Notes of an Ordained Lay Buddhist Felon Traveling Japan by Tony Koji Wallin-Sato

A lyrical pilgrimage across Japan and through the terrain of emotional inheritance, Notes of an Ordained Lay Buddhist Felon Traveling Japan braids together memoir, poetry, travel writing, and meditation. Addressing his mother in a series of letters being written across temples, train stations, steamy noodle shops, and neon-lit city streets, Tony Koji Wallin-Sato searches for a home that spans the Pacific and a self that is larger than the labels that have been imposed upon him. As he follows the tracings of his family, incarceration, addiction, harm and survival, this book is a testament to the enduring possibility of return.

Tony Koji Wallin-Sato is a multi-ancestral Nisei writer and carceral-impacted scholar. His chapbook, Hyouhakusha: Desolate Travels of a Junkie on the Road, was published through Cold River Press and his first book of poems, Bamboo on the Tracks: Sakura Snow and Colt Peacemaker (Finishing Line Press 2024) was selected by John Yau for the 2022 Robert Creeley Memorial Award. His second book of poems, Okaerinasai, was published by Wet Cement Press and was a finalist for the 2024 Big Other Readers' Choice Award. His poetry, photography, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Asian American Writer's Workshop, Yellow Medicine Review, LIT Magazine, New Delta Review, Haymarket Book's AAPI Anthology We the Gathered Heat and he recently won the 2026 USC National System Impacted Writer’s Contest's art category. All he wants is to see his community's thoughts, ideas, and emotions freely shared and expressed.