adventures and though it may be impossible for a budding Japanese language student to pick up on every clue, they are quite readable; it should be quite easy to find a copy of many of her books in a used bookstore. Should you happen to catch an airing of one of her dramas or find one on the internet, that will aid you in understanding her storytelling style. And finally, a few of her works have also been published as manga.

It is very difficult to find photos of this author. And she seems to have been somewhat of a mystery herself. Despite being a very popular author of her time, there is little written about her and it seems that this is how she wanted it to be. Although the Wikipedia articles are written decisively, it is possible that even her real age at death is unknown. Seeking to remedy this, a more contemporary Kyoto author, Hanabusa Kannon published a book in 2020 entitled ‘The Famous Mystery Writer of Kyoto that Nobody Really Knew.’ At one time there was an official website for Yamamura Misa, but it has (mysteriously) disappeared.

Books set in Kyoto

The number of books set in Kyoto is so extensive that rather than list them here, I will list the Kyoto locations or events that are featured in a sampling of her Kyoto works. My suggestion is that you pick a locale that you are familiar with and dive in. There are also a number of works that at least partially take place in Kyoto but don’t refer to a location in the title. Examples would be Kyoto Gourmet Journey, Kyoto Engagement Journey, Kyoto Honeymoon Journey and Kyoto Divorce Journey etc.

The books that feature the fictional Katherine Turner may also be of interest as they reflect some of the gaijin experience in Kyoto. The Japanese wikipedia entry for Misa Yamamura has a list of the books in that series.

General Resources Consulted

• Yamamura Misa — Wikipedia entry (English). A rather brief entry.
• 山村美紗 — Wikipedia entry (Japanese) Includes a list of her complete works.
• 山村美紗のおすすめ作品5選！ドラマ化も多くされたミステリー作家 (2021) — An introduction to five of her novels.
• 山村美紗おすすめ８選をご紹介～衝撃のトリックに酔いしれる～ — An introduction to eight of her novels.
• 山村美紗の作品一覧 — An annotated list of her books. Very useful.

Almost every member of WIK has written something about Kyoto and while there are many famous authors writing about Kyoto both in the distant past and the present, there are also many that remain unknown to us simply because they haven’t (yet) been translated into English. Like many other readers, I love to immerse myself in a book with a setting that is familiar. So when I was learning to read in Japanese, I would search for books set in Kyoto. My criteria was not necessarily great literature; for me, this was purely reading practice. Through trial and error, I found that a setting in Kyoto and/or a novel with ample dialog was my best bet. I did not try to understand every word or look up each unknown character. The only time I picked up my dictionary was when an unknown word or character made multiple appearances and I felt a compulsion to know the meaning or the reading.

In this short series, I want to introduce a few authors who used Kyoto as their setting for a number of their books. Once you understand an author’s style, it becomes easier and easier to read their books. My hope is that this will encourage intermediate and beyond Japanese language learners to try some of these books out. They are, for the most part, older books, so it should be easy to find copies in used bookstores. Most of all, I hope this encourages you to browse a few bookstores and find other wonderful authors that are still unknown to most English readers.

I begin with Mizukami Tsutomu. Or, Minakami Tsutomu. There seems to be little consensus on how to read his family name, or even his first name. I have heard Kai Fusayoshi refer to him as “Ben-chan” and I believe he was, at one time, a patron of Honyarado. He is certainly a prolific and colorful author. Surprisingly, I found his books on the contemporary geisha world and bar hostesses in downtown Kyoto fairly easy to read.

Biography

Mizukami Tsutomu (March 8, 1919 – September 8, 2004) was born in Fukui Prefecture in a small village. He was the second son of five siblings. At the age of nine, he was sent to live with a relative in Kyoto and to become an apprentice priest at a sub- temple of Shōkoku-ji called Zuishunin. However, the hard life of an apprentice priest didn’t suit him and he ran away at age thirteen.

He was brought back, this time to Tōji-in and the library he found there drew him into the world of literature. In 1937 he entered the Department of Literature at Ritsumeikan University. Having had tuberculosis, he was not assigned to active duty in the military during wartime, but instead was assigned to an army unit stationed in Fushimi.

After the war, he moved to Tokyo where his first book was published. He worked in many different fields (he claimed to have held 36 different jobs) to support his family. In 1959 his first mystery was published and sold quite well, establishing his name as a writer. From then on he was quite prolific and often wrote mysteries taking place in Hokuriku and Kyoto. He addressed a wide diversity of issues in his writing depending on where his interests took him. His family life was also quite colorful. His literary works won him a great number of awards and stretched into just about any genre you could imagine, including works for children. Though his works have been translated into both Russian and Chinese, he is oddly ignored by English language publishers. Only a few of his stories have been translated thus far.¹ I note that there was also a translation published of a selection from his book called ‘Eating the Seasons’ in the Kyoto Journal Issue 83 on Food.

Mizukami’s works set in Kyoto are by no means considered to be his best books or the most representative, but I present them here because they are not terribly difficult for a student of the Japanese language to read. In fact, they provide an excellent introduction to the Kyoto dialect spoken in the geisha quarters and by some Kyotoites today. The story lines are quite simple and the settings provide a good introduction to different areas of Kyoto. Here are a few that I read many years ago when I was learning the Japanese language. It should be easy to find copies of them in used bookstores in Kyoto or elsewhere in Japan.

Books on Kyoto

五番町夕霧楼 [Gobanchō Yūgirirō] Published in 1962. Considered to be his representative work on Kyoto, it was written as a contrast to Mishima Yukio’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. A young girl from Tango is sold into servitude to the Gobanchō District in Nishijin. In fact, she is sold into prostitution. There are love triangles, suicides, and misbehaving priests, all culminating in a fire at Hōkakuji Temple. With all of these elements it is no surprise that it was made into two different TV dramas (1968 and 1974) and a Shochiku film in 1980.

沙羅の門 [Sara no Mon] “Sara’s Gate” Published in 1964. It’s a tearjerker of a story about an unwanted pregnancy of a woman lodging in a temple near Yasaka Shrine. There was also a film adaptation made the same year and directed by Seiji Hisamatsu.

京の川 [Miyako no Kawa] “Kyoto River” Published in 1965. The life and troubles of the geisha world in Kyoto. This was also serialized for the NHK Ginga Drama in 1969 with a total of 25 thirty-minute episodes.

女の森で [Onna no Mori de] “In the Forest of Women” Published in 1969. A two- volume work on the lives of the Gion geisha. This was serialized for the NHK Ginga Television Novels series in 1975 and has a total of 20 twenty-minute episodes. It’s an excellent book to immerse in.

波影・貴船川 [Namikawa Kibunegawa] Published in 1969. A collection of five short works. A good starting point as the works are shorter and you can pick and choose.

出町の柳 [Demachi no Yanagi] “The Willow of Demachi” Published in 1989 Another collection of five short works.

Also notable is 土を喰ふ日々, published in 1978 which was made into a film starring Sawada Kenji as recently as 2022 entitled The Zen Diary in English about a writer living in the mountains and what he cooks throughout the seasons. See the trailer.

General Resources Consulted

• Mizukami Tsutomu — Wikipedia entry (English). A rather brief entry.
• 水上勉 — Wikipedia entry (Japanese) Includes a list of his complete works.
• 戦後の京都と「赤線」の町 ―水上勉「五番町夕霧楼」論 — An article on post-war Kyoto and the red-light district where Gobanchō Yūgirirō takes place.

1. The Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen. Translated by Dennis C. Washburn in 2008. ︎

Weiss’s work is difficult to categorize, but might be termed one of the higher forms of rumination on art and aesthetics, a practice restricted to a small group of writers, critics and polymaths, stretching from Walter Pater and John Ruskin to Alain de Botton. Geoff Dyer and Teju Cole come to mind for their considered meditations on states of being.

The beauty of Weiss’s prose, which is evident throughout this book, is an enticement to proceed to his ideas, a process that is a form of ensnarement, forcing the serious reader to reexamine their muddled thinking. Whether he is pondering the transformative work of an ikebana master, an iconoclastic ceramicist, or John Cage’s abstract score for Ryoanji, a composition played in chance-determined sequences based on the perception of the garden and its fifteen stones as a pre-existing form of musical score, or commending the experience of restaurant interiors, tableware, calligraphic displays and flower arrangements, an entrée into the refinements of Japanese culture, he does so with an uncommon refinement. Here is a book that doesn’t present itself as a work of literary merit, but cannot fail in being one. Books like this are a supreme rarity.

With deft hands, Weiss peels back the fine layering of opaque membrane that wraps the core of Japanese aesthetics, and takes us, in the case of the tea ceremony, into a “utopia with a single ritualistic purpose, a space that prepares one for enlightenment.” Eschewing the anointed look of the culturally mesmerized, and, thereby, compromised, Weiss writes of the practice, that the purity of its origins have been, “corrupted by the commodity aspect of tea utensils and the utilization of the private space of the tea room for political and financial intrigues.” The author understands the dilemma faced by the more aesthetically conscious tea masters, trapped between material forms, consumer valuations, and a striving for “pure connoisseurship, which can appear “mannerist, even decadent.” Does one adhere to a form of ritual so formally correct and minimalist it compromises the social leveling of the event, or stage a presentation so opulent, you end up with over-stewed leaves? 

Could this very fastidiousness, the sedulousness of a practice that keeps the unschooled hordes from the door, amount to, not just an affectation, but an over-attention to perfection? This put me in mind of a tea ceremony I attended earlier this year, in which the master, an elderly woman, apologized profusely for the condition of the winter camellia chosen for the event, which had suddenly blossomed that morning into a showy, unintended efflorescence. She hoped that the raku ware tea bowl that was being passed around, with its more muted tones, would moderate the over-exuberance of the flowers.  

Is the appreciation of such aesthetics in decline? Or, more to the point, how long has it been in decline? The appreciation of limited morsels of light in the Japanese home, for example, had already begun to lapse into a cult of quaintness by the time Junichiro Tanizaki published his long 1933 essay, ‘In Praise of Shadows’. Tanizaki, whom Weiss references, celebrates the merits of meager light and perishable, organic materials, noting in the case of the zashiki, the Japanese tatami room, that walls are deliberately made from soil and sand, in order to, “let the frail, melancholic, ephemeral light saturate the solemn composure of their earthy tones.” There is no question that, today, the appreciation of such refinements is confined to a very small number of Japanese. One would have to go to considerable lengths to experience the aesthetic sensations celebrated by Tanizaki, and now by Weiss.

 In an age in which the publishing industry, indiscriminate in its eagerness to bring out books on Japanese culture, to provide instant gratification, Weiss demands a great deal more from his readers. Spearheading a cerebral, unsparing school of intellectual inquiry, one you might term, “extreme erudition,” you’ll have to have your wits about you when encountering, for example, a sentence like, “If it is neither diegetic nor adiegetic, would it be paradiegetic?” which concerns the function of the frame in the visual arts.

As someone who grew up in a house totally bereft of books, I have spent a lifetime filling empty rooms with the written word, with titles that turn barren emptiness into what Donald Richie termed “the nourishing void.” The aptly named ‘Illusory Dwellings,’ is a fine addition to this improvised library. 

＊　＊　＊

Writers in Kyoto were very fortunate to welcome Allen S. Weiss to speak on ‘Illusory Dwellings’ and a variety of other topics in May 2024. Reflections on the event can be found here. A listing of Allen’s books can be viewed on his Amazon author page here.

Photojournalist and author Stephen Mansfield’s work has appeared in over 70 publications worldwide, on subjects ranging from conflict in the Middle East to cultural analysis, interviews and book reviews. To read more from and about Stephen Mansfield on the Writers in Kyoto website, please refer to this link.

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

Following is a short bio of the author.
Amanda Huggins is the author of the novellas All Our Squandered Beauty and Crossing the Lines as well as six collections of short stories and poetry. Her work has been published by Harper’s Bazaar, Mslexia, Popshot, Tokyo Weekender, The Telegraph, Traveller, Wanderlust, the Guardian and many others. Three of her flash fiction stories have also been broadcast on BBC radio.
She has won numerous awards, including three Saboteur Awards for fiction and poetry, the Kyoto City Mayoral Prize, the Colm Toibin International Short Story Award, the H E Bates Short Story Prize and the BGTW New Travel Writer of the Year. She has placed in the Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition, the Costa Short Story Award, the Fish Short Story Prize and the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and been shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Prize and many others. Amanda lives in Yorkshire, England and works as a freelance editor.

Talk with Author Simon Rowe at David Duff’s home, April 14, 2024

Nine people gathered to listen to Simon Rowe talk about his phenomenal success in publishing and other things on April 14 in Kyoto. Thanks very much to David Duff for opening his home/library once again for an event. Due to the absence (by illness) of John Dougill, we didn’t have an emcee, but I asked Simon if he needed formal introductions etc. and he said no, so the talk proceeded in a very casual way, with participants inserting questions and comments throughout.

As most people probably know, Simon is a New Zealander by birth and also spent a lot of time in Australia (Melbourne)。This childhood, as well as access to National Geographic magazine, gave him a curiosity about the world and a sense of adventure. He became a travel writer with many articles to his credit in various publications, traveling and writing handwritten notes and taking slides with an SLR camera. He was successful, especially during the Bubble economic period when there was a lot of venture capital floating around and publishers were buying articles in bulk. He emphasized the importance of “hustle”, and said that if one thing goes right (you get a “break”) it gives you the confidence to follow it up and more things start to come in.

He also said that the effect of the Internet has been that travel writing as a literary form has declined due to the “information dump” of YouTube etc. with everyone getting into the act, and it is important to have an angle (“spin”) which makes popular places look different. He also stressed the importance of authenticity in writing, and the trust that the writer knows his milieu (cultural, literary, etc.) makes the reader engage with fiction that may have something unfamiliar about it.

Simon segued into his experiences creating the character of Mami Suzuki, first in Pearl City (2020) and now in his new successful Mami Suzuki, Private Eye (Penguin 2023), who is a detective with a day job in a large hotel in Kobe, a single mother who lives with her mother and daughter. (See review, below.) He described his difficulties with people in the US who were concerned about cultural appropriation and wondered why a foreign man was writing about a Japanese female protagonist. However, due to his years in Japan (presently in Himeji) he knows what he is talking about in this culture, and in the case of the latter book he got a cover blurb from a female Japanese author in the detective genre, Naomi Hirahara, which was like a “seal of approval” which negated murmurs of cultural appropriation etc.

 Interestingly, the literary festivals in India where he recently took this character and book were delighted with Mami Suzuki and were not the least bit concerned with cultural appropriation. In fact he found himself very busy traveling around the country and attending various literary festivals and was enthusiastically received everywhere. His agent is an Indian lady in Bangalore who arranged for a lawyer to oversee (and edit) his publishing contract with Penguin books. (Penguin had taken a couple of years to get back to him about publishing his book, but eventually did.) Unfortunately, Penguin did not pay for his trip to India, but the contacts he made were worth it.

Some advice from Simon about the publishing world – bullet points I wrote down:

• Importance of contracts and agents – to get help with this side of things and to keep things on an unemotional (business) plane
• Contacting famous people for favors – they can only say no, and may say yes. Help becomes mutual once one has contacts.
• “Catching the wave”, feel the energy and always keep putting more in
• Royalties for books are NOT equivalent to your effort, don’t rely on them

He now is negotiating for film rights. We will eagerly follow his successes from now on.

Happily, Simon knows his way around Japan so didn’t require help with transport, etc. There were still a few people there talking to him when the meeting broke up around 6:15pm.

Thanks very much to Simon for taking the time to give us this very interesting talk.

REVIEW of Mami Suzuki, Private Eye (Penguin, 2023) by Simon Rowe

On the cover of this book, it is written, “From the Kobe wharfs to the rugged Japan Sea coast, the subtropics of Okinawa, and a remote island community in the Seto Inland Sea, each new adventure ends with a universal truth – that there are two sides to every story of misfortune.” I resonate with this, as my own short stories often invite readers to witness epiphanies in the lives of the protagonists; and to arrive at an understanding of why they acted and thought as they did.

We first met Mami Suzuki as the detective in “Pearl City”, the first story in the collection Pearl City – Stories from Japan and Elsewhere (2020) and this story, with very slight changes, comprises the first part of Mami Suzuki – Private Eye. The author said that it provided the inspiration for the writing of the novel, due to the great positive feedback he received, particularly from female readers. This detective must find her way through the distractions of single motherhood, living with her young daughter and aging mother (who sometimes accompany her on her travels), consoling herself with a beer late at night as she mulls over her cases, which have come to her by word of mouth and which she solves in the moments she has free between her job as a hotel clerk in Kobe and the demands of her personal life.

Simon said to me, “Mami Suzuki is a ‘quiet’ read, and though the mysteries themselves aren’t that hard to solve, they place a lens over the human condition – a whydunit rather than a whodunnit”. I myself appreciated the compassionate tone of Simon’s writing in this and other works. This is not a “hard-boiled” detective novel with a body count. It is easy to imagine these “crimes” being perpetrated by ordinary human beings, who had pressing reasons for doing as they did. It is not the usual detective story, in which “right triumphs” as the criminal is brought to justice; it is much more complex than that.

Mami Suzuki has human problems and distractions. She is also appreciative of the finer things of life, from a good shot of whisky to designer clothes, as she juggles the mundane details of her life, and there is even a tanned, middle-aged fisherman to provide romantic interest and with whom she bounces the case details around. The stories move at a peaceful pace, with many small details sprinkled over the scenes, bringing them to vivid life and pointing up the author ‘s easy familiarity with the settings.

Mami Suzuki – Private Eye is a story which calls to mind travel writing at its best – it can transport you to many places, including a pearl-sorter’s workstation or the precincts of a sunlit shrine garden, and make the reader feel at home in all of them.

For Simon Rowe’s numerous works on the Writers in Kyoto website, please see this link.

Kyoto Journal 106 dives into the theme of ‘Cultural Fluidity’: the accelerating flow and blend of cultures across borders. This concept is the 21st century globalized equivalent of what might have formerly been oversimplified as imported and exported cultures. From Japonisme to Pokémon, contributors illuminate this subject from diverse viewpoints, through a mix of essays, poetry, photography, and illustrations. KJ 106 addresses the many ways foreign cultures have manifested in Japan, how aspects of Japanese cultures have manifested in Japan, how aspects of Japanese culture have been reimagined overseas, and in some cases, how those manifestations of Japanese culture have then flowed back to influence Japan.

Historical perspectives include scholar and garden creator Marc Keane’s investigation into the international roots of Japanese garden design, and  Ken Rodgers’ profile of John Manjiro, who accidentally became instrumental in opening Japan at the end of the Edo period. On the other end of the spectrum, Alex Mankiewicz delves into the history of the Emoji, Gen Z’s lingua franca, and Rebecca Flato observes the phenomenon of the ubiquitous Japanese vending machine. Lewis Miesen offers a view of lives of the second and third generations of the Japanese diaspora, as well as those who have now returned to the homeland of their ancestors.  Lauren Deutsch shines a light on the Japanese diaspora’s embrace of its roots through Bon Odori events in the USA, blended with North American influences; traditional senryu poetry reveals deep emotions among WWII-era  Japanese-Americans on their way to internment camps. John Brandi revisits the profound influence of haiku on his development as a poet. Patricia Matsueda reflects on her mother’s post-war emigration. An ‘ethno-punk’ duo traverses Japan  seeking cultural roots, and Nathan Mader recounts David Bowie’s connections with a Kyoto Zen garden. Susan Pavloska interviews Li Zi-Zi of SEN Ikebana Flower Meditation on her unique synthesis of Chinese Gongbi painting and Japanese ikebana. Kyoto’s rich but lesser known role as a center of Beat, Punk, and counterculture is explored in Mahon Murphy and Ran Zwigenberg’sportrait of Kyoto University’s Seibu Kōdō venue. Magda Rittenhouse reports on experiencing a virtual concert by Sakamoto Ryuichi; Jazz guitarist and teacher Joshua Breakstone contrasts approaches to jazz in the U.S. and Japan; an interview with John Oglevee introduces a contemporary Noh play featuring the wandering spirit of Elvis. 

Available from the Kyoto Journal website at the following link: https://www.kyotojournal.org/product/kyoto-journal-106-cultural-fluidity-digital/

********************
From the WiK Website:
“In this ‘recollections of poems and trees’, Robert Weis unites two seemingly distant worlds: that of short poems inspired by haiku and that of bonsai trees. Flora and poetry blend naturally on these pages through free verse poems, short prose and photographs, with a single aim: to make us see the beauty within.”

*********************
This little book by Robert Weis, co-editor of the 5th WiK Anthology, The Nature of Kyoto, is a collection of free verse poetry and photographs mainly of bonsai trees (photographs by the author, Jean-Pierre Reitz and Zsuzsanna Gaal), tastefully designed by WiK’s Rick Elizaga. The photographs of venerable yet small bonsai trees dominated my first impression of the book. The photos are not connected by theme to the poems which are juxtaposed with them, at least not to me; there must certainly be a subtle connection, since the photos have been carefully chosen by the author to be next to the poems; and more perceptive readers will be able to find it.

The poetry is mainly about experiences with nature, which Robert Weis has plenty of, both in Japan and many places in Europe. The poems range among such topics as clouds, trees, water. An example, which I particularly liked, is “Tree at the Window” (partially quoted below), which leaves the reader in a pleasant state of doubt whether the poet is referring to a tree outside his window or to a lover who shares his life. Or both.

At each dawn I greet you before I leave you
To find you in the evening on the other side of the mirror
You look like me and I look like you
Day after day we grow roots
In silence
Like the tree in front of the window.

There is an introduction which traces the author’s affection for the Japanese tree Momiji (maple), also loved by the Japanese writer Kawabata Yasunari (who was himself a bonsai aficionado), and an afterword which details involvement with the Bonsai Japanese art form, which is very popular in Europe. True to the name of the present book, Weis expresses large ideas which are embodied in small or miniaturized things.

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

Robert Weis was instrumental in setting up in the summer of 2022 a large exhibition in the Luxembourg Natural History Museum of art and photography, “Spirit of Shizen: Japan’s nature through its 72 seasons”. The accompanying catalogue constitutes an anthology featuring essays and contributions by several WiK members. 
He has also published another volume of poetry, Dreams of a Persimmon Eater (January 2023) and also the self-described “travelogue with a personal touch and some spiritual and literary insights”, Return to Kyoto (2023). Though these books are originally published in French, the present work was written originally in English.
He is a “geopoet” whose travels take him to various interesting areas of Europe as well as numerous visits to Japan and Kyoto. The photograph above shows a persimmon bonsai which the author saw in Kyoto in 2019.

Pawasarat’s book offers an insider’s perspective, drawing on her many years living in the Old Capital, coupled with an understanding of Japanese culture. The narrative unfolds the multifaceted layers of Gion Matsuri, providing a useful companion for those exploring Kyoto in July. Below are key points that explain why this book is not simply a guidebook, but also a means of digging deeper into the culture.

1. Organized Guidebook: Pawasarat’s book stands out by featuring color-coded sections that facilitate quick information retrieval. The compact size makes it ideal for travelers, with a Kindle version offering much larger photos and maps.
2. Float Insights: The author dedicates two sections to the July 17th and 24th processions, providing succinct background stories on each float and highlighting their significant treasures. The abundance of information is handled in a way which ensures that readers gain key insights without feeling overwhelmed
3. Practical Information: A valuable section offering a full calendar of events aids visitors in planning their Gion Matsuri experience, with detailed maps showcasing float locations and parade courses. The inclusion of useful tips, particularly on coping with the scorching July heat, demonstrates the author’s consideration for readers’ well-being.
4. Diverse Festival Activities: The book includes various aspects of the festival beyond the processions, in sections like “Art Treasures” and “Explorations.” Readers are taken through musical performances, dance performances, and even opportunities for active participation, such as pulling a float.
5. Historical- Religious Context: Delving into the festival’s history, the author unveils the intertwining of Buddhism and Shinto, offering a glimpse into Japanese religion. The author skilfully navigates a third religious element in the festival, for several floats are dedicated to the folk religion of Shugendo (combining elements of Shinto, Buddhism, and Taoism). The colorful devotees of Shugendo perform sacred rituals especially at the En no Gyoja float (supposed founder of the sect). The various events and floats reflect the deep syncretism of Japanese religions.
6. Modern Purification Ritual: The book encourages readers to view the festival as a modern purification ritual, connecting with its historical roots in protecting Kyoto’s citizens from plagues. Pawasarat invites readers to make a deep engagement with the festival’s sacrifices, portraying them as an ascetic practice that fosters communal cohesion and self-transformation.
7. Community Commitment: Drawing on her experience with a neighborhood maintaining a float, the author provides insight into the commitment and dedication required for the festival’s success. She highlights the necessity of communication among participants, emphasizing the ritual’s generational significance and its ability to slow life down to the pace of face-to-face community interaction.

In short, Catherine Pawasarat’s The Gion Festival: Exploring its Mysteries transcends the usual role of a guidebook, offering readers a profound connection to the festival’s rich history, intricate rituals, and the dedicated community behind its continuity. Whether a first-time visitor or a seasoned participant, readers will find that this book serves as an invaluable companion, unlocking the many layers of the Gion Festival in a captivating and accessible manner.

John Dougill’s latest book, Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan: A Journey by Train from Hokkaido to Kyushu, was launched in Kyoto on Sunday November 19. The event was held at Irish Pub Gnome, with music by Quin Arbeitman on piano, and 35 guests in attendance, including Writers in Kyoto members and other friends.

After people mingled for some time, John Dougill was warmly introduced by WiK treasurer, Paul Carty. “John calls himself a loner,” he said, “yet there is no-one with a greater network of friends.” (John is protesting heartily at this point, and the audience laughs at his protests.) “Not only that,” continues Paul, “but when you read the book, John is always engaging with people, and that’s where this book is really powerful. He travels from the north to the south of Japan, listening to people, and just as Walt Whitman heard America sing, John heard Japan talking, and he has captured the humanity of the people in a very beautiful way.”

John himself then gave a short speech and then read from passages from the book on Mt. Rishiri in the chapter on Wakkanai, and the tale of Tama the cat in the section A Brief History of Japan’s Railways. John was seriously ill last winter, and it had looked uncertain as to whether he would see this day at all. Not only was he “glad to be here,” but “frankly I’m glad to be anywhere,” he said in his speech to laughter, channeling Keith Richards. He also publicly thanked Paul Carty for his support throughout his illness, and also for Paul’s help with the book.

Another reason that the book is very dear to the author is because it is his most personal. In his previous writing (college textbooks, books about Oxford, film, Japanese culture and so on), he had refrained from such personal writing. This time he felt free to express himself and had intended to self-publish, but was delighted that the publisher, Stone Bridge Press, agreed to take it up. They urged him to add extra information to appeal to train enthusiasts, and did a wonderful job on the design.

I felt that this was not just a book launch, it was a celebration of life. It could also be seen as one of the good things to result from the Corona restrictions to overseas travel. The account of the long journey from Japan’s far north to the deep south runs on parallel tracks – past and present, fact and contemplation, social commentary and humour, erudition and passing thought. Not surprisingly all copies of the book at the launch were sold and signed. It was good to see, and now it is launched it is sure to win attention in the highly competitive world of travel literature.

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

Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan is now on sale through amazon.com and amazon.jp. For a review by Rebecca Otowa, see here. For other reviews, see the amazon page and scroll down past the endorsement by Alex Kerr (“I know of no Japan journey that is so full of joy as this one.”)

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

Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan is available through amazon and in leading bookshops in Japan (Kinokuniya and Maruzen). For a review by Rebecca Otowa, please click here. For other reviews see amazon or goodreads.

＊　　＊　　＊

John Dougill is the founder of Writers in Kyoto, author of numerous books on Japan including Japanʼs World Heritage Sites (Tuttle, 2014), In Search of Japanʼs Hidden Christians (Tuttle, 2012) and Kyoto: A Cultural History (Signal/OUP, 2004). He also runs the Green Shinto blog. A longer introduction can be found here, and a listing of his available books here.

On Reading David Joiner’s The Heron Catchers

Herons are lithe, elegant birds. Gliding over water, nesting in fields, or soaring through the air, the heron’s perceived ability to transcend the elements has led to fabulous fairytales, stately dances, and sublime paintings. Haiku poet Matsuo Bashō wrote verses about the heron and artist Ohara Koson immortalized the bird in woodblock prints. Now novelist David Joiner adds to our collection of heron lore and love with his hauntingly beautiful The Heron Catchers, published by Stone Bridge Press.

Set within the quiet green abundance of the Yamanaka Onsen village, some distance from the picturesque castle city of Kanazawa, The Heron Catchers promises a lovely idyll of rural life. As charming as rural life may appear from a distance, however, it too is rife with conflict and pain. Shortly after the novel opens, readers are confronted with treachery. Here, main character Sedge visits the famous Kenrokuen garden, at the heart of Kanazawa, to meet a woman:

He stood on a short wooden bridge over a stream winding away from Kasumagaike pond, admiring a newly blossoming cherry tree, and pines here and there recently freed from their protective winter yukitsuri ropes, when a snapping of branches made him spin around. To his astonishment, a wild boar burst from a bush, colliding with a heron upstream and sending a cloud of feathers in the air (10).

Sedge springs into action, covering the injured heron’s head with his jacket to both calm the bird as he attempts to rescue it while simultaneously protecting himself from its razor-sharp beak.

Treachery comes in other forms, too.  Soon we learn that Sedge has been deeply wounded by his wife’s infidelity. Nozomi has run off with the talented but volatile potter, Kōichi,—taking with her all of Sedge’s savings—and leaving Sedge the impossible task of running their Kanazawa craft store with no capital. Nozomi’s brother, mostly in an effort to protect the family name, invites Sedge to spend time at the inn he owns not far away in Yamanaka Onsen. Sedge can teach the employees English for room and board. It turns out that one of the inn’s employees, Mariko, is married to Kōichi, the man who ran off with Sedge’s wife.

When the rules at the inn become too oppressive—particularly those that prevent Sedge from seeing Mariko romantically—Sedge decides to strike out on his own.  Or rather, he moves in with Mariko. The comfort their strange alliance offers is threatened by the presence of Kōichi’s teenage son, Riku, who lives with Mariko.  He, more so than the adults, has been hurt by life’s cruelties. Like the injured heron, he is frightened and dangerous, lashing out at any who try to approach him.

Will Sedge and Mariko be able to find the solace they need to heal their own damaged hearts? Will they be able to rescue Riku? What has happened to Nozomi, Kōichi, and the money? These and other questions propel the narrative forward. But more than the trace of a plot, readers are captivated by the understated beauty of the prose and its shimmery profundity. There are truths buried here, truths about the fragile persistence of sorrow and love and hope. We brush up against them as we read but hardly notice.

When they reached the shrine, Mariko waved him to a narrower path he hadn’t noticed, which wound behind the shrine and through a copse of sugi trees. In a minute they emerged on the opposite side of the mountain, lower than where they’d been. Here the view opened even more. Despite the highway near the ocean, where cars were small as ants, he sensed that no one in the world could find them here (95).

We follow the characters as they travel deeper in their journey towards healing, a journey that takes them deeper into the mysteries and beauty of nature. There are missteps along the way. We watch as the characters stumble, uncertain in their pain.  And, we celebrate with them, too, when they learn to staunch their hurts as surely as they bind a heron’s broken wing.

Given my background in Japanese literature, I could not help but think of the folk-tale of the heron wife while reading the pairing of Mariko and Sedge.

In the Japanese folk-tale, a young man comes across a wounded heron, and he takes it in and nurses it back to health. When the heron has regained the use of its wings, he releases it, and the heron flies away.

Time passes and the young man meets a beautiful woman with whom he falls in love. They marry and live happily together. The young wife weaves cloth, which the man sells, and the two are able to support themselves.

But the wife places a constraint upon the man: He must never observe her while she is weaving.  Of course, the young man cannot resist the temptation to look, and when he does he sees a heron at the loom.

Now that her secret has been exposed, the heron wife can no longer remain in the human world. She returns to her flock, leaving the man bereft.

In The Heron Catchers as well there is an importance placed on seeing, control, and the power of knowing. In one scene, Sedge’s desire to see Mariko’s naked body in the moonlight reads with mythic overtones.

     She led him into her bedroom. Of the three curtained windows along her walls, only the one behind her futon had been left open for the sky to pour its light inside. It was enough to see her figure when she slid her yukata off, light and darkness moving over her body: her nipples, her navel, the space beneath her armpits, the barely visible bars of shadow between her ribs, the constellation of scars—the sea of skin that surrounded these things like water keeping islands afloat (172).

Unexpectedly, this romantic scene leads to tragic results that threaten to unravel the domestic happiness the two have struggled to achieve. This scene, and the one cited above, suggest the tug at work in the novel to get to the heart of some hidden meaning—to understand, to know, to read “the constellation of scars.” Much of the novel, therefore, carries readers into the characters’ inner worlds where time swirls round and round unanswered questions.

In an online interview between publisher Peter Goodman and author David Joiner, Goodman observes that David’s American characters do not walk through his narratives like the questioning outsider. The story does not draw attention to their otherness or make it the point of conflict but rather integrates them within their landscapes in a very natural way. The comment is astute. Readers know that Sedge is American, but we are never told what he looks like, what race, what religion, or any other identifiers. Rather, we identify with Sedge in a much more universal way, as a human being on a quest. “I want my characters to be on equal footing linguistically and even in some respects culturally,” Joiner noted to Goodman in response, “that allows me to go a lot deeper in their interactions with each other.”

And, deeper we go.

Part of the cultural landscape that Joiner’s characters explore is shared with haiku poet Matsuo Bashō, who traveled through Yamanaka Onsen and Kanazawa on his celebrated journey into “the deep north.”  For all his barbs and hard edges, the boy Riku is drawn to Bashō and his poetry. When Sedge asks him why Bashō made the trip, Riku replies that he did it to “escape the pain and sorrow of this world” (169). For Riku, haiku is an escape. For The Heron Catchers, Bashō’s journey offers the characters a model for the momentary epiphanies life offers. In the space between these sudden realizations, Sedge, Mariko, and even Riku take their own journeys deep into the interior where they are able to bind their wounds, meditate, and return.

Matsuo Bashō wrote a few poems on the heron. This one seems most appropriate to this novel:

inazuma ya               a flash of lightning
yami no kata yuku        into the gloom
goi no koe               goes the heron’s cry.

                         Translated by Geoffrey Bownas and
                         Anthony Thwaite

Author David Joiner, a Writers in Kyoto member, was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, but now makes his home in Kanazawa. The Heron Catchers is his third novel and will be available from Stone Bridge Press and other online outlets from November 21, 2023.

Joiner’s second novel Kanazawa, also published by Stone Bridge Press (2022), was named as a Foreword Reviews Indie Finalist for multicultural novels. See the review by Rebecca Otowa.

Reviewer, Rebecca Copeland, also a WiK member, is Professor of Japanese at Washington University in St. Louis, a translator, and a novelist. The Kimono Tattoo, set in Kyoto, was reviewed by Rebecca Otowa for WiK on July 6, 2023.

What an honor to hold the newest book by author Rebecca Otowa in my hands. Inspired at Miidera Temple by a picture showing “100 Views of Miidera” in the style of small cards, 100 Objects in My Japanese House contains intricate, colorful images drawn by the author and divided into three broad categories: Exterior, Deities, and Interior. Those who are familiar with Rebecca’s other published works, in particular At Home in Japan (Tuttle 2010), understand her deep familiarity with Japanese customs, and that much of this connection was founded in a relationship with the centuries-old farmhouse she has resided in continuously since 1986. 100 Objects in My Japanese House provides an even deeper glimpse into the author’s immediate surroundings – a dragon bronze incense holder, a black and white photograph, a heavenly bamboo plant, a traditional sewing box, a futon fabric design, a summer neck pillow, and many others. A particular favorite of mine is the old stone wall in front of the house (pictured below) because it captures so well the gray, brown, and yellowed hues which come with the passing of time.

In addition to the 100 drawings, which all include explanations in both English and Japanese, Rebecca has chosen yuzen paper for the front and back covers, as well as the use of yotsume toji – the traditional method of stab binding which was introduced to Japan in the Muromachi Period and remained popular until the Meiji Period. Such inspiration came to Rebecca in a dream and was appealing because of her personal aversion towards computers and complications which come with modern-day digital self-publishing.

Creation of this special limited edition included the following steps (in order), as detailed by the author:

1. Draw the pictures (all images drawn by the author over a period of three years)

2. Take photos of the pictures (taken by a friend/professional photographer during four visits over the course of a year, paid for by the author herself)

3. Set up the photos and captions in preparation for printing (done on the author’s personal computer using Microsoft Word, which was then saved in PDF format)

3. Copy the PDFs (While initially washi paper was considered, it was too difficult and expensive, so regular printing paper was purchased from a local stationery store. 900 pages were required.)

4. Fold all pages in half (by the author herself, and required for yotsume-toji binding)

5. Put the folded pages in book order (by the author herself, and for the limited edition of 30 copies)

6. Purchase yuzen paper for the covers (bought by at the author at a paper shop in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture; One sheet makes three covers. The paper shop staff provided introduction to a factory for traditional binding.)

7. Take books to the binder and provide special explanations, such as the need to bind the book on the left instead of the right (as is the style of most traditional books printed in Japanese)

8. Wait three weeks

9. Make title labels for the cover and glue them on, sign and number books (by the author herself)

Total Cost: Approximately 2000 USD

Kudos to Rebecca on carrying out her envisioned project to the end, which shows us that such special creations are still possible without the use of too much complicated technology and a reliance on an outside publisher. 100 Objects in My Japanese House is a unique work of art and a significant contribution toward keeping alive the knowledge of both countryside and traditional Japanese living.

Left: Completed book with handwritten title label; Right: Example page (with old stone wall)

The all-volunteer Kyoto Journal has released a new digital issue: KJ 105: The Geography of Myth.

Historical visions and an innovative strategy to revitalize Kyoto crafts 

KJ 105 encompasses vast arcs in Japan’s mythical history and social geography through articles, photo-essays, and intriguing excerpts from the latest books by some of our favorite KJ-associated authors.

• Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan: A Journey by Train from Hokkaido to Kyushu: John Dougill, visiting Mt. Takachiho in southern Kyushu, examines the founding of the nation under Emperor Jimmu in the context of a Chinese imperial expedition to Japan by an eminent alchemist seeking the elixir of everlasting life. 
• Umui: A Journey Across Okinawa: Everett Brown’s mesmerizing photos and meditative observations from Okinawa reveal deep traces of a shamanic past.
• Hidden Japan: An Astonishing World of Thatched Villages, Ancient Shrines and Primeval Forests: Alex Kerr laments the impending loss of a “Jurassic Beach” on the relatively unspoiled southern isle of Amami Oshima. 
• Empty Kyoto: photographer Daniel Sofer shares visions from his newly crowd-funded book documenting unprecedented views of the city’s signature attractions during Covid lockdown. 
• Arcs and Circles: Marc Peter Keane reflects on the meaning of emptiness in Buddhism, garden design and everyday experience.
•  100 Objects in My Old Japanese House: Writer/illustrator Rebecca Otowa documents the heritage accumulated in her family’s 400-year-old farmhouse.

Remo Notarianni chronicles cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s ongoing practice of filming in the surprisingly rich “empty” environment of deserts. Poet Amy Uyematsu revisits Manzanar, the WWII desert internment camp where her parents were confined, and yet maintained their culture. Fiction writer Marianne Villanueva explores contradictory accounts of family myth in the Philippines. Maureen Tai revisits childhood memories in Ipoh, Malaysia. Rick Elizaga experiments with moss and an AI image generator. Historian Hyde Fras shares insights into Prince Shotoku Taishi’s pre-Nara constitution, and Chris Goto-Jones finds lessons for today in the late-12th century hermit life of Kamo no Chomei, author of the Hojoki.

A special feature is a fascinating and informative interview by Creole Wihongi with Steve Beimel, the inspiring founder of CraftJapan21, an entrepreneurial organization that is actively applying successful innovative strategies to revitalize essential Kyoto crafts and preserve their heritage of specialized skills. A companion piece by Creole explores the first-hand experience of visitor Ariston Zhou, currently apprenticing with a longstanding Kyoto woodcraft company.
 
Plus haiku by Deborah P Kolodji, reviews, and a ramble by Robert Brady. Available now as a download from KJ’s website.

Also worth noting: We have invitations out for participation in our two upcoming issues: KJ 106 (Fluidity of Culture) and KJ 107 (Fire & Kyoto). For further details, please subscribe to our newsletter.

The original Hidden Japan was in Japanese, titled Nippon Junrei, and this translation gives us another example of Alex Kerr’s stupendous literary, cultural and linguistic gifts. It comprises a description of journeys in 2017-2019 and is in a way an extension, or re-visitation, of his earlier book Lost Japan (Penguin 2016), also originally published in Japanese. The subtle and complex parts of the Japanese soul — oneness with nature, dark forests, multi-faceted religion, quirky and non-right-angled art — which he is writing about have receded further into oblivion in the years between then and now.

In the introduction to the Japanese book, reproduced here, we are reminded that in Japanese culture, “hidden”, or “back” things are often seen as more mysterious and thus more desirable than “revealed” or “front” things. (The phrase and idea of “in your face” is not easily translatable into Japanese.) He acknowledges his debt to the writer Shirasu Masako and her book Kakurezato (Hidden Hamlets).

Hidden Japan is a compendium of several trips the author took to ten different parts of Japan including among others Noto peninsula, Amami-Oshima island in the far south, and Yazu and Chizu in Tottori Prefecture. Some are related to his love of old buildings, especially houses, such as his trek to southern Fukushima prefecture; and some are connected to his own history, such as the American Occupation settlements of the Miura Peninsula, Kanagawa Prefecture near Yokohama, where he lived when his father was stationed in Japan in 1965. It also branches out into such areas as trees and tree cultivation, cedarwood shingles in temple and shrine architecture, and the complex origins of the elemental and avant-garde Butoh dance tradition. In a passionate opinion piece modestly titled “Postscript”, Kerr outlines his ideas for “a new philosophy of tourism”, and indeed he has become one of the most important voices for saner policies of tourism in Japan. The book also includes a comprehensive glossary and useful maps.

It’s typical of Kerr’s outlook that he writes in this Introduction, “please enjoy learning about the places in this book. But please never, ever go there.” He quotes Shirasu Masako describing the imperative to share one’s experiences of “hidden” places as “cruel” because it contributes to the place becoming more well-known and more visited, which inevitably changes it and may eradicate the very things that made it charming in the first place. In labeling some places “hidden”, he harks back to the days when people read travel books because they would probably never go to a place, rather than as a preparation for going there. That was the era of the “armchair traveler”. Occupants of the armchairs of those days asked of a travel book that it not only give information about the place described, but also sprinkle in some history, personal adventures, cultural points, and literary worth in the form of quotations and allusions, as well as good writing. Hidden Japan amply provides all these things.

When you read this book, if you find yourself thinking, “I must make that part of my next itinerary”, Kerr implores you to think again. Would the place in question benefit from your visit, or would your presence just make it that much less hidden? Would you be able to refrain from boasting that you had visited one of Japan’s most isolated backwaters, and thus make it likely for friends to visit too? It’s certain that many of these places would benefit financially from a few more visitors. But it is equally certain that many of them, faced with the possibility of a tourist influx, would haplessly destroy the very thing they have set themselves up to be famous for.

As a painful example of this, Kerr mentions the spectacular steep-hilled rice field terraces of Shiroyone, on the Noto Peninsula, which he says “feel a bit staged” because of their close proximity to the cement Michi-no-Eki (“break point on the road”, usually a cement building where local produce and souvenirs are sold). But then he goes oan to say, “Maybe a convenient parking lot right there, with an observation platform from which you can easily snap a shot and then be quickly on your way, is just what people are looking for.” It is certainly what the Chamber of Commerce in this area is looking for, and if we think about various people we know, we could probably think of many who fit neatly into this slot too.

The hidden places that Kerr writes about are certainly enticing, if you seek “the real Japan”, and especially if you like old buildings, nature, and historical associations. It’s very tempting to feel that you are one of only a very few people who have set foot in some isolated locale or other. But especially in these times when “reality” itself is taking a beating as a concept, to be able to say you have “actually visited” some place or other is rapidly losing its meaning. For a second, let’s imagine doing “remote” traveling — sitting comfortably at home and, with such a book in your lap, imagining trekking the mossy paths of Itaibara hamlet, or sampling the fare beneath the grass-grown thatched roof of Mitake-en restaurant, or unraveling the esoteric attractions of Butoh dance as described by a visit to Kami Itachi Museum, to name but a few? Kerr re-introduces us to this type of traveling, done in the mind with one’s imagination as a surprisingly lucid guide. If one is stretching a muscle long disused, all the better. Think of what you are missing — long boring hours in a car or in public transport, all the mundane problems of “getting there”, and most of all, that moment when you finally arrive and are distracted by something else, or inevitably think, “Is this all?” I am reminded of a humour book I once read in which an American, visiting the Louvre, accosted a docent with the question: “Excuse me, where is the BIG Mona Lisa?”

There are many things in this book that fire the imagination, especially if one knows a bit about Japanese history, and one is certain to learn many things that one did not know before. Especially, one learns about the changing attitudes and beliefs of the Japanese people themselves, and how these affected manifestations of culture.

In many ways, though it harks back to a quiet, mysterious country that many want to experience directly though the opportunities get fewer every year, a Japan of the past, Hidden Japan is a book for the future. It conjures up a time when the drive to “go, go, go” to places will be stilled, either by choice or because of dwindling resources or other global contingencies, and we will turn to other means of getting that thrill. At this time of the world, when Covid is relaxing its grip and travel is once more possible, it is a paradox — a travel book that asks, for good reasons, that people not visit the places described. I’m not sure if this was the original object, but it is what I took away from reading it.