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(#70: KYOTO LIVES)

Back Issues: 2004
#57

Cover photo by Tri Luu

Way back in KJ #50 (our special issue on Transience), poetry editor Pat Donegan proposed haiku poetry as "an antidote to speed." Today the infosphere seems to be spinning even more crazily, and second-by-second updates only compound the problem. So what is the antidote to this modern world, to times like these? Pretty much what it's always been — the practice of mindfulness, by whatever means you choose.

Pico Iyer sways on a ropebridge in thin Himalayan air, probing the mental constructs erected on that seemingly simple premise, Tibet.* What to hold onto, what to reach out for? William Stimson is impelled back to the source; Sherry Nakanishi receives a mantra from a marathon-monk on Kyoto's Mount Hiei; David Daigaku Rumme spends 30 years in an Obama monastery simply trying to let go of ego — then heads for California. Sierra Nevada poet Gary Snyder resounds with the Great Bell of Gion; Okinawan woodcut artist Naka Bokunen immerses himself in a prismatic flow of natural and psychic phenomena. Meanwhile, Uchida Tatsuru deconstructs rhetoric, essays the personal in the political in "Agreeing on Agreement." Rakugoka Katsura Sampo follows a dream. Fiction writer Jess Row sets a sharply-observed short story in Hong Kong and snowbound Korea, where a Western photographer learns the true meaning of the apparently grandiose vow to save all sentient beings. Tim Myers meditates on the park-dwellers in front of Tokyo's totally grandiose City Hall, while Japanese photographer Miyamoto Ryuji sees transients' cardboard houses as an archetypal human dwelling. Scott Ezell mourns the death of a tribal chief in Taiwan while the band plays "I ain't got no home in this world anymore." Kyoto poet/editor Cid Corman too, R.I.P. At Tokyo's Keio University, Pat Donegan's  students write deceptively simple haiku on the military occupation of Iraq.

Tri Luu's two cover photos seem simple too — each a rear view of a monk's shaven head. Plain white background, a literal breathing space. But look again. That empty field is almost iridescent. Thin air? Think again. Breathe deep. Who sleeps? Who awakens?

* In "On the Ropebridge," an extract from Pico Iyer's recently-published book, Sun After Dark, reviewed here in the Japan Times (Sept. 5, 2004) by Donald Richie -- who incidentally describes Kyoto Journal as "our most prestigious English-language publication."

Full Contents:
On the Ropebridge - Pico Iyer on Tibet (with photos by Richard Gere, Manuel Bauer, Nancy Jo Johnson & John Einarsen)
Letting Go of Ego - An interview with Zen Priest David Daigaku Rumme, by Nevin Thompson (illustrated by Herbert Sax)
Returning to the Source - William Stimson (illustrated by Herbert Sax)
A Mantra from Ajari-san - Sherry Nakanishi
Bokunen Remembers - an interview by Jeffrey Irish (with illustrations by Bokunen)
Village Life - a ramble by Robert Brady
For You - fiction by Jess Row
Glimpsing Tokyo - by Tim Myers
Cardboard House - an essay and photos by Miyamoto Ryuji
Gomen - David Greer
Better Homes & gardens (among factories) - Ralph Cardwell
Encounters:
Master & Deshi - Butch Read
The Chief is Dead - Scott Ezell

In Translation:
Agreeing on Agreement - Uchida Tatsuru, translated for KJ by Kawasaki Takeshi, illustrated by Tiery Le

Poetry:
The Great Bell of the Gion and The Kannon of Asakusa - Gary Snyder
Reflections on the War in Iraq - Haiku by Keio University students

Reviews:
War Torn - Stories of war from the women reporters who covered Vietnam - Don Kirk
The Cat from Hue - A Vietnam war story by John Laurence - Roy Hamric
The Art of Rice - Spirit and Sustenance in Asia by Roy W. Hamilton- Lauren Deutsch
In What Disappears, by John Brandi - Preston L. Houser
Haiku - Asian arts & crafts for creative kids, by Patricia Donegan - John Brandi
Classic Bonsai of Japan, trans by John Bestor - Marc Peter Keane
NOW NOW, by Cid Corman, Preston L. Houser
mamaist: learning a new language, by Alan Botsford Saitoh - James Gurley
The Seed of Joy, by William Amos - William Corr
Big Motorcycle - A Tokyo Story, by F.J. Logan - Ken Rodgers
Design/graphics by John Einarsen, Markuz Wernli, and Tiery Le.

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SOLD OUT Photocopy: $10 / 1,000 yen

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Street, Just Deeds, Transience, Media in Asia, Time, Transforming Conflict, Inaka, Orthodoxy & Heresy, Word, Sacred Mountains of Asia, The Death & Resurrection of Kyoto, Radicalism of Cultural Continuity, Neighborhoods, Allure of the Exotic, Kyoto Speaks, Eros, Japan in the Year 2020

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