Kyoto Journal issue #79 

- An Unfamiliar Home - 

is now out!

Kyoto Journal issue # 79

 #79 is out! 

Includes selections from Pure Land Mountain; 

also, check out Japan postcards from the early 1900s

KYOTO JOURNAL DIGITAL NOW OUT!  

** Sign up for free issue **

The folks over at Kyoto Journal recently announced release of their 77th issue, after a long transition from print to digital (and a complete website rebuild). This puts KJ back on track as a quarterly publication providing "insights from Asia."

The 22 articles in this issue (200 pages+!) take readers beyond the ancient capital to Hiroshima, Tokyo and Fukushima, on to Korea, China, Nepal, Tibet, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, delving into film and fiction, poetry, "off-the-beaten-track" travels, craft and calligraphy, architectural and archaeological investigations, yoga, post-disaster initiatives, and reviews, finishing up right here on Pure Land Mountain.

A KJ 77 sampler is available at: http://kyotojournal.org/current-issue-digital-edition/

And a full contents list, here: http://kyotojournal.org/current-issue-digital-edition/)

If you go to KJ's homepage, http://kyotojournal.org/, you can sign up for an occasional newsletter — and receive a free download of a classic issue, KJ 73.

A one-year subscription to KJ (4 issues) is just 4,000 yen.

FRESH CURRENTS: FREE DOWNLOAD

Kyoto Journal/Heian-Kyo Media's latest special publication, on Japan's present and future energy policies-- released on the day angry citizens surrounded the Japanese parliament buildings to demand an end to nuclear power.

"Fukushima has raised, once again, the perennial questions about human fallibility and human frailty, about hubris and man's arrogance in thinking he can control nature. The earthquakes, the tsunami, the meltdown at Japan’s nuclear power plant are nature’s reminders of her power… Alternatives to nuclear energy are a thousand times more abundant and a million times less risky. To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity."

— Vandana Shiva

http://download.freshcurrents.org/ 

MORE LIGHT THAN DARKNESS

I didn't see the whole thing, didn't catch the name of the small town, just saw the last bit of a news report I guess it was, then it was gone; clicked in right where some Japanese schoolgirls age 12~13 were walking cheerily along a just-cleared road amidst mounds of tsunami destruction in one of the severely afflicted towns, a place of narrow valleys among small steep mountains where folks still live at heights the tsunami hadn't reached.

As the girls walked along they tossed a volley ball up into the air, chatting and playing, passing through the devastation they had just survived. They were on their way to a playground somewhere, I thought, taking that to be the point of this little clip: have hope, don't give up, get some fun, live on and brighten-- until they arrived at a rare surviving building, slid back the door and entered, put down the ball and each shouldered an old-fashioned basket backpack that was heavy with something. They then departed and with their burdens began walking once more, this time in twos up the steep ways that threaded the sides of the mountains and led to houses up there, mostly occupied by elderly folks cut off from a world that is no more, a world erased as far as they could see.

As the girls neared each house they called out a friendly hello, said their names and Here's lunch! From within came a glad response, the pair then entering to bring a meal to one or more elderly folks who had been waiting. Thus the girls went from house to house, calling friendly greetings and being welcomed with happiness. In this way they were meeting the elderly people in their town, folks they would otherwise never have known but now were visiting daily, knew now by name and feeling, saying good morning not by rote but in a friendly, even familial way, bringing food and new companionship to these elders who in their lonely places were grateful… 

At each house they'd chat a bit, those elders now having two young girls in their daily lives, like family, bringing them aid without obligation, in return the girls having all these grandmas and grandpas; the girls do this every day and they like it, they like the smiles that greet them and the cheer they cause, the chatting with and helping all the elders only yesterday absent from their lives, as it is also for the elders, who are joyed to have youngsters come to their home and relate to them personally, in a caring way -- it was uplifting to behold. 

This is the way it should be, these young women happy to be giving a gift that is more than just the food they bring, each day doing wonders that they never thought of before, in turn receiving the gift that many never come to in all their lives: the understanding that elders need the young, but the young need elders just as much. How better to uplift a society than by such ways as this? Things should be like this, things should always be like this: no distance between the generations, no life without their touch. 

On they go even now, the girls among the smiles, beyond the end of that brief part I saw-- they lift up all those lives with their baskets of food, their warmth and words, happy in calling out Good morning! Hello! See you again tomorrow! and going on their way, up to the next neighbor on the mountain. They are heroes, those girls, to themselves and to us all, even to those who have not seen this little story. 

I will never forget them, walking through that wreckage, rich with future, on their way to share that wealth with those who yesterday were isolated strangers having nothing but a roof and what was left of life, who thanks to the girls have lived to see beauty rise from devastation with a shout of greeting and the wave of a hand, living proof each new day that the heart holds more light than darkness--

As if to give some other depth to the value of this task, at the end of the clip the adult female reporter, who has been following the girls around the mountain paths for the story, one morning tries on one of the baskets filled with bento lunches and staggers backward at the heaviness...

***

This ramble appears in Kyoto Journal's first digital issue, #76, a fine publication to be released just as soon as the magazine's long-awaited new website is finally launched. Meanwhile, KJ is best tracked here: http://www.facebook.com/kyoto.journal

FRESH CURRENTS

An important announcement from Kyoto Journal:  

"Fresh Currents: Japan's Flow from a Nuclear Past to a Renewable Future." www.indiegogo.com/freshcurrents

Dear friends,

At Kyoto Journal we are working hard on a special publication, "Fresh Currents," investigating the disastrous results of Japan's nuclear energy program, and the real potential for shifting to fully renewable energy sources.

We have started our first-ever fundraising campaign in our 25-year history as a non-profit organization. We aim to raise $9,500 by July 7th. With these funds, Fresh Currents will be released later this year in both print and PDF versions (with the eventual possibility of it subsequently being published in Japanese), which we will do our best to get into the hands of key policymakers, local government officials, community leaders, educators, and media outlets.

We offer unique rewards in return for donations. Pledge $25 to the project and receive a copy of Kyoto Journal’s brand new digital issue 76; your name will also be listed in Fresh Currents. For a pledge of $100 receive a subscription to Kyoto Journal (5 issues) and a digital copy of Fresh Currents. Those pledging $300 or more will be mailed an original artwork by renowned Kansai-based artist Brian Williams: a limited-edition, hand-drawn gravure etching of an ancient cedar growing on Yakushima.

Please visit www.indiegogo.com/freshcurrents, where you can view our campaign video, find out how we will utilize donations, who Fresh Currents contributors are, and more. We thank you for your support.

From all of us at KJ!

***

Please pass this message on.

KYOTO JOURNAL #74
NOW OUT

Silk Roads
Samarkand-to-Nara
Guest edited by Leanne Ogasawara
(Click cover photo for content details, excerpts and related links.)

Also, check out Kyoto Journal's new Facebook page!

KYOTO JOURNAL - FALL 2009

Kyoto Journal #73 Now Out

KYOTO JOURNAL #72
Now Out:

Available at a source of wisdom near you.

REAL STREETS

Every real street began as a footpath between places worth walking to, later widened for horse and cart and speed and then there were sidestreets, and avenues added in full-blown urban ad hocness to spell out whole cities all the way from foot to car to bus and truck and airport, air streets above the world city, the streets now memorable lines in the long story that is the city, veins in the living urban body, source of its nourishment, character and voice, people, houses, machines, metaphor for going, being, neighboring, community, membrane of private/public, face of the neighborhood, streambed of commerce, other half of home, the street is what the old folks lean out the windows or sit on the porch or stoop to gaze upon, remember the streets of their days, common property, the favorite memories of a former city kid are memories of the street, where all the meeting happens, all the socializing happens, all the growing happens, graffiti museum, streets too evolve, remember they were all once just dirt, even only a short time ago, look at the old pictures preserved in the museums that make people go Ah! The street as mythic theater, and as common voice, marketplace, festival, playground, way to elsewhere, to school, church, work, the way home, the way away, to other streets in towns and nations full of streets and towns of their own, on the street where you live, where happen miracles and terribles, potential stage of tragedy and comedy and romance every minute, and the streets of old cities, old Tokyo gone with the war, and the streets of old Kyoto with their old houses with the fold-down benches on the front for folks to sit on and watch the world of the street pass by too are gone to tv streets. Shijo, Main Street, Champs Elysees, Broadway, Unter Den Linden, Rodeo Drive, the beat, street smarts, street value, easy street, La Strada, the long brown road, life’s proving ground, the heart of the art, the way, the Tao, the Tao is a street, the way of all streets; streets are faces, streets are voices, and beneath the streets are streets above streets…

Slightly altered from Kyoto Journal #55, STREET Special Issue

A TOUCH OF AMUSEMENT

I had never seen a funnier waiting room in my life.

The expression on the walls, the look on the door combined to drive me into shrieks of laughter.

I was rolling on the floor, my sides aching, tears streaming from my eyes when the secretary called my name, announcing my turn for the job interview.

I straightened myself as best I could and brushed the floor dust off my suit, still chuckling at the color of the carpet and stifling guffaws at the lamps on the hilarious stands at the ends of the outrageous couch, as I gathered my papers together and wiped my eyes with my tie.

By the time I opened the door to the inner office, overcoming a new surge of laughter at the sight of the ludicrous doorknob, I had gained sufficient control over myself to present a reasonably staid appearance, suited to the position for which I was applying, that of bank manager.

The board of interviewers, however, was seated around such a side-splitting table that I lost control at once and doubled over roaring, dropping my briefcase onto a carpet even funnier than the one I'd just left, and going into absolute convulsions at each boffo question the comical crew asked me.

It was too much; I nearly crack up even now, just thinking about it.

Anyway, I howled all the way through the interview-- you should have seen their ties! I simply couldn't contain myself!

At the end of it, they had the secretary help me out of there - I was absolute jelly by then - and later I was informed that I had gotten the job.

As you can see, I don't laugh at all any more. Now that I actually manage money, it isn't the least bit funny.

Used to read this at the Kyoto Connection, over 20 years ago,
perhaps anticipating our current surreal global financial comedy;
a slightly different version was published later, in Kyoto Journal #19...
w/thanks to Ken Rodgers.

KYOTO JOURNAL #70

Kyoto Journal's "Kyoto Lives" special issue now out...

KYOTO JOURNAL #69 NOW OUT


Another exceptional blend of perspectives...

KYOTO JOURNAL #68 IS NOW OUT...

"KJ #68 starts out literally in the backyard of one of our editors — amidst frogs, bees, butterflies and mantises — leading into a passionate exploration of environmental aesthetics by Brian Williams, a leading Shiga landscape painter, and an investigation of Natural Agriculture by writer/photographer Lisa Hamilton. Other rambles, poems and profiles take us as far afield as back-country India and rural Cambodia; we meet multi-ethnic students in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a comedian family in Mandalay, Burma, and two women doctors from Iraq as they visit Japan.

This issue's In Translation feature looks at how publishers present Japanese children's books in English, with the bonus of a delightful modern fable by Awa Naoko, translated by Toshiya Kamei. Fiction is set in the mountains of Vietnam, as well as a mikan-growing village in on Japan's Pacific coast. Blogology introduces vital links for anyone interested in homesteading in Japan.

Finally, we return to Kyoto, strolling the contemplative Philosopher's Walk."

Details of Full Contents

See also Home Page

KYOTO JOURNAL#67 IS NOW OUT.

"Thought-provoking perspectives from Asia."
Ken Rodgers has put a sidebar on the KJ page,
with a link therein to some of my previous 'Rambles,'
and one of them, Under Jurassic Skies,
at the bottom of the KJ page!
Thanks, Ken!

Kyoto Journal #66

is now out, gracing fine bookstores everywhere...