A pleasant addition to this zine is your personal journal with creative practices. With its help, you will be able to experience the aesthetics of the Heian era for yourself, create your own metaphors, and look at the world around you in a new way.

This issue invites one to touch the innermost secrets of the Japanese soul—the quiet, subtle elegance of Miyabi and the poignant philosophy of Mujo, which whispers of the fragility of all things. The pages of this zine open as a sanctuary for your own slow reflections, morning matcha, and the romanticism of the everyday. Welcome to the Kyoto that is no more. One must only close their eyes and trust the moment.

It was an era when the entire world appeared as a half-hint through the thin bamboo blinds of palaces. The life of the Heian aristocracy was woven from the scents of rare incense, the rustle of calligraphic scrolls, and the quiet sighs of the wind. In that vanished capital, nothing mattered more than the ability to choose the perfect shade of paper for a message, to grind ink to a flawless luster, and to hear eternity within a fleeting moment.

Let us leave the rush behind and step into a forgotten time. A time when the ancient capital of Heian-kyō—“The City of Peace and Tranquility”—nestled among the emerald, moss-covered hills of Yamashiro. A thousand years ago, haste was unknown. Time was measured not by the soulless movement of clock hands, but by the gentle drifting of wild cherry petals in spring, the lonely cry of a stag in the autumn mountains, and the shifting of elusive shades on the sleeves of multi-layered silk robes.

This time, the path leads across centuries, deep into the heart of the mysterious and refined Heian era.

a continuation of our shared poetic journey.