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INTRODUCTION

Kyoto and Its Heritage

If one were limited to visiting a single city in Japan, there is no question that Kyoto would be the preferred choice. As the ancient capital of Japan, from its inception in 794 it set the cultural tone for the nobility, the Imperial court and eventually the nation at large. It also welcomed the various Buddhist sects that were to develop in Japan and which were to affect the beliefs of commoners and courtiers alike. Politics being what they are, the Buddhist temples were at first kept at arm’s length by having them built on the surrounding hills rather than on the plain in the city proper. The interference of Buddhist monks in the previous capital at Nara was not going to be tolerated by the Emperor and his court in their new location, and thus few temples could be found in central Kyoto in the capital’s early days. Now, 1,300 years after the city was established, the temples, shrines, gardens and remaining palaces of the Emperor and his nobles, scattered throughout and around Kyoto, provide an ambience that few other cities can offer.

To experience the essence of Kyoto, one should walk its avenues and streets, its alleys and byways. Only in this way can one appreciate the spirit of the place—its quiet lanes and bustling main thoroughfares, and its juxtaposition of houses and shops, temples and shrines, gardens and industries. Such an approach may seem to offer difficulties since many cities in Japan are centuries old and have streets laid out in a winding and seemingly incoherent pattern. Unlike many cities in Japan, however, Kyoto has a very orderly city plan based on streets which intersect at right angles. This systematic, regular plan reflects the fascination of the founders of Kyoto with the ancient Chinese capital of Ch’ang-an (present-day Xian) whose orderly street plan it copied. Specific main streets as well as the major rivers further subdivided this plan so that the grid pattern of Kyoto streets makes it an easy city in which to roam. Armed with the tourist map provided at the Tourist Information Center and a small compass (if one’s sense of direction is fallible), you are unlikely to get lost. (The Tourist Information Center is on Karasuma-dori, the street headed north alongside the lighthouse-like tower, opposite the north side of Kyoto Central Station and the outdoor bus station.)

Chishaku-in, opposite Kyoto National Museum.

Where did it all begin for Kyoto? When in 794 the Emperor Kammu planned his new capital at Heian-kyo, the early name for Kyoto, he provided it with an auspicious descriptive name, since Heian-kyo means “Capital of Peace and Tranquility.” The new capital was to enjoy peace and tranquility in its early years, a status which, unhappily, had all too quickly evaporated at the previous seat of government in Nara, 30 miles (48 km) to the south. There, the great Emperor Shomu, who had developed the grandeur of Nara, had been followed on the throne by his daughter, a woman too easily influenced by the men in her life. Unfortunate in her judgment and in her reliance on those about her, one of her lovers had been her prime minister who eventually rose in revolt against her rule while another lover was a Buddhist priest who had intentions of usurping her throne. At the same time, the temples of Nara, meant to engender piety and to protect the state, were all too often controlled by priests who preferred to dabble in politics rather than keep to their religious profession. In order to govern, as the Empress’s successor discovered, an Emperor was forced to deal with unnecessary political intrigue and unseemly infighting within the court and the Buddhist hierarchy.

The forested Arashiyama mountain range on the outskirts of Kyoto.

Thus the Emperor Kammu, in order to escape the pernicious priests and meddlers in Imperial affairs, moved his capital in 784 to Nagaoka, today a suburb of Kyoto. Then, when that location proved inauspicious, he decided to create the new capital of Heian-kyo on the site of present-day Kyoto. This new center of Japanese governance was to be ruled by the Emperor without the interference in political matters of the Buddhist clergy who had bedeviled the court in Nara. Thus, the Emperor Kammu decreed that Buddhist temples were not to be located within the city limits. While he was a pious ruler and not opposed to the Buddhist faith, he saw a need to separate church and state so that each could remain paramount within its own realm. As a result, the earliest temples in Kyoto (with one exception) were forced to develop outside the confines of the original capital; the hills about the city have thus been enriched with the Buddhist temples whose buildings, gardens, images and art treasures can still be enjoyed today by both local residents and foreign visitors.

The hills surrounding Kyoto were inevitably attractive to the nobles of the court as well as to emperors and princes. Thus mansions and palaces in the early Japanese shoin (palace) style were built on the outskirts of Kyoto. Many such edifices were to become temples upon the death of their owners, and although fires and wars have often destroyed such buildings, they have been rebuilt after each catastrophe, sometimes with a greater glory than previously. They remain to this day as reminders of an historic past as well as attractive sites for modern-day visitors.

A city composed of wood is prey to earthquakes, fires and floods—and to the destruction of war. Although some of the major sites in Kyoto have their roots in the ancient past, the present buildings are most often later reconstructions along traditional lines. The glory that was Kyoto in its “Golden Age” in the years between 800 and 1200 was to disappear in the next three centuries.

In particular, the later era know as Sengoku Jidai (The Age of the Country at War) in the 1400s and 1500s saw the virtual destruction of the city and its population. Two opposing Japanese armies were camped to the north and to the south of the city, Kyoto itself being the battlefield for a war which went on endlessly until both sides were exhausted and the city was devastated.

The clipped bush Yuseien Garden at Sanzen-in Temple in Ohara.

The return of peace under the generals Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the second half of the 16th century saw a gradual resurgence of life in Kyoto. When the pioneering Christian missionary Francis Xavier, one of the first Europeans to visit Kyoto, arrived in the city in 1551, he described it in a letter: “... formerly it had 18,000 houses.... Now, in fact, it is destroyed.”

Xavier was simply reporting what a Japanese official had recorded in a more poetic way years previously when he described the capital as “... an empty field from which the evening skylark rises with a song and descends among tears.”

Conditions had sunk to so deplorable an economic level in the mid-1500s that a contemporary document describes the Imperial Palace in terms which could well fit a peasant’s hut. The Imperial income itself had declined to a point where the Emperor was reduced to selling the Imperial household treasures—as well as his autograph to anyone who would pay for it.

It was under the dictatorial but benevolent rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi from 1582 to 1598 that Kyoto was rebuilt and began to prosper once more. With peace and the movement of many of the peasants from the countryside to the cities, the population of Kyoto was quickly restored. These newcomers soon became involved in commerce and the crafts, and within a few brief years a cultural and economic renaissance was under way. Temples and shrines were rebuilt, palaces and mansions of unparalleled splendor were erected, commerce flourished, and the citizens of Kyoto came to view their political ruler, Hideyoshi, almost as a god. The 35 years from the death of Nobunaga in 1581 (Hideyoshi’s predecessor) to the death of Tokugawa Ieyasu (who succeeded Hideyoshi) mark the height of Kyoto’s revival as well as the flourishing of the ostentatious Momoyama period of art.

Although Kyoto’s glory shone less brightly once the capital of the Shoguns was moved to Edo (Tokyo) in the early 1600s, Kyoto remained the center of traditional culture for the nation as well as the home of the Emperor and his court. The city retained the aura of sophistication which had been its heritage, as well as the sensibility to beauty for which it had always been noted and which it never lost—a sensibility its brasher successor in Edo could never hope to achieve.

A manicured rock garden at Ryogen-in.

Even the departure of the Imperial court from Kyoto to Tokyo after 1868 has not dimmed the importance of the city. Its ability to retain the essence of Japanese culture is the main element for which Kyoto has always been valued, and the multifaceted culture of many centuries continues to flourish despite the sprawl of a modern, major world city beset with all the problems of the present century. Thus it is that millions of visitors continue to come to Kyoto each year to enjoy the city’s traditions, its arts and crafts and the inspiration offered by its plethora of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, as well as its many private and public museums and its continually a esthetically satisfying gardens, pa laces and villas.

There are various ways in which one can approach a city with treasures as vast and varied as those of Kyoto. One could search out its heritage chronologically from the earliest surviving buildings to its most modern structures. One could visit its religious edifices according to their affiliation—Zen temples, Shinto shrines and so forth—or one could concentrate on its palaces, its gardens, its literary associations or its museums. All are valid approaches.

Instead, in this guidebook, Kyoto’s grid pattern of streets has been used as the basis of the approach since the city’s fine transportation network permits one easily to explore the city segment by segment. (Those interested in specific sites can readily find them through the Contents or the Index.)

Ryoan-ji, Japan’s most popular Zen garden, composed of gravel beds and moss-encircled rocks.

While the city spreads from the Higashiyama mountains at its eastern perimeter to the mountains of Arashiyama and the Saga section to the west, it is easiest to divide the city into its central, eastern, western, northern and southern sectors in order to encompass the magnitude of the sites to be seen and make it easier for visitors to enjoy individual sites that can be visited. Thus each of these sectors is divided into “Tours” which can occupy a morning or an afternoon, and which can be left at any point to be returned to at another time if one wants a break. Directions are given from the bus stop nearest the site to be visited, and the map of bus routes on the Tourist Information Center map indicates the major bus routes in the city. Although these site visits are set up primarily for walking tours, occasionally a bus ride between sites is indicated for those who do not want a long walk. Naturally, taxis provide the easiest means of travel from within the city, and they can provide the most expeditious transportation to the various sites of interest. Thus the first part of the guide to Kyoto begins with the central portion, which lies to the east, and then the west of the Kamo-gawa (Kamo River— gawa means “river”). Each section begins with a brief introduction to the major sites in the area under consideration. The temples, shrines, palaces or villas which follow are then introduced, with directions for reaching the sites, the days and hours they are open to visitors, and whether a fee is charged for entry. The historical and cultural background of each site follows, and then the present status of the site is described in detail. The festivals or ceremonies associated with the site complete the individual entries.

Although Kyoto was established in 794 when the Emperor Kammu moved the capital, first from Nara in 784 to Nagaoka (a suburb of Kyoto today) and then to Kyoto 10 years later, the city retains some vestiges of its early days. Its orderly street plan laid out on the plain within the encircling hills to the west, north and east, and its two main rivers, the Kamo-gawa to the east and the Katsura-gawa to the west, are enduring physical vestiges of those early years. Other enduring elements of the earlier city are of a more spiritual and cultural nature. These elements can be seen in the zest for life of Kyoto’s residents as manifested in the city’s festivals, the continuing artistic sophistication as represented in its crafts and arts, and the appreciation of its special architectural treasures which have been preserved or rebuilt after each disaster suffered by the capital and its inhabitants.

This book is organized into a series of 29 walking tours in and around Kyoto. Map 1 shows the location of the tours in Kyoto City; Map 2 shows the location of tours outside the city proper. The length of each walking tour varies, but each can be completed within a few hours, depending on how long one wishes to linger. All of the most popular sites are included, together with some spots that may be unfamiliar even to long-time residents. The first walking tour of Kyoto begins with one of the older sections of the city, a sector which retains the physical aspects of an earlier age.