Don Magazine

When I die, steal my bones
and give some to Ophelia
so she can weave them
through her hands
like ashy-fragile pansies.

What is the WORD on haiku? What should it be outside Japan? Season words? 5-7-5 syllables? Free verse? How about punctuation? There isn’t any in Japanese haiku – but there are kireji (‘cutting words’), which only really translate as punctuation marks – that means there’s more than 17 syllables if you insist on 5-7-5 and use punctuation.

In the beginning was the Thought 
The Thought did not become flesh 
but became the Word 
and in violence made its dwelling among us 

初めに念があった
念は肉ではなく
言（こと）となった
暴力に因って（よって）わたしたちの間に宿られた

Back in the day, if you wanted a story to be distributed, you kinda had to tell it, with your mouth or your hands. Then however came the clay tablet; the scroll; the codex; the printing press; the paperback; the publishing house; the PDF. When it comes to the creation and dissemination of written material, what was under the purview of a literate few is now something the individual can achieve on their own with the right knowledge, software, and printer. Or the right notebook even. Whether bestseller or humble zine, the word that has emerged to handle this process, ‘publishing’, is an umbrella term of activities ranging from editing and design to printing and marketing. And it is also so much more. 

Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction 

This week, try to write a confrontation story. As always, the story is due three days before the next class, so that your classmate can comment on them. Don’t comment using the documents’ Comments function, but use the footnotes section instead, so that they can be seen directly on the document. The stories are assigned randomly, so leave feedback on a story that you receive. Enjoy writing!

I pound my fists against the wall and a guttural scream rips from my core. My fingers splay out and scratch down the wall. A choked sob escapes me as I drag myself down—tears and flecks of drywall fall under my nails. 

Mes mots sont sous tes yeux, 
Ces mots sont sous tes mains. 
Je peins les mots qui s’absentent, 
Tu écris ce que je pense. 

there is word 
and meaning 
some words 
more meanings 

I am living here
perched above you.
Please love me,
though I am only a small sparrow
who dreamed of being a raven
who would quarrel with temple cats
but never win.

advantages of not 
knowing too many words 
in an order that never 

“I met someone,” she says, picking up the menu. My heart sinks. I watch as her eyes roam through the appetizers, silently trying to catch a feel of her. I wonder, for a moment, if she is waiting for me to ask the next obvious question. If she thinks I’m going to give her that luxury, she’s wrong. I pick up the menu as well. From the corner of my eye, I catch her stealing a glance at me for a brief second. 

If light, or desire 
Can truly be trapped 
In mere layers of glass 
I saw it in that reflection. 
Drawn from a fire in Lhasa 
Salvaged in the Bangkok rain 
Catching a silent Kyoto winter moon. 
A borrowed story louder than my own 
I stared far beyond the person it reflected 
And declared “This is not who I am 
But who I shall be”. 

The tale of kuchisake-onna goes something like this: a beautiful woman wearing a surgical mask asks you: “Am I pretty?” If you say no, she kills you with scissors, sometimes with a large knife, or a katana; if you say yes, she takes off the mask, revealing her grossly disfigured mouth and asks again: “Even now?” If you say no, you die…shocking. If you say yes, however, that’s where things get interesting. Some say she kills you anyway because she knows you’re lying. Others say she slashes your mouth so you look just like her. There are ways to escape, however feasible they may be: throw candy at her, say “pomade” three times, confuse her by telling her she’s average then run, or simply say you don’t have time and in true Japanese spirit, she will apologize and let you go on your way. 

This morning 
I was bit by a lion. 

Morning has a weight before it has a colour.

I open the glass sliding door and Kyoto summer climbs onto my skin. I drink a glass of ice-cold water and it dresses my hands. The rim leaves a circle on the table and I press my palm into it. I already wear my summer mask.

On the street I carry the small sentences I can hold: ohayō, sumimasen, arigatō gozaimasu. Sometimes the grammar fogs and I bow a little too long. My cheeks bloom a little hotter.

It was a hot day, nearly too hot, because my god, it was humid, and I was sick. That awful kind of sick where you aren’t so bad that you can’t get up and do things but so sick that every nerve is alight with fever-like sensitivity. I wanted to grind my fist into my head to stop the pounding, or just give up completely and turn tail. 

A packed bar
Gorgeous young men
I grab my drink and take my seat
For a dating event,
noone’s talking

Let me just adjust my mask

The art. 
You can’t take a picture of this, it’s already gone.

KN: I remember how it all started. In college, you did this project called Deadly Addiction, right? Most of your friends modeled for you, and you asked them to ‘look dead’ wearing glamorous outfits. It was quite a sight! How did you come up with that idea? Or how does one come up with ideas for projects like that? 

Kimono & Chibby wear Mexican wrestler masks. What's that about?

A lot of people ask me that actually. I could just say "it's a look isn't it?" But the look of the characters developed from live masked performances by the Amsterdam band The Doppelgangers. The live costume design started in quite a haphazard way with what was to hand, and was then honed over time. The original masks came from Harajuku, the wig was given to us by a drag queen, Kimono’s dress was from Waterlooplein market in Amsterdam.

You cannot engage with Japanese culture without encountering some kind of mask. This goes beyond discussions of battling COVID and allergies; be it the 14th or the 21st century, masks are everywhere. Whether for theatre like Noh masks, rituals like fox masks, protective gear (防具) in Kendo, or for fighting the villain of the week as Ultraman does; the variations of masks are numerous, and the roles they hold diverse. Now, this East Asian archipelago has one more to add its collection: the Danbol Mask, styled from the Japanese word for cardboard (段ボール). And the man behind this? Yoshikazu Inoue (井上嘉和). 

The fire had died down to embers and the wind shifted slightly, blowing the smoke westward out of camp. I shuffled my feet in the dirt as I looked up at the sky. Grandfather knew the names and histories of the stars; he used to tell their stories when I was still too young to understand. Father says he wishes he had listened to them, because now when he looks up to Grandfather’s ghost, he has no idea what it is trying to tell him. When I ask Grandmother if she knows, she smiles and hugs me; she doesn’t say much at all anymore. Mother says her ghost has already left to be with Grandfather, and when I ask what she means, she says that I need to wash the cooking pot and to please stop pestering her. It was a full moon, which meant it was bright enough that I didn’t need to keep the fire burning to see, but Mother says I should do it anyway, because the fire is all that separates us from the wild. 

I'm nervous today.

Dishes rattle in the cupboard,

a glass breaks,

a plate chips.

I pick up the pieces

cut my hand

blood drips

Colours represent only the tiny fraction of the light spectrum which is visible to humans. Beyond this range of light, we can for example find ultraviolet rays that tan our skin on the beach, or microwaves that warm up our bento in the kitchen. Infrared light is another such kind of light, named for its frequencies approximating the visible red light.

“You’re a lil’ squishy piece of shit aren’t you, all high and mighty wrapped up on your bourgeois packaging. I mean, what the hell do you even think is in here?”

An earthquake took place one day. The earth had seen what was to come, and it trembled in terror. Had it but taken a slow, deep breath instead! We don't need all that excess to push us to evil.

ある日、地震が発生した。起きてくることが見えてしまって、震えた。すでに悪を抱える我々には、大きさはどうだってよい。

Ayu Okakita: born in Fukuoka, raised in Osaka, sculpted in the US and UK. While her music journey technically started in Japan, it was in the US on a high school exchange program that she found her voice, writing lyrics and putting vocal melodies to them to combat homesickness. “I love singing. [The voice is] a very raw instrument.” Raw is an understatement however. Since that time in Indiana, this instrument of hers has undergone growth and fine-tuning. As a result, her music style is surreal, ethereal, calming, heartbreaking.

I wanted to burn down that strawberry stand

Walking back from a long workday of yoroshiku onegaishimasu, I halted—
21 meters away from my apartment

the breath she pulls out of me
as i try on
this red
kimono

Alight at Sakaishi station, on the JR Hanwa line. Take the West Exit down the stairs and make a right. Walk past Mister Donut, up to the intersection, and cross the road on your left. See the giant red guitar before you? You have arrived at Red House.

I soak up that feeling—
pooling black oil
stinging my fingertips.
it coerces me to stay:
a bit of black tar 
in my lungs 
feels safer 
than a smokehouse 
burning through every organ
if I leave.