{"id":81736,"date":"2015-01-16T19:30:32","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T00:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81736"},"modified":"2015-01-16T18:20:43","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T23:20:43","slug":"simon-rowe-himeji-city-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/16\/simon-rowe-himeji-city-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Rowe, Himeji City, Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Windows on the World is a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. This is the final entry in the series, which we began in January 2012<\/a>: it\u2019s Matteo\u2019s sketch for last November\u2019s contest winner<\/a>, Simon Rowe. Many thanks to Matteo for illustrating so many views over the years. Some of these drawings are now available in his new book, <\/em>Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views<\/a>.\"Simon_Rowe\"<\/a>Time has gathered Japan\u2019s villages into towns and cities, even turned some into metropolises, but the cho<\/em>, or neighborhood, remains the heart and soul of the nation.<\/p>\n

Mine resembles an overcrowded circuit board with its dense clusters of houses spanning a century in design and its winding pathways, which\u00a0deliver children to school, businessmen to bus stops, and elderly to their kitchen gardens. This is Kamiono-cho, in Himeji city\u2014where the westward sprawl that begins in Osaka finally runs out of steam.<\/p>\n

Bamboo grows as thick as a man\u2019s leg in the forests beyond the neighborhood, lofty and mesmerizing when the valley winds blow. In Autumn, the smell of burning rice chaff reaches through the window, signaling the end of the harvest season and the start of the festivals that\u00a0celebrate its bounty. Taiko-drum volleys rattle my window, just as the earthquakes do.<\/p>\n

Snow dusts the rooftops in winter. Through the opened window, knife-edged winds carry a whiff of Siberia\u2014chilling, yet invigorating. Spring sees cherry blossoms garnish the neighborhood and family picnics mushroom beneath them. Then the blossoms fall, like the brief and beautiful life of a samurai, with the first spring rains. Summer arrives and the window is shut to the whining insects and the suffocating humidity, which descend on the city. The pane rattles once more with the typhoons of late summer; TV antennas waggle on tiled roofs, momentarily lost to the rain.<\/p>\n

The old neighborhood, once famous for strawberry growers, is vanishing. Where fruit grew, model houses\u00a0now stand. Outside them, housewives gather on dusk to chew over the day\u2019s proceedings and await their children\u2019s return from school. Long after dark, the buses will disgorge their tired husbands, who will drift heavy-hearted back to their homes and sleeping families. \u2014Simon Rowe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Windows on the World is a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. This is the final entry in the series, which we began in January 2012: it\u2019s Matteo\u2019s sketch for last November\u2019s contest winner, Simon Rowe. Many thanks to Matteo for illustrating so many views over the years. Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[16653,2783,1945,16652,1672,20544],"class_list":["post-81736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-on-the-world","tag-himeji-city","tag-illustrations","tag-japan","tag-pen-and-ink","tag-snow","tag-windows-on-the-world"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWindows on the World: The View from Himeji City, Japan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the final entry of our long-running \u201cWindows on the World\u201d series, Matteo Pericoli illustrates Simon Rowe\u2019s view in Japan.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/16\/simon-rowe-himeji-city-japan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Simon Rowe, Himeji City, Japan by Matteo Pericoli\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 16, 2015 \u2013 Windows on the World is a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. 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