Kyoto: The Eastern Hills

Kyoto has five hanamachi — flower towns — the districts where geiko and maiko live and work. Gion Kobu, where we stand, is the most prestigious. At their peak in the prewar era, the hanamachi of Kyoto were home to tens of thousands of geiko and maiko. Today the number has fallen to roughly two hundred. The decline is not simply economic — it is cultural. The system requires years of total commitment beginning in adolescence, and young Japanese women today have other paths open to them. The ones who remain are among the most disciplined performing artists in the world.

Look at the buildings on either side of this lane. The ochaya — teahouses where clients entertain — are distinguished by discreet small plaques on the dark wooden doors. You cannot simply walk in and request an evening. An ochaya requires an introduction from an established client, and when you finally attend, the bill will run to thousands of dollars for an evening of food, drink, conversation, and performance. The okiya — geisha houses where the maiko live and train — are similarly unmarked. This discretion is intentional. Gion has always operated on exclusivity.

One more fact worth knowing as you walk these lanes: Gion — and all of Kyoto — was spared the incendiary bombing that destroyed much of Tokyo, Osaka, and nearly every other major Japanese city in the Second World War. The city was deliberately removed from the target list. Secretary of War Henry Stimson had visited Kyoto before the war and understood its irreplaceable cultural significance. He argued repeatedly against its inclusion on the target list and ultimately prevailed. Instead, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen. That decision, terrible in its consequences, is the reason Kyoto's wooden architecture survives at all. What you see here — the machiya townhouses, the stone lanes, the paper lanterns — would otherwise be gone.

Kyoto has five hanamachi — flower towns — the districts where geiko and maiko live and work. Gion Kobu, where we stand, is the most prestigious. At their peak in the prewar era, the hanamachi of Kyoto were home to tens of thousands of geiko and maiko. Today the number has fallen to roughly two hundred. The decline is not simply economic — it is cultural. The system requires years of total commitment beginning in adolescence, and young Japanese women today have other paths open to them. The ones who remain are among the most disciplined performing artists in the world.

Look at the buildings on either side of this lane. The ochaya — teahouses where clients entertain — are distinguished by discreet small plaques on the dark wooden doors. You cannot simply walk in and request an evening. An ochaya requires an introduction from an established client, and when you finally attend, the bill will run to thousands of dollars for an evening of food, drink, conversation, and performance. The okiya — geisha houses where the maiko live and train — are similarly unmarked. This discretion is intentional. Gion has always operated on exclusivity.

One more fact worth knowing as you walk these lanes: Gion — and all of Kyoto — was spared the incendiary bombing that destroyed much of Tokyo, Osaka, and nearly every other major Japanese city in the Second World War. The city was deliberately removed from the target list. Secretary of War Henry Stimson had visited Kyoto before the war and understood its irreplaceable cultural significance. He argued repeatedly against its inclusion on the target list and ultimately prevailed. Instead, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen. That decision, terrible in its consequences, is the reason Kyoto's wooden architecture survives at all. What you see here — the machiya townhouses, the stone lanes, the paper lanterns — would otherwise be gone.

The climax of the festival is the yamaboko junko — the float procession on the seventeenth of July. The yamaboko are enormous wooden floats, some reaching heights of twenty-five metres and weighing up to twelve tonnes. What makes them extraordinary is how they are built: entirely without nails. The wooden framework is assembled using rope-lashing techniques, the same methods used for five hundred years. The ropes are decorative as well as structural — intricate knot patterns are part of the aesthetic. The floats are decorated with tapestries from around the world: Flemish weavings, Chinese silks, Persian rugs. Kyoto's merchants were trading globally before the concept of globalisation existed.

Walk through the main gate and into the shrine grounds. The stone lanterns along the paths are lit at night — the shrine is open twenty-four hours, as most Shinto shrines are, because Shinto does not distinguish between sacred time and ordinary time the way Western religions do. Worship at a Shinto shrine can happen at any hour, in any weather. The approach through the stone lanterns at night, with the main hall glowing in the dark, is one of the quietly spectacular experiences of Kyoto.

The climax of the festival is the yamaboko junko — the float procession on the seventeenth of July. The yamaboko are enormous wooden floats, some reaching heights of twenty-five metres and weighing up to twelve tonnes. What makes them extraordinary is how they are built: entirely without nails. The wooden framework is assembled using rope-lashing techniques, the same methods used for five hundred years. The ropes are decorative as well as structural — intricate knot patterns are part of the aesthetic. The floats are decorated with tapestries from around the world: Flemish weavings, Chinese silks, Persian rugs. Kyoto's merchants were trading globally before the concept of globalisation existed.

Walk through the main gate and into the shrine grounds. The stone lanterns along the paths are lit at night — the shrine is open twenty-four hours, as most Shinto shrines are, because Shinto does not distinguish between sacred time and ordinary time the way Western religions do. Worship at a Shinto shrine can happen at any hour, in any weather. The approach through the stone lanterns at night, with the main hall glowing in the dark, is one of the quietly spectacular experiences of Kyoto.

The tea was equally transformative. Eisai planted tea seeds brought from China in the grounds of Kenninji. The tea garden you can see today is a direct descendant of those original plants. He also wrote Kissa Yojoki — "How to Stay Healthy by Drinking Tea" — in twelve fourteen, the first Japanese text on tea. Within two centuries, tea ceremony (chado or chanoyu) had become one of the defining art forms of Japan, reshaping architecture, ceramics, garden design, and the philosophy of aesthetics.

Inside the main hall, look up. The ceiling is painted with two enormous twin dragons, each eleven metres in diameter. They were painted in two thousand and two by the artist Koizumi Junsaku to commemorate the temple's eight hundredth anniversary. They are extraordinary: gold and black against a dark background, painted in a style that is simultaneously ancient in feeling and completely contemporary in execution. In Japan this is not considered a contradiction.

The garden contains a reproduction of the Fujin Raijin Zu — the famous screen painting of the gods of wind and thunder — by Tawaraya Sotatsu from the early seventeenth century. The original is in the Kyoto National Museum. It is one of the masterworks of Japanese painting: the two gods rendered in gold, green, and white, expressions of wild energy contained within a perfectly composed frame.

Kenninji sits in the middle of Gion and yet remains remarkably uncrowded. The larger temples — Kiyomizudera, Ginkakuji — draw the tour groups. Kenninji draws the people who know. Take your time here.

The tea was equally transformative. Eisai planted tea seeds brought from China in the grounds of Kenninji. The tea garden you can see today is a direct descendant of those original plants. He also wrote Kissa Yojoki — "How to Stay Healthy by Drinking Tea" — in twelve fourteen, the first Japanese text on tea. Within two centuries, tea ceremony (chado or chanoyu) had become one of the defining art forms of Japan, reshaping architecture, ceramics, garden design, and the philosophy of aesthetics.

Inside the main hall, look up. The ceiling is painted with two enormous twin dragons, each eleven metres in diameter. They were painted in two thousand and two by the artist Koizumi Junsaku to commemorate the temple's eight hundredth anniversary. They are extraordinary: gold and black against a dark background, painted in a style that is simultaneously ancient in feeling and completely contemporary in execution. In Japan this is not considered a contradiction.

The garden contains a reproduction of the Fujin Raijin Zu — the famous screen painting of the gods of wind and thunder — by Tawaraya Sotatsu from the early seventeenth century. The original is in the Kyoto National Museum. It is one of the masterworks of Japanese painting: the two gods rendered in gold, green, and white, expressions of wild energy contained within a perfectly composed frame.

Kenninji sits in the middle of Gion and yet remains remarkably uncrowded. The larger temples — Kiyomizudera, Ginkakuji — draw the tour groups. Kenninji draws the people who know. Take your time here.

The expression "jumping off the stage at Kiyomizu" (kiyomizu no butai kara tobioriru) is used in Japanese the way English speakers say "taking the plunge" — it means committing fully to a risky decision. The expression is not merely metaphorical. Historical records document two hundred and thirty-four actual jumps from this platform between the year seventeen hundred and eighteen eighty. People jumped believing that surviving would grant them a wish. Approximately eighty-five percent of the jumpers survived the thirteen-metre fall into the trees and undergrowth below. The practice was officially banned in eighteen seventy-two, though not before generating a considerable body of documentary evidence about human determination.

Below the main hall, the Otowa waterfall is divided into three separate streams. Visitors use long-handled cups to drink from them. The three streams are associated with longevity, success in studies, and fortunate love. Drinking from all three is considered greedy and said to nullify the effect. Most people drink from two and spend a moment deciding which two.

Kiyomizudera is at its most spectacular twice a year: in late March and early April when the surrounding hillside is covered in cherry blossom, and in November when the maples turn red and orange. If you are visiting in those seasons, come at opening — six in the morning — before the crowds arrive.

The expression "jumping off the stage at Kiyomizu" (kiyomizu no butai kara tobioriru) is used in Japanese the way English speakers say "taking the plunge" — it means committing fully to a risky decision. The expression is not merely metaphorical. Historical records document two hundred and thirty-four actual jumps from this platform between the year seventeen hundred and eighteen eighty. People jumped believing that surviving would grant them a wish. Approximately eighty-five percent of the jumpers survived the thirteen-metre fall into the trees and undergrowth below. The practice was officially banned in eighteen seventy-two, though not before generating a considerable body of documentary evidence about human determination.

Below the main hall, the Otowa waterfall is divided into three separate streams. Visitors use long-handled cups to drink from them. The three streams are associated with longevity, success in studies, and fortunate love. Drinking from all three is considered greedy and said to nullify the effect. Most people drink from two and spend a moment deciding which two.

Kiyomizudera is at its most spectacular twice a year: in late March and early April when the surrounding hillside is covered in cherry blossom, and in November when the maples turn red and orange. If you are visiting in those seasons, come at opening — six in the morning — before the crowds arrive.

Today these machiya house shops selling the things Kyoto has always sold: tsukemono pickles in enormous ceramic jars, matcha sweets in every possible form — soft mochi, hard konpeito, powdered layered parfaits — pottery from Kiyomizu-yaki, one of the great ceramic traditions of Japan, lacquerware in red and black and gold, and bamboo ware from the workshops of northern Kyoto. Many have been converted to restaurants and cafes — you can sit in a room that looks unchanged since eighteen fifty, drinking coffee, connected to a network that did not exist twenty years ago. This juxtaposition is entirely normal in Kyoto and entirely strange to visitors.

The lanes connect Kiyomizudera to Kodaiji Temple — the temple built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's widow Nene in sixteen oh six to pray for her husband's spirit — and through to the broader Higashiyama walking route. Between Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka there is a small level plaza with stone lanterns and a view of the hillside pagodas. Pause here. This particular view — stone lanterns, wooden buildings climbing a forested hill, pagoda rooflines against the sky — is the visual image of Kyoto that most people carry in their minds before they arrive, and one of the few images that is entirely accurate.

Today these machiya house shops selling the things Kyoto has always sold: tsukemono pickles in enormous ceramic jars, matcha sweets in every possible form — soft mochi, hard konpeito, powdered layered parfaits — pottery from Kiyomizu-yaki, one of the great ceramic traditions of Japan, lacquerware in red and black and gold, and bamboo ware from the workshops of northern Kyoto. Many have been converted to restaurants and cafes — you can sit in a room that looks unchanged since eighteen fifty, drinking coffee, connected to a network that did not exist twenty years ago. This juxtaposition is entirely normal in Kyoto and entirely strange to visitors.

The lanes connect Kiyomizudera to Kodaiji Temple — the temple built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's widow Nene in sixteen oh six to pray for her husband's spirit — and through to the broader Higashiyama walking route. Between Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka there is a small level plaza with stone lanterns and a view of the hillside pagodas. Pause here. This particular view — stone lanterns, wooden buildings climbing a forested hill, pagoda rooflines against the sky — is the visual image of Kyoto that most people carry in their minds before they arrive, and one of the few images that is entirely accurate.

At the center of this assembly is the seated Kannon by Tankei himself, two and a half metres tall, considered one of the supreme masterpieces of Japanese Buddhist sculpture. Tankei was in his eighties when he carved it, having spent his life in the workshops of Nara and Kyoto. The face is extraordinary: absolute stillness containing absolute compassion.

Ranged in front of the one thousand standing Kannons are twenty-eight guardian deities — protectors of the Buddhist universe — also from the thirteenth century, each carved with ferocious individuality.

The temple holds an annual archery competition called Toshiya every January. Archers stand at the southern end of the sixty-metre veranda and shoot northward, trying to send arrows the full length of the building without touching the eaves above. The competition tests both power and accuracy over an extended session. The record was set in sixteen eighty-six by an archer named Wasa Daihachiro, who shot thirteen thousand and fifty-three arrows in twenty-four hours and scored eight thousand one hundred and thirty-three hits. That record has never been broken.

At the center of this assembly is the seated Kannon by Tankei himself, two and a half metres tall, considered one of the supreme masterpieces of Japanese Buddhist sculpture. Tankei was in his eighties when he carved it, having spent his life in the workshops of Nara and Kyoto. The face is extraordinary: absolute stillness containing absolute compassion.

Ranged in front of the one thousand standing Kannons are twenty-eight guardian deities — protectors of the Buddhist universe — also from the thirteenth century, each carved with ferocious individuality.

The temple holds an annual archery competition called Toshiya every January. Archers stand at the southern end of the sixty-metre veranda and shoot northward, trying to send arrows the full length of the building without touching the eaves above. The competition tests both power and accuracy over an extended session. The record was set in sixteen eighty-six by an archer named Wasa Daihachiro, who shot thirteen thousand and fifty-three arrows in twenty-four hours and scored eight thousand one hundred and thirty-three hits. That record has never been broken.

Inside the Hojo — the abbot's quarters — are fusuma paintings by Kano Tanyu from the seventeenth century: tigers among bamboo, rendered with extraordinary authority in ink wash. Kano Tanyu was the official painter of the Tokugawa shogunate and perhaps the most technically accomplished painter in Japanese history. These paintings are not reproductions.

And then there is the Suirokaku. Walking through the temple grounds, you will encounter a red brick Victorian aqueduct crossing directly through the complex — arches of industrial-era masonry rising above ancient Zen gardens, carrying water from Lake Biwa fifty kilometres to the northeast. The aqueduct was built in eighteen ninety as part of a massive engineering project to connect Kyoto to Lake Biwa's water supply, funding the city's modernisation after the capital moved to Tokyo. The engineer, Tanabe Sakuro, was twenty-two years old when he was commissioned to design it, having just returned from studying in the United States. The juxtaposition of twelfth-century Zen and nineteenth-century civil engineering is so improbable that it takes a moment to trust what you are seeing. It is real. Both are real.

Inside the Hojo — the abbot's quarters — are fusuma paintings by Kano Tanyu from the seventeenth century: tigers among bamboo, rendered with extraordinary authority in ink wash. Kano Tanyu was the official painter of the Tokugawa shogunate and perhaps the most technically accomplished painter in Japanese history. These paintings are not reproductions.

And then there is the Suirokaku. Walking through the temple grounds, you will encounter a red brick Victorian aqueduct crossing directly through the complex — arches of industrial-era masonry rising above ancient Zen gardens, carrying water from Lake Biwa fifty kilometres to the northeast. The aqueduct was built in eighteen ninety as part of a massive engineering project to connect Kyoto to Lake Biwa's water supply, funding the city's modernisation after the capital moved to Tokyo. The engineer, Tanabe Sakuro, was twenty-two years old when he was commissioned to design it, having just returned from studying in the United States. The juxtaposition of twelfth-century Zen and nineteenth-century civil engineering is so improbable that it takes a moment to trust what you are seeing. It is real. Both are real.

Nishida's central project was reconciling two philosophical traditions that had developed in almost complete isolation from each other: Western philosophy — Kant's epistemology, Hegel's dialectic, William James's pragmatism — and the Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition he had practiced since youth. Western philosophy proceeded by analytical argument; Zen proceeded by direct experience that dissolved the categories argument depended on. Nishida's attempt to synthesize them produced what he called "pure experience" — experience prior to the division between subject and object, knower and known. It is a concept that is easier to understand in meditation than in a philosophy seminar.

The school of thought Nishida founded — the Kyoto School — became the dominant tradition of Japanese philosophy in the twentieth century, influential enough to generate serious controversy about its relationship to Japanese nationalism in the war years. That conversation continues.

Walk this path slowly. The canal beside you flows from the Lake Biwa aqueduct at Nanzenji. The water is clear and fast, slightly green from the algae of the stone channels. Small bridges cross it at intervals. In the absence of cherry blossom or autumn foliage, the path in ordinary time is quiet and modest — exactly right for a path named after a philosopher.

Nishida's central project was reconciling two philosophical traditions that had developed in almost complete isolation from each other: Western philosophy — Kant's epistemology, Hegel's dialectic, William James's pragmatism — and the Japanese Zen Buddhist tradition he had practiced since youth. Western philosophy proceeded by analytical argument; Zen proceeded by direct experience that dissolved the categories argument depended on. Nishida's attempt to synthesize them produced what he called "pure experience" — experience prior to the division between subject and object, knower and known. It is a concept that is easier to understand in meditation than in a philosophy seminar.

The school of thought Nishida founded — the Kyoto School — became the dominant tradition of Japanese philosophy in the twentieth century, influential enough to generate serious controversy about its relationship to Japanese nationalism in the war years. That conversation continues.

Walk this path slowly. The canal beside you flows from the Lake Biwa aqueduct at Nanzenji. The water is clear and fast, slightly green from the algae of the stone channels. Small bridges cross it at intervals. In the absence of cherry blossom or autumn foliage, the path in ordinary time is quiet and modest — exactly right for a path named after a philosopher.

The legend of why: in the year ten eighty-four, the monk Eikan was performing his early morning walking meditation — circumambulating the altar in repetitive circles, a standard Jodo practice. As he walked, the golden statue of Amida descended from the altar and began walking with him, leading him in his own circumambulation. Eikan stopped, frozen in amazement. Amida turned — looked back over his left shoulder — and said: "Eikan, you are slow." The statue has been depicted looking back ever since. It is, in the idiom of Buddhist imagery, a gesture of compassion: Amida turning to make sure no one has been left behind.

The temple grounds are famous throughout Japan for autumn foliage. The momiji — Japanese maples — that cover the hillside behind the temple turn from green to yellow to orange to deep crimson in the weeks around early to mid-November. The temple stays open in the evenings during this period, the garden lit by lanterns, the reflection of the red maples in the pond below becoming one of the iconic images of the Kyoto autumn. If you are here in November, do not miss this. If you are here at any other time, the garden is still beautiful — quieter, less photographed, and easier to sit with.

The legend of why: in the year ten eighty-four, the monk Eikan was performing his early morning walking meditation — circumambulating the altar in repetitive circles, a standard Jodo practice. As he walked, the golden statue of Amida descended from the altar and began walking with him, leading him in his own circumambulation. Eikan stopped, frozen in amazement. Amida turned — looked back over his left shoulder — and said: "Eikan, you are slow." The statue has been depicted looking back ever since. It is, in the idiom of Buddhist imagery, a gesture of compassion: Amida turning to make sure no one has been left behind.

The temple grounds are famous throughout Japan for autumn foliage. The momiji — Japanese maples — that cover the hillside behind the temple turn from green to yellow to orange to deep crimson in the weeks around early to mid-November. The temple stays open in the evenings during this period, the garden lit by lanterns, the reflection of the red maples in the pond below becoming one of the iconic images of the Kyoto autumn. If you are here in November, do not miss this. If you are here at any other time, the garden is still beautiful — quieter, less photographed, and easier to sit with.

The garden contains two features of extraordinary strangeness. The first is the Ginshadan: a flat, raked sand garden representing the sea. It is not small — it fills a substantial area of the lower garden, raked into perfect parallel lines of waves that curve around a central island. The second is the Kogetsudai: a cone of compacted white sand rising one and a half metres from the centre of the garden, its form precise and enigmatic. No one knows with certainty what it is for. Theories include a sundial, a device for reflecting moonlight onto the pavilion's facade, a viewing platform, or purely an aesthetic object. It appears in paintings and records from the Edo period, which means it is at least several hundred years old, and its function has been unknown for all of that time.

Ashikaga Yoshimasa spent twelve years here while his capital was destroyed. The Onin War — which he triggered by failing to resolve the question of his succession — burned most of Kyoto to the ground and killed hundreds of thousands of people. While it burned, Yoshimasa attended tea ceremonies, arranged flowers, wrote poetry, and refined what became the wabi aesthetic that underpins all of Japanese tea culture. He was, simultaneously, the worst ruler Japan had in the Muromachi period and one of the greatest patrons of Japanese aesthetics in history. Both things are completely true.

Stand for a moment at the upper path, where the garden's hillside moss and maple grove open to a view back over the city. The mountains behind you are the Higashiyama — the Eastern Hills you have walked through today. Kyoto spreads below, the grid of its streets laid out exactly as they were designed in seven ninety-four, modelled on the Tang Chinese capital of Chang'an. In the far distance, the Western Hills. Between them, eleven centuries of capital — the imperial court, the warrior culture, the Buddhist institutions, the craft traditions, the tea ceremony, the geiko, the maple trees in November, the cherry blossoms in April. All of it still here. All of it still ongoing.

The garden contains two features of extraordinary strangeness. The first is the Ginshadan: a flat, raked sand garden representing the sea. It is not small — it fills a substantial area of the lower garden, raked into perfect parallel lines of waves that curve around a central island. The second is the Kogetsudai: a cone of compacted white sand rising one and a half metres from the centre of the garden, its form precise and enigmatic. No one knows with certainty what it is for. Theories include a sundial, a device for reflecting moonlight onto the pavilion's facade, a viewing platform, or purely an aesthetic object. It appears in paintings and records from the Edo period, which means it is at least several hundred years old, and its function has been unknown for all of that time.

Ashikaga Yoshimasa spent twelve years here while his capital was destroyed. The Onin War — which he triggered by failing to resolve the question of his succession — burned most of Kyoto to the ground and killed hundreds of thousands of people. While it burned, Yoshimasa attended tea ceremonies, arranged flowers, wrote poetry, and refined what became the wabi aesthetic that underpins all of Japanese tea culture. He was, simultaneously, the worst ruler Japan had in the Muromachi period and one of the greatest patrons of Japanese aesthetics in history. Both things are completely true.

Stand for a moment at the upper path, where the garden's hillside moss and maple grove open to a view back over the city. The mountains behind you are the Higashiyama — the Eastern Hills you have walked through today. Kyoto spreads below, the grid of its streets laid out exactly as they were designed in seven ninety-four, modelled on the Tang Chinese capital of Chang'an. In the far distance, the Western Hills. Between them, eleven centuries of capital — the imperial court, the warrior culture, the Buddhist institutions, the craft traditions, the tea ceremony, the geiko, the maple trees in November, the cherry blossoms in April. All of it still here. All of it still ongoing.