Kyoto

“ Just as Tokyo is the seat of government nowadays, so Kyoto was in olden times. The Emperor—the Son of Heaven, as he was called—dwelt there in a magnificent palace, and all the great daimios lived near him in state, surrounded by their retainers. The streets of the Imperial City were beautifully built and spotlessly clean, and the houses were far grander than Taro had ever dreamed of—with great sloping roofs and picturesque gates and park-like gardens enclosing them. Very different indeed was the capital from the province of Shinano, from which Taro had come. ”

“ Strength within and weakness without those walls afforded a contrast deep in purport. To the southward, not far distant, lay Nara, treasured home of the beautiful in art as well as the profound of learning. Kyoto, the capital, no farther away, sheltered the revered and the dignified in statesmanship and authority. ”

“ But the Shoguns, who ruled in their name, and others great in the land, adorned Kyoto with some of the greatest and most interesting temples in Japan, such as the temples of the Gold and Silver Pavilions, the two Hongwanji temples, the temple of the Thirty-Three Thousand Images, and the chief temple of Inari the Goddess of Rice. And it being the ancient capital, we found the city full of old prints and curios, and the old-fashioned pleasure resorts of Japan.
Kyoto was a city of the pleasure-seeker of old time, as capitals are wont to be. It has wonderful tea-houses in the city ”

“ Thus the Shogunate of Kamakura had lost its raison d'être, before other factors of civilisation, such as art and literature, had time to develop themselves there independent of those of Kyoto, so as to suit the new spirit of the new age, that is to say, before the Shogunate could accomplish its cultural mission in the history of Japan. The culture of Kyoto proved itself to be omnipotent as ever. ”

“ It must have been fully apparent to the great captains of the fourteenth century that Kyoto was easy to take and hard to hold. Lake Biwa and the river Yodo are natural bulwarks of Yamato, not of Yamashiro. Hiei-zan looks down on the lake, and Kyoto lies on the great plain at the foot of the hill. If, during thirteen generations, the Ashikaga family struggled for Kyoto, they maintained, the while, their ultimate base and rallying-place at Kamakura, and thus, even when shattered in the west, they could recuperate in the east. The Southern Court had no such depot and recruiting-ground. ”

“ It is for ever the man’s city, if we can call Kyoto the city of women for the sake of comparison; in consequence, it is apt to be naked, bizarre and often arrogant, but there is no other city like Tokyo, which is honest and simple. As a piece of the art the city is sadly unfinished; in its unfinishedness we fee! a charm, as I said before, the charm of weariness that rather breaks, in spite of itself, an artistic unity. Consciousness of perfection is unknown to the city ”

“ If old Japan is to be found anywhere it is in Kyoto—in spite of its huge factory chimneys. In Tokio, complete European dress is common in the streets, but in Kyoto it is the exception. Tokio also wears boots, but Kyoto is noisy with pattens night and day. Not only are there countless shops in Kyoto given up to porcelain, carvings, screens, bronzes, old armour, and so forth, but no matter how trumpery the normal stock in trade of the other shops, a number of them have a little glass case—a shop within a shop, as it were—in which a few rare and ancient articles of beauty are kept. ”

“ Without great factories such as Osaka boasts of, without the political importance of Tokyo, and without shipping advantages such as have made Kobe and Yokahoma famous, Kyoto is noted rather for conserving the life of old Japan. Here are the family industries, the handicrafts, and a hundred little arts in which the Land of the Rising Sun excels.
Little themselves in stature, the people of Japan are best in dealing with little things requiring daintiness, finish, and artistic taste. ”

“ This river cuts Kyoto between two long rows of houses built on piles and overhanging its waters. In summer the stream is most domesticated and gives, charitably, a large area of its dry bed as a pleasure ground for fêtes, but when the snows are melting back in the hills in the days of spring and blossoms, it becomes temperamental and the peasants say that it has drunk unwisely of saké. ”

“ Kyoto is the prize of Japan. It is a city of six hundred thousand inhabitants, only fifty of whom are foreigners and these mostly missionaries. The result of this small number of Occidentals is that Kyoto still retains its Japanese charm and has very few of the vulgar and commercialised features of the West. ”

“ Kyoto, sometimes called Saikyo, was the ancient capital, where the shoguns and mikados used to reside in the early days. It is a city of temples, where nothing under three hundred years is counted old, and although typically Japanese it seems somehow different from other cities. The tiny houses and narrow streets appear tinier and narrower here than elsewhere. ”

“ Taken originally from Chinese masters of the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Kyoto art ultimately developed into the Japanese national school, whereas the Kamakura art, borrowed from the academies of Sung and Yuan, became the favourite of the literary classes and preserved its Chinese traditions. Speaking broadly, the art of Kyoto showed a decorative tendency, whereas that of Kamakura took landscape and seascape chiefly for motives, and, delighting in the melancholy aspects of nature, appealed most to the student and the cenobite. ”

“ At this Kyoto factory were turned out the most artistic jewelry, boxes, cigarette cases and a great variety of small articles, many of which sold at absurdly low prices, considering the amount of labor and time expended on them.
Kyoto will be found one of the best cities in Japan for the purchase of the art work just described, as well as embroidery, silks and other stuffs. ”

“ Like most old Japanese cities, Kyoto is proud of its temples, Buddhist and Shinto. And perhaps I should explain just here the difference between these two faiths that were long merged into one, but have been dissociated since the restoration of the Emperor to his old-time powers forty years ago. Shinto is the ancient Japanese system of ancestor-worship, with its doctrine of the divine descent of the Mikado from the Sun-goddess and its requirement that every faithful adherent make daily offerings to the spirits of the family's ancestors. ”

“ Kyoto stands amid surroundings of wonderful beauty, the site apparently having been selected with rare acumen for its possibilities in large landscape effects, and these have been developed with that fullness and richness which the greatest artists might be content to approach. ”

“ In size Kyoto is the third city of Japan, with a population of half a million people, and it is the bucket stove alone that saves the residents from becoming homeless through 377 the ravages of fire, for if wood and coal stoves were used there would be frequent conflagrations. ”

“ But those peasants might well love the magnificent temple,—their own creation in very truth, both directly and indirectly. For no small part of the actual labor of building was done for love only; and the mighty beams for the roof had been hauled to Kyoto from far-away mountain-slopes, with cables made of the hair of Buddhist wives and daughters. ”

“ Japan is producing without capital, in our large sense of the word. She has become industrial without becoming essentially mechanical and artificial. The vast rice crop is raised upon millions of tiny, tiny farms; the silk crop, in millions of small poor homes, the tea crop, on countless little patches of soil. If you visit Kyoto to order something from one of the greatest porcelain makers in the world, one whose products are known better in London and in Paris than even in Japan, you will find the factory to be a wooden cottage in which no American farmer would live. ”

“ The most beautiful and perfect of the gardens of Japan, in the old-fashioned Chino-Japanese style, which I have ever seen, are the Kōrakuen in Tokyo, and the Katsura-no-Rikyū in Kyoto. The former was originally the garden of the Prince of Mito, the site of whose mansion is now occupied by the Koishikawa Arsenal. Thus the quiet beauty of the art of the “Old Japan” is brought into contrast with the preparations for displaying its strength of the “New Japan.” ”

“ There are many cheaper ones that are pretty too. Tomorrow we go to the original temple where the tea ceremony originated and are to participate in the tea ceremony, which the high priest will perform for us. You better get a guide book and read about the temples of Kyoto, as they are too numerous to tell about in letters. We have the municipal car for all these occasions. Good thing we do, for Kyoto has shrunk like a nut in its shell since the days of its ancient capital size and the distances between temples are enormous. ”

“ So far as I know there is not to be seen in Tokyo or Yokohama any large geisha show, resembling a theatrical entertainment, such as one may see in Kyoto in cherry-blossom season, or at the Embujo Theatre in Osaka every May. These exhibitions are delightful things to see, the Cherry Dance of Kyoto, in particular, being famous throughout Japan. The buildings in which they are held are impressive. The one in Kyoto was built especially for the Cherry Dance, and the interior of it, while in a general way like a large theatre, is modelled after the style of an old Japanese palace. ”

“ Nothing further marked his progress, and the visit at Kyoto was a great success in spite of Shibusawa’s preoccupied state of mind. His reserve gave him an air of dignity and charm of manner that surprised and pleased the too much coddled mikado, who could not help admiring the young man’s strong, athletic build and evenly balanced temperament. Here at last was one who frowned upon frivolity and seemed to exemplify real manhood; who aimed at something above sordid pleasure. ”

“ Tokyo, with its immense population and its air of business and activity, is yet not so favored by foreigners, nor by the better class Japanese, as a place of residence as is Kyoto. Indeed, a great many of them carry on a business in Tokyo and also keep a house in Kyoto. Most of the merchants of Tokyo, however, prefer to live in one of the charming little villages a few hours' ride by train from Tokyo, on the shores of the Hayama, where there is a good view of Fuji-Yama, the peerless mountain. ”

“ This slighting of the military calling was due to communication at this period with China, whose civilisation so dazzled the Japanese that they caught the literary effeminacy which then afflicted that country. The samurai of Kyoto the capital gradually lost their former military spirit. But Bushido was not seriously affected by its decline in Kyoto; for this effeminacy was confined to the capital and its immediate neighbourhood. Those, for whose ambition Kyoto was too small, mostly migrated into the country where they strengthened their position. ”

“ Kyoto, however, is of great interest for its many art shops—since applied art, as seen in satsuma and cloissone ware and in damascene, have almost reached the level of pure art. A visit to one of the satsuma factories is an interesting experience, as it shows how little the art of Japan has been influenced by the foreigner. ”

“ Peace at length dawned for Kyoto. But not yet for the provinces. There the sword was not immediately sheathed. In Echizen, Owari, and Totomi the great Shiba family was subjected to weakening onsets by the Asakura, the Oda, and the Imagawa. In Kaga, the Togashi house was divided against itself. In Kyushu there were bitter struggles between the Shimazu and the Ito, the Sagara and the Nawa, and the Otomo, the Shoni, and the Ouchi. Finally, Shinano, Suruga, and Mikawa were all more or less convulsed. ”

“ From Kyoto to Kobe is a ride of two and a [pg 319] half hours in the train. The road skirts the hills which bound Kyoto, passes Osaka, and follows some rivers that flow higher than the level of the country—indeed, the road runs through tunnels under three large streams!
The terracing of the land is very marked along this route. Japanese methods of farming and irrigation require that the land shall be level, and so the country is all plotted off into little irregular terraces. The ground is saturated with water, which stands to a depth of several inches around the growing crops. ”

“ The spontaneous [Pg 9] growth of great movements and the mystery of the source of genius are illustrated in the career of Matahei. His environment fitted him to follow in the footsteps of his master, Mitsunori of Tosa. Yet the city of Kyoto, veiled in mystic sanctity, where religion and princely patronage held art in conventional shackles, gave birth to the leader of the Popular School. Still, was not Kyoto, the sacred heart of Japan, a fit cradle for Ukiyo-ye, the life and soul of the Japanese people? ”

“ Before getting into the long and uninteresting suburbs of Kyoto there are some large ponds on either side of the way, willows and tall reeds growing on their banks, and in every little creek fishermen with their boats and nets, all very picturesque and paintable. ”

“ The younger members of the family were reared up rather as courtiers than as soldiers, [Pg 159] trained more in playing on musical instruments, in dancing, and in witty versification of short poems than in the use of weapons.
The most memorable deed achieved by Kiyomori was the change of the capital from Kyoto to Fukuwara, a part of the present city of Kobe. Till then Kyoto had been continuously the capital of the empire for three and a half centuries. To remove the centre of the government from that sacrosanctity must have been a great surprise to the metropolitans. ”