Kyoto’s Geography, Explained

Kyoto’s Geography, Explained

when I visited Kyoto a couple of months ago I noticed something surprising all the major temples and shrines I was visiting like the famous Tory gates are located outside of the city center as I looked over the city from one of the hills on the outskirts this struck me as strange because the former Imperial Palace is located right in the center why not have the biggest religious buildings there too and as I kept thinking I realized I didn’t know much about Kyoto’s history at all it’s a place bursting at the seams with temples shrines palaces and castles in 2019 88 million tourist descended on the city to visit the Tory Gates or the bamboo forest n Shiki Market or another site there are about 2,000 shrines and temples in and around Kyoto alone with all of that history it can be hard to understand the comprehensive story of a place and this is something I know firsthand this video is for anyone interested in Kyoto or maybe you’re visiting Kyoto and you want a better Geographic and historical understanding of the city this is basically the video I wish I had before I visit it now I’ll answer the question of why most major shrines and temples are located outside the city center as well as give you that full historical Geographic understanding let’s get to it after the bike hu the biggest island in Japan about 50 km Northeast of Osaka the city is near the Confluence of the katsura and kamu rivers today Kyoto is homeed to about 1.5 million residents but in the early 700s it was empty but Emperor kmu saw the benefits of this location for a future Capital City the freshwater access was an obvious plus the hills that fed the rivers are full of Timber allowing for the rapid construction of a brand new city and of course Hills provide the city with some defense from Invaders something any new capital city would need perhaps even more important from a symbolic perspective was the way the hills surrounded the city site on three sides according to Chinese tradition a city needed to be protected by Hills on three of the cardinal directions with the South left open and Mountain free the Japanese at the time were strongly influenced by Japanese culture and traditions so Kyoto was a jackpot from that perspective Ive this geography is sometimes cited as one of the reasons why Kyoto lasted so long as a capital city for hundreds and hundreds of years and this is actually notable because this is not the first capital city that Emperor kmu founded he founded a capital at nagaoka K 10 years earlier before moving it to Kyoto likely due to flood concerns a few years before that he had the capital move to there from Modern Day Nara third times’s a charm I guess but he wasn’t the only Emperor moving the capital around you can see on this map all the places that were the capital in the century or before Kyoto became the capital for a good long time until it moved during the Mii restoration okay so Emperor kamu founded Kyoto in 794 I should let you know that the original name for the city was actually hian Kio but I’m going to keep using Kyoto in this video just for Simplicity sake and while I have you I should just mention that Kyoto is a city with so much history and culture I’m not going to be able to get to it I’m condensing it for 10 minutes so I’m sorry if I miss anything same with all the landmarks in Kyoto I’m going to miss something if you want to learn more about the history of Kyoto check out the book Kyoto and urban history of Japan’s premodern Capital by Matthew stavos I’ll put a link to the book in the description it’s just great it was one of my primary sources for this video though I definitely included others which are also in the description okay back to the video so now we understand why the city is where it is with the rivers and Hills let’s look at the original City plan again it follows a traditional Chinese model with a rectilinear grid grid fans Rejoice the site slopes from north to south and the Imperial Palace is located at the center of the northern highest part of the city surprisingly this Imperial Palace is not the same as the current Imperial Palace which we can see if we superimpose the traditional plan over modern Kyoto why the move well the old hyan Palace was super flammable it burned down all the time it burned down so many times the historians assumed that arson was a factor it just burned down repeatedly over and over and while it was being rebuilt Emperors in the meantime would rule from their family palaces the most elite families lived in the Northeast quadrant of the old city the current Imperial Palace grounds actually encompasses much of this Elite district and when it was a functioning Imperial Palace before the emperor moved the capital to Tokyo in 1869 the palace was filled with the homes of nobles as well as the emperor after the move most of the noble houses were demolished to make way for the Imperial Gardens the Imperial Palace itself is a descendant of an old mansion of the fujiwara clan one of the most influential families in Japanese history of course the current Palace has also been rebuilt many times due to you guest it fire the original plan of Kyoto also gave some of the street structure that is still in use today here I’ll highlight some of the streets that existed then and still exist now the original plan also featured perfectly square blocks that over time eroded a little into some of the woning is present in the current central area of the city but it’s still close enough eventually a future Emperor added additional North South Streets which is why the blocks are no longer squares it turns out that Frontage along the street was important for merchants so more Street Frontage is better one final note about the original Kyoto City Plan before we move out of the city Center and into the hills the original plan forbade almost any type of religious building within its boundaries there were only three temples as a part of the original City plan one of these temples still exists toi Temple at the southern end of the original plan located here today it’s a UNESCO world heritage site it had a counterpart sagei which was once here today there’s a park with some ruins you can go and check out between those temples by the way was the rashan the grand gate at the southern end of the boulevard that led to the original Imperial Palace by the 1100s and had fallen into disrepair the shabby state of the gate became a backdrop for Akira kurosawa’s movie rashan where it symbolize the decline of Japanese culture okay back to religion with so few temples and shrines within the official City Limits many Nobles would build private temples in their own compounds essentially flaunting the rules of the city they would also patronize temples and shrines outside the city limits turning them into impressive pieces of religious architecture I do want to be clear that there are now temples and shrines in the center of the city but they’re not from the initial phase of Kyoto’s existence therefore many of the noble temples that are now major tourist attractions are from the Medieval Era not the initial founding era and located at the edge of the city what’s interesting to a city planner like myself is that these exurban temples and trrs created a form of medieval suburban sprawl how well first of all despite the fact that temples and shrines weren’t allowed in city limits religion was an important part of Japanese life at the time and lots of people wanted to go to shrines and temples well the elites often sponsored the construction of lavish temples to demonstrate their piety Cur favor with the larger populace or use them as elaborate tax Havens temples back then were tax exempt just like they are in the United States today these large temples also attracted religious pilgrims which turn them into tourist destinations whole Community sprung up around them to cater to locals and tourists alike these Temple communities became hugely influential in Kyoto era politics and even the politics of Japan as a whole back in the 13th and 14th centuries Emperors of Japan would retire and still rule after retirement this is called cloistered Rule and they would do so from their own massive Temple palaces here are a few of them on the map first up is the Temple of the golden Pavilion one of the most popular tourist attractions in Kyoto today I’m guessing it has something to do with the Striking gold exterior and the location on the water within the larger kinaku G complex the complex was originally a villa for a powerful Elite Noble Clan and around the 1220s they built the first iteration of the temple it wouldn’t see its first gold exterior until over 100 years later though the Kakui Temple is another great example of a cloistered rural facility this one was originally a Palace built by Emperor Saga in 814 several former Emperors conducted cloistered rule there in the Heyday of the practice while I’m listing some well-known and interesting religious buildings on koto’s Fringe I want to bring up a couple that aren’t actually cloistered rural temples but have their own unique backstories the first is the Shinto Shrine Fushimi Inari TAA this is a shrine that seems purpose-built for Instagram with 10,000 Tory Gates forming a tunnel up the hillside on the Southeast side of Kyoto this Shrine is not actually dedicated to the deity of Instagram but instead the Kami of rice the founding of the shrine predates the founding of Kyoto itself established in 7-Eleven the shrine gained favor in the early years of Kyoto though and by the 900s it was receiving plenty of medieval patronage Emperors elevated the shrine to the highest level in the entire country and its opulence reflects this position the second Shrine I want to mention also predates Kyoto itself it’s the Asaka Shrine in the gon District across the camo River from Central Kyoto it was founded back in 656 it too received significant Imperial patronage in later years and was elevated to the most important shrines in all of Kyoto yaka Shrine is also notable for being located in Japan’s most famous gisha District gon I need to make a couple of clarifying points here first in Kyoto they’re called Geo not gisha and second Geo as we know them today did not come into fashion until the 18th century prior to that gon was like all of the other neighborhoods outside of central Kyoto a district for pilgrims to the nearby temple in this case yasaka shrine it eventually evolved into a popular Entertainment District today it’s a great place to visit and besides occasionally spying a Geo you can take in a large historic district that seems again purpose-built for Instagram it’s really popular during cherry blossom season so a lot of Koto can be understood from the framework that religious uses weren’t allowed in the center of the city and that so many Nobles lived in the northeast corner of the old city that they moved their Imperial Palace there but I want to talk about another important landmark in the city from a different later era nio Castle njo Castle’s construction was instigated by OD numaga an influential Dao or Noble and credited as one of the great unifiers of Japan in the 16th century it was built along one of the main streets of Kyoto morachi Road in a corner of the old Imperial Palace complex the construction still required the demolition of thousands of homes and over 15,000 workers began the project if you look at the map here you can see that the castle doesn’t conform to the street Grid it’s exactly 3 degrees off historians believe the reason for this is that the castle designers used a new technology the magnetic compass to lay out the castle the castle is oriented to magnetic north from the time while the 8th Century Street grid is aligned to geographic North the castle was expanded on by the Shogun Tokugawa yasu in the beginning of the 1600s and he forced Nobles to contribute to its construction the castle was built to provide a vantage point to spot Invaders on all sides of the city and this was an ERA where centralized castles were in Vogue Ado Castle in Tokyo built 100 years earlier is another example of this type of Castle and speaking of Ado in Tokyo Kyoto’s fortunes did wne a bit after after the Mii restoration that formerly moved Japan’s seed of power to the city up North but luckily Kyo continued to grow and modernize and did not fade away and did so all while maintaining its historic structures it was relatively unscarred from World War II as well the result of city that still feels very contemporary and Alive while still absolutely Laden with amazing sights it’s avoided a fate similar to Venice which is a former world power city that is now being crushed under the weight of over tourism so just a heads up my next video is on another iconic this time San Francisco now San Francisco is an

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Kyoto is one of the most historic cities in Japan. Founded in the 8th Century, it boasts numerous shrines and temples. This video explores this history and geography of Kyoto.

Resources on this topic:

– Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital by Matthew Stavros: https://www.amazon.com/Kyoto-History-Premodern-Capital-Architecture/dp/0824838793

– Wonderful map overlay of Historic Kyoto: http://www.arc.ritsumei.ac.jp/archive01/theater/html/heian/

– Kyoto: A Cultural History by John Dougill: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Kyoto/rhMTDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

– Seeing Kyoto by Juliette Winters Carpenter: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Seeing_Kyoto/L4JK8jH2uU4C?hl=en&gbpv=0

Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
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