Kyoto a Cultural Guide. John H. Martin

      Introduction

      Kyoto and Its Heritage

      TO EXPERIENCE the essence of Kyoto, one should walk its avenues and its streets, its alleys and its byways. Only in this manner can one appreciate the spirit of the place—its quiet lanes, its 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 that intersect at right angles. This systematic, rectangular plan reflects the fascination of the founders of Kyoto with the ancient Chinese capital of Ch'ang-an (present day Sian) 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.

      Kyoto was established in 794 after the Emperor Kammu moved the capital, first from Nara in 784 to Nagaoka (a suburb of Kyoto today), and then to Kyoto itself ten years later. 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 Kamogawa river to the east and the Katsuragawa river to the west, are the enduring physical vestiges of those early years. The 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 residents as manifested in the city's great festivals, the continuing artistic sophistication as represented in its crafts and arts, and the appreciation of Kyoto's special architectural treasures which have been preserved or rebuilt after each disaster suffered by the traditional capital and its inhabitants.

      A city composed of wood is prey to earthquake, fire, and flood—and to the destruction occasioned by war. Although some of the major sites in Kyoto have their roots in the city's ancient past, the present buildings are usually 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 known as Sengoku Jidai (Period of the Warring States, 1467-1568) in the 1400s and the 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 return of peace, under Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the second half of the sixteenth century, saw a gradual resurgence of life in Kyoto. When 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 said in a more poetic way years previously when he described the capital as "an empty field from which the evening skylark rises with song and descends among tears."

      Conditions had sunk to so deplorable an economic level in the mid-1500s that a contemporary Japanese document describes the imperial palace in terms that 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 with 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 in the crafts, and within a brief few years a cultural and economic renaissance was underway. Temples and shrines were rebuilt, palaces and castles of unparalleled splendor were erected, commerce flourished, and the citizens of Kyoto came to view their political ruler, Hideyoshi, almost as a god. The thirty-five years from the death of Hideyoshi's predecessor Nobunaga in 1582 to the death in 1616 of Tokugawa Ieyasu (who succeeded Hideyoshi) mark the height of Kyoto's revival as well as the flourishing of the ostentatious Momoyama period.

      Though Kyoto's glory shone less brighdy once the capital of the shogun 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 that had been its heritage; the sensibility to beauty for which it had always been noted was never lost—a sensibility its brasher successor in Edo could never achieve. Even the departure of the imperial court to Tokyo after 1868 has not dimmed the importance of Kyoto. Its ability to retain the essence of Japanese culture is the element for which Kyoto has always been noted, and the multifaceted artistic heritage of its many centuries continues to flourish despite the modern sprawl of a major world city beset with all the problems of the twentieth century. Thus it is that millions of visitors continue to come to Kyoto to enjoy the traditions, the arts, the crafts, and the inspiration offered by its Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, its many private and public museums, and its aesthetically satisfying gardens, palaces, and villas.

      There are

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