KJ Back Issues: 55

Cover: Shanghai Morning, Markuz Wernli
street
This 55th issue of Kyoto Journal takes you to the streets of Asia.

Much like the Asian street experience, it is an almost chaotic blend of both subtlety & brashness, the familiar and the unknown, old and new, unexpectedly juxtaposed visions of clarity and disorder, commerce and devotion, the public and the personal, amid the continual ebb and flow of continuity and change...

May 4th, 1989: Philip J. Cunningham is accompanying the Chinese students as they march to Tiananmen Square, radiant with the optimism of spring. In the chill of the following winter, Stewart Wachs finds a message of hope in the Forbidden City.

December 2002: Afghani street girls are shooting Kabul, armed with cameras provided by PhotoVoice, recording their city as they see it. Meanwhile photographer Heidi Breeze-Harris is stopping passers-by in Hanoi, asking them to pose and tell her their favorite belonging.

August 3rd, 2003: Sally McLaren joins protesters reclaiming the streets of Osaka, not marching but dancing against imperialism. Bosozoku riders make their own kind of noise on the streets -- in jackets flaunting the Emperor's golden chrysanthemum.

September 14th, 2003: Throughout 24 hours, Andrew 01 photographs the same patch of Taipeh street economy real estate as it is worked by successive shifts of marketeers and their marks. In another project, he flips up the curtains of Print Club machines in Tokyo and Seoul to take randomized photos of the streets they have colonized.

Pico Iyer meditates on the streets of India; Douglas Bullis takes a Bombay taxi in which the flies are the aircon. Nagai Yayoi meets the Ogoh-Ogohs in Bali. Furukawa Setsuko finds backstreet treasures in children's drawings in Laos and Thailand; Yamagishi Takao reminisces about children's street games; Lehan Ramsay meets Henna Boy on Brigade Road, Bangalore; Didi Ananda Kaomudi encounters the children who live under the streets of Ulaan Bataar; Jennifer Sauer plays with street kids on rooftops of Manila, and Owen Smith learns about hunger in India. Michael Hofmann takes a morning walk in Kathmandu; Catherine Pawasarat takes an evening stroll in backstreet Bangkok. Amanda Suutari avoids a rainstorm in Singapore; Kimi Sekhon explores a an Islamic shrine in Mumbai. Or Giladi listens to people's stories at a shrine above Rangoon.

Robert Brady takes us to the heart of "every real street" and Gunter Nitschke delves into the enigma of the Kyoto cho. Mark Peter Keane etymologizes; Malte Jasperson follows the sound; Patricia Donegan savors the steps. Philip Brasor looks up, Richard Lloyd Parry meets a street herbalist in Jakarta; Patrick Falby learns to live with prahok in Cambodia; Eric Gower freefalls ramen; Dominic Al-Badri no longer eats in Chinese restaurants. Don Kirk looks back on Chung-ro, Seoul; David M. Lenard on Dhong Khoi, Ho Chi Minh City; Paul Scott on Oimatsu-dori, Osaka. Ken Chen overhears a conversation between Confucius and a car.

Bicycles, rickshaws, an elephant; crowded streets, empty streets, flooded streets, festivals, neon, street food, more bicycles. Streetside chairs reveal characters as diverse as their owners. Amid the tumultuous traffic of a downtown street, a man leans back, engrossed in the song of a caged bird...

Plus:
Poetry by Margaret Chula, Agnes Lam, Han Yu.
Reviews by Jim Cathcart, Mikami Akina, Ken Rodgers, Noguchi Yuki.
Photos by Markuz Wernli, John Einarsen, Micheal Wolf, Albie Sharp, Asano Kiichi, Andrew 01, Lyn Satterly, Stewart Wachs, Richard L'Anson, Patrick Rimond, Kasahara Katsumi, Okuda Shunji, John Ashburne, Ken Straiton, Nick Nostitz, Domon Ken, Naito Masatoshi, Robert Kowalczyk, Ahn Young-Joon, Sato Tomomi, Furukawa Setsuko, Frank Carter, Ngurah Budi Artha, Fusayoshi Kai, Yoshinaga Masayuki, Keith Macgregor, Nakano Masataka, Raghubir Singh, Heidi Breeze Harris.