As we come to the Ninth Day of Kitsune, let’s treat one of the senses which has been left so far untouched despite our forays into images, taste, and touch; let’s listen to music, both period and related, from Heian era to today.
Nearly every year of my life, my immediate family has gathered on Christmas Eve, invited friends and pseudo-adopted family, eaten ourselves silly on shrimp and brownies and cheese balls and red and green M&Ms, and watched It’s a Wonderful Life.
“That old hack of a film? Really?” you ask.
If you asked it silently to yourself, read on, and I’ll explain. If you asked aloud, there’s the door over there. We don’t argue about It’s a Wonderful Life.
In recent years, kitsune and other folklore creatures have been making a striking comeback, it seems. Yes, they were always there, but now they’re everywhere, from fashion (French clothing line Maison Kitsune) to music (several music groups go by the name Kitsune).
Here’s a very brief collage of modern media in which you might spy a kitsune — and one of my favorite kitsune scenes in which there is no kitsune at all.
Today we feature a guest post by my friend Emilia Blaser, a collector of kimono. Because there’s a lot of misinformation and false assumptions regarding kimono, Emilia is graciously allowing me to repost her convenient guide to kimono for beginners.
Today we will learn an important aspect of polite society — chopsticks! Or, as they are known in Japanese, hashi.
I don’t usually do a Wordless Wednesday post — for one thing, I’m pretty bad at “wordless” — but here are some fantastic pictures I collected for research and inspiration while working on Kitsune-Tsuki and Kitsune-Mochi.
Click through to see so many pretty pictures.
Kitsune are clever shapeshifters who can appear as a human. Today, we’re going to change our own appearances toward a kitsune costume.
Christmas is one of my favorite holidays — but it wasn’t exactly popular during Heian and Kamakura eras in Japan, for obvious reasons. So here on the blog we’re going to celebrate Twelve Days of Kitsune, and each post we’ll discover a new folk tale, period foods, or…
At one point in Shard & Shield, a character is waiting for his treason to be discovered. He knows it is only a matter of time before he is identified, seized, tortured, and executed, but in the meantime he must go about his daily business as if nothing is wrong, as if he fears nothing, as if his entire world does not hang by a Damoclean thread.
I might have researched and prepared for writing such a state by sending off a manuscript for consideration.
Someone on the NaNoWriMo chat group mentioned a technique in which a writer writes a pep talk from his or her characters. She said she had found it helpful.
I hadn’t heard of the technique, but just the thought of it scared the snot out of me.
