Over the coming weeks, submissions from the recent Writers in Kyoto Seventh Annual Writing Competition will be shared here on the website. We hope that our readers will also enjoy and be as moved by the content as the judges were in the very challenging process of selecting the winners.
While there were a limited number of top prizes, Honorable Mentions were given to four individuals, one of whom is Ed Shorer. Ed is a retired middle school teacher, residing in Los Angeles, who lived in Kyoto from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. During that time he apprenticed as a tofu maker and taught English at Kyoto Seika University. An early contributor to Kyoto Journal, he provided an essay about Kyoto’s Music Coffeehouses for Issue #2. He has degrees in Japanese and English Intercultural Studies and Popular Culture Studies, and spends much of his time in competitive slot car racing. Thank you for joining the competition, Ed, and sharing with us a memorable slice of Kyoto’s history.
(A complete list of results for the Seventh Annual Kyoto Writing Competition can be found here.)
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Remembering Kyoto’s Music Coffeehouses
Kyoto Music Kissaten were my home away from home when I lived in Kyoto in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Honyarado for its beat poet spirit, and Shige-san’s brown bread. Zaco for the best blues. Ringo for Beatles albums I never knew existed. The Drug Store with its wall-to-wall-to-ceiling purple shag carpet, and nude poetry readings. Yamatoya with an exquisite sound system and jazz as smooth as the mizuwari that came out at night. Hitsujigoya, where the owner and I connected over our love of coffee, travel, and tofu: Hitsujigoya was formerly his father’s tofu shop, and I was a tofu-maker’s apprentice at the time.
These were not temples or gardens in the traditional sense, yet patrons attended regularly and with similar reverence.
When I last visited Kyoto in 2018, most of them were gone. Honyarado had burnt down. Mickey House and Zaco, shuttered. Still, I searched for that kissaten spirit that spoke to my soul so many years before: Masters who put their all into their passions. I could still read enough Japanese in an entertainment guide to figure out there was a jazz kissaten near Nijo Castle, and made my way there. Nijo Koya was tucked away down a tiny street, and my heart smiled when I found it. Entering I found the thirty-something owner in the middle of making a cup of coffee with as much attention as the finest tea ceremony practitioner. With Sarah Vaughn and Her Trio softly playing in the background I thought I had entered a time machine.
“Your shop reminds me so much of one I used to go to, Hitsujigoya,” I said in Japanese. “Hehhh… that shop’s owner, Fukuoka-san, is one of my regular customers!”
Full circle. I was home again.
