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BLOGS BY KJ ASSOCIATES & CONTRIBUTORS

Bob Brady
Pure Land Mountain

Michael Lambe
Deep Kyoto

Ted Taylor
Notes from the Nog

Sushma Joshi
The Global & the Local

Mark Mordue
The Basement Tapes

Leanne Ogasawara
Tang Dynasty Times

David Cozy (& friends)
Only a Blockhead

Eric Gower
The Breakaway Cook

Philip Cunningham
Tiananmen Moon

Preston Houser
Kyoto Meditations
(shakuhachi podcasts)

Roy Hamric
The Roy Hamric Blog


"Every issue of the Kyoto Journal is like a beautiful paperbound book, ninety-six pages of the most beautifully and straightforwardly designed magazine around. It is the unofficial English language rag of expatriate foreigners in Japan, though it tends to cover the whole of Asian culture from nation to nation. It has been around for about two decades, and no writers or artists are ever paid for their contributions, making it one of the most consistently high-quality "open source" publications anywhere..."

– David Rothenberg
Parabola, May 2009


"I don't know of any magazine where the design and content so seamlessly blend as Kyoto Journal. The English-language quarterly's circumspect cultural critique is never compromised but is in fact strengthened by the graphic design. The peaceful, stylish design is just as original and scintillating as the magazine's approach to the ideas, interviews, poems and discussions it contains... Kyoto Journal is forever looking for original ways of depicting people and life... We recommend it highly."


– Marco Visscher
Ode
, Jan/Feb 2005


In October 2007, KJ was short-listed for the 11th consecutive year, in the Utne Independent Press Awards, for General Excellence.

In 2004 KJ was nominated by the Utne editors
for awards under three categories: General Excellence, Design, and Cultural/Social Coverage.

Previous nominations included Art & Design Excellence (award winner, 1998), Local/ Regional Coverage, Writing Excellence, Design, General Excellence, and Best Essays.


Worth checking out:

50th anniversary of Rip-Rap - Gary Snyder at U-C Berkeley Nov. 23 2009

Cold Mountain

The Beats in Asia

Ashoka videos

TED Talks

Thought-provoking perspectives from Asia...

A non-profit volunteer-based quarterly magazine established in 1986, Kyoto Journal offers interviews, essays, translations, humor, fiction, poetry and reviews, accompanied by memorable photo-essays, original illustrations and award-winning design. No hype, minimal advertising, maximum reading value.

A brief introduction to our upcoming issue on Biodiversity is available now at kyotojournal.org/biodiversity/

KJ#74, our most recent issue, is a long-awaited special on the Silk Roads, guest-edited by Leanne Ogasawara, with guest designer Kevin Foley providing some spectacular layouts and typography. (Click on the cover image at right for the complete annotated contents).


Featured articles available online:

Of Bonds, 'the Word' and Trade
by Jeff Fuchs

word

mtnsPHOTO © BY JEFF FUCHS

“There are no straight lines through the mountains.” This ‘truth’ rumbles out of Lobsang’s mouth, a mouth that seems as unyielding and direct as the words that pass through it. I have heard these words before from ancient traders who still remember a time when mule and camel caravans wound their way to and from the great market towns of Asia and the Middle East. The words are a testament to the astonishing geographies involved and gives an inkling of the character necessary to pass unscathed along the ancient trade routes.

...continued


Beauty and Power on China's Silk Road
by Sam Crane

head

The tour guide opened the door and we stepped into darkness. It took a moment for us to adjust visually but slowly, slowly the interior of the small cave came into view.

In front of us stood a statue of Buddha, about three meters high, surrounded by swirling painted blues and reds and browns — flanked by two smaller statues of guardians. The light from the open doorway fell on the Buddha and suffused throughout the space. As our eyes moved upward to the ceiling, angled inward from all four sides, we were met with the menacing image of an asura, a wrathful, demon spirit. Around him rose flame-flowing shapes of blue and ochre and beige, interspersed with animal-like figures, all brushed onto the plaster-white surface. On the other ceiling panels was a profusion of characters and forms in various shades: hunting scenes and acrobats and apsara, the flying spirits symbolic of this place. Along the side walls were small images of Buddha, repeated hundreds of times in colorful symmetry. We stood transfixed between the roiling and riotous ceiling and the orderly proportions of the multihued walls.

...continued


KJ Special On-line Feature:

When the Envoys Returned

Poem by Deborah Kroman

after reading an account of 8th century China by Huang Shengzheng

                             After thirty years of cresting mountain-high surges,
                             the envoys brought back eagle-wood, ambergris,
                             and an essence distilled from rose petals.

                             They needed water to rock them to sleep,
                             so at dusk they rowed downstream. 
                             The blind envoy smoked his pipe

                             as his friend described how deer came 
                             to the water to drink. Their memories unfurled like sails.
                             A Greek scholar had told them it was forbidden

                             to capture a crane, instead they brought back
                             unicorns, lions, and peacocks.
                             Cranes flew together in rippling rows.
                             
                             At dusk cranes already on the sandbar
                             called to those high above.  Once heard,
                             their trumpeting stayed in the mind forever.

                             Only cranes flew high enough to carry souls to heaven.
                             In the palace where everyone whispered, and the walls
                             muffled the vendors’ cries, 

                             the blind envoy itched for one last journey.
                             His friend described the cranes’ mating dance,
                             how the males spread their wings and leapt

                             above the indifferent, grazing females.  No one had seen
                             the cranes’ nesting grounds.  They flew further north
                             than the boundaries of the known world.

[This poem connects not only with Silk Roads, but also with articles in our upcoming special theme issue on Biodiversity, KJ #75. Superbly adapted to a wide range of habitats, migratory cranes have existed for around 60 million years...]


KJ Special On-line Feature:

Into Dasht-e Kavir:
Notes From the Great Sal
t Desert

Story and photos by Steven Tizzard

2
PHOTO © BY STEVEN TIZZARD

In Iran it is the year 1388, a new year, the spring, the month of Farvardin. It is the celebration of Norouz, a Zoroastrian festival that has survived, despite being usurped in this land by Islam, its heir; despite being turned outlaw for a time in the most vigorous days of the Revolution. This celebration of the vernal equinox flourishes again, the most important holiday in ancient Persia and modern Iran. This protean reverence to the re-birth of spring pre-dates enlightened imperial greatness under the two Dariuses and Cyrus. Indeed, the Prophet Zarathustra may have plagiarised existing practices in forming the first monotheism. The precise origins of Norouz are lost, an unrecorded mix of myth and whisper, from a time before the Aryans migrated from southern Russia to the Iranian plateau. Perhaps it comes from even earlier, when man, cognisant of the seasons, their importance, and of time itself, began worshipping one power through the elements: water, fire. The desert is an escape from the commerce of national holidays, the tourist hordes, the suffocation of gazers, greeters, new acquaintances. It is the only place to flee. 

...continued


KJ Special On-line Feature: DISPATCHES

A Minute and 100 Meters Down the Road

by David Maney

photo
PHOTO © BY DAVID MANEY

Urumqi, Xinjiang, Sept. 3, 2009. The soldier outside the station had one hand on the barrel and the other on the butt of his shotgun. There were two military trucks by the bus stop and two soldiers in the back-right seats of every bus leaving Urumqi station.

Welcome to west China.


I arrived via long-haul train, 40 hours and just under 4,000km in a hard-seat, from Beijing, where rumours were circulating about the extent of the military presence, needle attacks, Uighur and Han street gangs, and the validity of the reports coming out of Xinjiang. After four days I left with more doubts about why ethnic tensions in Urumqi arose and how they could be resolved.

...continued

 




 

CLICK HERE FOR
FULL CONTENTS LIST


Independent print magazines like KJ are finding distribution through bookstores increasingly difficult in the current world economic situation.

As a practical alternative, we strongly suggest a subscription
(just 4,200 yen inside Japan, for four issues – or $50 shipped world-wide, plus one free back issue). Individual issues also available by direct order...

Subcriptions
In Japan: 4,200 yen
Elsewhere: US$50
(4 issues, shipping included)

More details here, or
subscribe online at Redwingbooks.com

Bookstores carrying KJ, especially in Japan: here.


For fresh news from KJ, see Facebook, here. And, occasionally, at Deep Kyoto


THE HEART SUTRA
- Kai Keane



view full size here


A highly-recommended KJ-associated blog :

10,000 Things
" Ten Thousand Things" is a Buddhist expression representing the dynamic interconnection and simultaneous unity and diversity of everything in the universe.
Our goal is to create a netroots venue that supports the culture of positive peace: actions for inner & outer peace, sustainability, diversity, social justice, & affirmative creative expression––in Asia (and everywhere).
––
Kim Hughes, Jen Teeter, & Jean Downey

10,000 Things archive
(Older posts on KJ site)

A new KJ-related site focusing on the upcoming Biodiversity conference in Nagoya:

COP10.org
was created to offer a progressive, non-affiliated news clearinghouse, brainstorming forum, and resource index for activists working on biodiversity related issues. In addition to providing critical info and logistic guidance for COP10 NGO participants, it hopes to elicit and offer new collaborative insights and strategies so they can be more effective when they arrive.



Contact KJ at
feedback[at]kyotojournal.org