Category: Featured Writers (Page 1 of 24)

Writers in focus

The Name of the Willow

Marc Keane is well-known to readers for his remarkable books on Japanese Gardens, and during his lunchtime talk for WiK last autumn he revealed that he was working on three new writing projects. One of them has now come to fruition, The Name of the Willow. Like Rebecca Otowa, whose artistic talents were evident in …Read More

Garrison Island (by Stephen Mansfield)

Monochrome images capture the stark realities of Okinawa’s vassal status. Stephen Mansfield is a Japan-based writer and photographer, one of the leading contributors about contemporary Japan, and a reviewer for The Japan Times. He is the author of 20 books, and his work has appeared in more than 60 magazines, newspapers and journals worldwide.  This …Read More

Alan Watts (part five)

One of the foremost Western celebrities with a particular connection to Kyoto was British philosopher and entertainer, Alan Watts. He has appeared previously on this blog in a 4-part series extracted from his autobiography, but a 2012 biography sheds a different light on the man and adds some further insight into his attachment to Kyoto. …Read More

Cold Waterfall

by Stephen Benfey Kazu sat in the freezing waterfall beside the white-bearded yamabushi. The mountain priest’s temple lay below. Kazu knew it from hikes in Kyoto’s hills with his high-school mountaineering club. He’d sought refuge here three months ago, in November. Heartbreak had sent him, and fear. It was her smile. Every time his co-worker …Read More

Robert Weis visits Kyoto

Robert Weis has a passion for Japan, and for Kyoto in particular. ‘It’s my spiritual home,’ he says. He draws inspiration from its famous and not so famous spots, and for WiK’s fifth anthology he wrote of the significance of mountains around Kyoto. His appreciation of trees, especially maples, is evident in his writing. ‘When …Read More

On Turning Seventy-Five

Malcolm LedgerThursday, 7th September 2023, Kyoto It makes you think. A time to reflect and take stock. Three-quarters of a century. An easily comprehensible number, in a way that fifty-million, say, is not. Twenty-seven thousand, three-hundred and three days, each lived second written, engraved, on your face, body, and heart. The joys and griefs, the …Read More

STRAIGHT IN THE EYE

by Amanda Huggins Beth and James arrived in the Japanese Alps after yet another petty argument. It had started before they left Tokyo and then worsened when they reached Shinshimashima train station and were unable to agree on their onward bus route. When they finally found the right bus for Kamikochi, a previous disagreement resurfaced …Read More

Ken Rodgers Reads at WiK Words & Music Event

July 16, 2023 | Irish Pub Gnome, Kyoto I’ve been thinking about tonight’s theme: Words and Music. Seems to me we are here basically to listen—and to be gently surprised by what we hear. Mostly we think of things we do as actions, but even taking a walk may be not so much about a …Read More

Debt Crisis in Peach

by Marianne Kimura “Omigod!”, I exclaimed in a slightly theatrical, artificially loud voice to my husband Satoshi and shoved my phone in his face just as he was about to bite into a shrimp-flavored rice cracker.“Wha..?” he mumbled idly.“Japan’s debt is like 220% of its GDP! It’s the worst one in the world!”Without answering, he …Read More

John Einarsen on Seeing

Celebrated photographer John Einarsen has a new book out, entitled This Very Moment. Below he describes the process by which the striking images are created. This week not only sees the 104th edition of the Kyoto Journal which he manages, but the opening of ‘Perception beyond Borders’, an exhibition of his photographs at Kunjyunkan gallery …Read More

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