Our first print issue takes us on a journey into the real Kyoto—a setting of significance as the cultural heart of Japan and the place that we at STORIED call home.

We eschew the temples in favour of a photographic essay into daily life in the city, celebrating the beauty in the mundane through friend and photographer Joe Keating’s emotive images. We break free of the city, traversing the forests and coasts of rural Kyoto, and we talk tea with the women that are pushing boundaries within the centuries old industry. We visit the world of traditional tattooing, an art form overtly discouraged in Japan yet one steeped in spiritual history, discussing what it means to perform the technique in present-day Kyoto—a city known for its strict adherence to cultural rules.

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