yoshiwara nikki: kyoto

Kyoto - when one pictures Japan, images of this historic city's twisting alleys, geisha, and ancient shrines are juxtaposed with the towering shining skyscrapers and flashing nighttime billboards of Tokyo and Osaka. As a student of premodern Japanese history, I was thoroughly acquainted with the romantic images of Kyoto and its political intrigue; it served as Japan's capital for about 1000 years and was known as Heian, the city of peace and harmony. More than simply a political headquarters, Kyoto was the center of artistic and cultural life for the nation, the imagined center of civilization itself. While there was certainly a literary and intellectual and religious life going on outside of the capital, people who wanted to matter in society would make their homes in the city and would pine sorrowfully for it when forced to leave. Aristocrats making "pilgrimages" to temples only a few miles away from their beloved capital would wallow in self-pity, bemoaning their plight of exile in the barbaric wilderness.

In the city itself, the images that come to us from the zenith of court life in the Heian period (late 700s to early 1100s) are of well-bred courtiers trained in aesthetics, composing poems on perfectly colored paper to their objects of affection, languishing in dim rooms, scenting their twelve-layered, color-coordinated robes with incense blends, floor-length hair streaming over the fabric and peeking tantalizingly from beneath window screens. It was a time when socially-recognized beauty and manners were prized and one's mistaken pairing of slightly mismatched robes could spell disaster for one's reputation. Later, we have images of stately geisha followed like mother ducks by their trainees, maiko; of austere Buddhist temples in dark wood and black lacquer, of kabuki actors, umbrellas, and rainy afternoons in hushed, meticulously-cultivated gardens. We dream of sipping fresh green tea from pottery cups and hearing the tinkling of bells as we contemplate the cherry blossoms arranged at our windows.

I traveled to Kyoto with these images in my mind, made even more idealistic over the years by romantic daydreams of the place which provided a stage for the characters of countless novels, plays, and memoirs that I had enjoyed. I was breathless with anticipation of what lay before me as the stubby blue mountains flew silently by the train window on my journey to the far-off former capital.

Upon arriving in this city, I was in for a surprise - from the shining new station made of glass and arching steel beams, to the wires criss-crossing the low-hanging gray sky, to the dirty, crowded buildings, it was nothing like what I had pictured. Kyoto looked like any other city in Japan: a bleak, gray urban landscape, rather than the imagined haven of low, dark wooden houses with shaded windows and recessed entrances. The scrubby trees that dotted street corners were not any taller, nor were the roads any quieter or cleaner.

In fact, the realization struck me as I looked outside the station: Kyoto was one of few cities spared bombing in World War II, reportedly due to its cultural and historical value to the world as well as Japan. This fact made it - unlike the bright and newly rebuilt Hiroshima, for instance - dirtier than your average scummy Japanese city. I felt my skin crawl as I compared my tidy map of the station area to the maze of faded pastel concrete and strewn wires that lay before me.

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As with many places in Japan, the beauty of Kyoto is perhaps not on the surface. It lies in the hidden treasures one can find there, the infinite array of protected and quiet spots for reflection, hidden and tucked away from the modern fatigue of worn structures and grim determination. My heart had sunk upon first laying eyes upon this unattractive metropolis, but I soberly resolved to keep an open mind and appreciate the reality of what surrounded me.

Even after two visits to Kyoto, and a tour of some of its more beautiful and interesting sights, I was left with a mixed impression. Despite the beautiful gardens, majestic temples, and old-fashioned streets, I still felt somehow betrayed by the hype surrounding Kyoto. It is not because I felt the sights were not up to par; indeed, there are many awe-inspiring things in Kyoto, a greater concentration of them in a small area than most other places in Japan. I could not help thinking, however - at Nijo Castle, at Heian Shrine, Kiyomizu-dera, Pontocho - that it was nothing I hadn't seen before. In fact, some of the places that I compared these cultural sights to - Dazaifu in Fukuoka, Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima, Kumamoto Castle, Senganen in Kagoshima, and the old neighborhoods in my own city - seemed even more impressive than what I encountered in the old capital. After being told that Kyoto is the cultural capital of Japan, I expected something more impressive than what I had been seeing all year in Kyushu, in southern Honshu, even in the neighorhood shrines down the street from my apartment. The locations may have been more famous in Kyoto, but in substance they didn't seem any different, and sometimes even less impressive than other things I had seen in Japan.

To the foreign visitor who has only a little time in Japan, however, I can see the draw of Kyoto. One can experience all aspects of Japanese life and culture in a small space, without taking too much time and money for travel between sights. It is understandable that someone spending only few weeks or less in the country would not want to spend half of the trip in a train, on the way to Tohoku, western Honshu, or Kyushu - the Kanto (Tokyo) and Kansai (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe) regions are close together and provide the tourist with a great number of ways to sample Japanese culture. I hesitate, however, to recommend traveling all the way to Kyoto if one is a resident of another region of Japan, for I found that I could have more enjoyable experiences off the beaten tourist path, without wasting the money and effort to go to Kyoto - only to see the same (but more crowded and less impressive) sights that we had in my own city.

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Dismayed though I felt at first, I needed to swallow my emotion and get to the task of familiarizing myself with the city - I was, after all, the Japanese-speaking tour guide to visitors from home on their first trip to Asia. Despite difficulty matching the cartoonishly-drawn tourist map to the actual layout of the city, we were soon on our way to take in the long list of sights we had compiled before making our journey. The list originally spanned pages, but upon arrival, we realized that the logistics of seeing every sight in Kyoto were perhaps beyond our capabilities and were obliged to limit ourselves to a few basics. To reduce pages of cultural scenes to a short bulleted list begged for me to find the "most important" or "most worthwhile" example of each type of thing to be encountered, but as it so often happens, I was summarily thwarted by real life; my tour of Kyoto became a series of random but fascinating experiences, giving me a small, vivid taste of the huge variety of strange cultural tidbits that can be uncovered there.

As we walked down the main streets and peered from bus windows, we quickly began to appreciate just how full of sights Kyoto truly is - for an ugly, grubby landscape it is packed to overflowing with aged temples, castles, imperial residences, universities, libraries, galleries, shrines, and gardens. There is something for everyone interested in the ancient culture of Japan here, from tacky stage shows to galleries devoted to arcane details of Heian-period life. Everything, however, has been built up for the tourists - for Kyoto is the most popular tourist destination not only of foreign visitors, but of the Japanese themselves as well. Each garden, each ancient temple and former residence of a famous person, is filled to varying degrees with tourists; every inch has already been photographed a thousand times; the sights are surrounded by fences and signs and demands admission. There are out-of-the-way landmarks that one can find, but with only a few days to take everything in, I resigned myself - list in hand - to ready-made experiences.

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My visitors and I began our tour of Kyoto with attractions we hoped would be calming, maybe even enlightening: temple gardens. Though the famous "golden pavilion," Kinkaku-ji, was out of our reach, we made do with Ginkaku-ji - a silver version. In reality, Ginkaku-ji is not so much a copy of its similar-sounding neighbor; rather, it is famous for its finely-combed rock garden, said to glow silver in the light of the moon: thin, clean lines curving around a smooth miniature replica of Mount Fuji, surrounded by sparsely planted and meticulously manicured pines. As one would expect, the temple was packed with tourists, all crowded into the narrow wooden walkway that snaked around the garden, snapping pictures and pushing in front of each other for a better view. To my surprise, I discovered that the garden was not the only attraction for one Japanese tourist - I caught this photographer taking pictures of yours truly as well. Apparently, for this person, the sight of a foreigner was as much of a tourist attraction as the garden! I had come all the way from the south of Japan, but I hadn't realized until I came to Kyoto just how international and diverse my own city was; there, the sight of foreigners doesn't faze anyone. Yet, here I was in the tourist capital of Japan, finding more people staring at me and sneaking photographs of "the foreigner in foreign habitat" than at home.

On our garden tour, Ryoan-ji was the next stop; this Buddhist temple, located a little northwest of the city center near Ritsumeikan University, is famous for its minimalist stone gardens, though it contains no Fuji replica. The bus ride there took us through the city to a slightly more residential area, more quiet alleys and houses, dark beneath miniature pines and maples along their wooden fences. The sky was dimming with the late afternoon, heavy clouds giving everything a cool and mysterious gray cast. As we pulled up to Ryoan-ji, we were struck by the glow of green from the forest shading it from the road. From where we stood, steps led straight up, broadly, through low-hanging green maples and the ground was saturated with soft moss. The lush forest around us gave the area a hushed and dreamlike feel - an island in the mess of concrete and wires and tiled rooves.

Ryoan-ji, too, was crowded with tourists both Japanese and foreign; being so late in the day, however, it didn't feel nearly as rushed or packed. We took our time exploring the interior of the temple, leaving our shoes at the entrance and letting our sock feet slide over the smooth wooden floorboards and tatami mats, worn by years of gentle use. Inside, the walls were panels of rice paper stretched on wooden frames, covered in delicate paintings and faintly stained yellow by time. Some rooms were open to the outside, entire walls made of sliding doors that had been pushed back for a view of the gardens, while others were covered in brightly-painted wooden dragons. It was a strange mix of ornate demons and simple, clean lines and shapes.

The garden at Ryoanji is the most famous and most advertised in Japan; it is entirely made up of stones, raked carefully in order to simulate land, mountains, and the sea. Larger rocks are sparsely distributed to give the effect of the "water" flowing around them. The garden is considered to be one of the cultural and artistic masterpieces of Japan, its minimalist design enticing the visitor to engage in quiet contemplation. Sitting on the long, low bench on the veranda above the garden, looking down at the raked gravel with other, suddenly-hushed tourists, one begins to see what Zen masters are talking about when they refer to negative space, the space between the rocks. Everyone here, chattering away happily just a moment before, was humbly quieted by the sight of this garden.

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The evening could not have been more of a contrast to the quiet contemplation of Ryoanji's garden: we walked to Gion, once the home of geisha and kabuki actors but now resembling nothing so much as an enormous mall. It is one of the centers of nightlife, filled with brightly-lit arcades and well-dressed men and women crowding the streets. The main street is wide, bright, and straight, and filled with noise and modern young culture. Louis Vuitton purses and Gucci sunglasses were the most pervasive sights here, not elegant kimono and wooden sandals.

While in Gion, we attended a demonstration show that gave an overview of Japanese theater, from puppet shows to comedies, as well as other cultural points such as the tea ceremony. It is billed as a sampling of historical high culture, but in reality was a tacky reenactment in a vaguely dirty, worn auditorium. The props, walls, and seats all had a slight tinge to them, as though stained by wear and time. The experience of this place was not something I would recommend wasting time on; much like my initial reaction to Kyoto itself, it was an utter disappointment, only a tourist-ready shadow of what was expected.

Other sights in and near Gion, however, were pleasant surprises. Just a few blocks to the north and south, the city transforms back into a dim remnant of its past: narrow alleys, dark houses with wooden shutters hiding the windows, low rooves hanging over walls. The scene is all dark cobblestone and faint lights, streets winding over on themselves as they snaked up little hills through the mess of buildings.

To the north of Gion, away from the main drag and the tourist-heavy theaters and restaurants that lie to the south, one can wander through the historic alleys that seem like something out of the 18th century rather than the present. The buildings are all wooden and line the immediate sides of the street, rather than hiding away behind walls and fences; their doorways are gently screened by long fabric marked with crests and patterns, the opening in the hanging offering tantalizing glances of the wooden entranceway beyond. Outside the houses and businesses, soft lights were enclosed in wooden containers; squinting, I could almost imagine them to be old-fashioned lamps rather than electric bulbs. On the night I strolled through this area, it was deserted and silent, as though I had stepped backward in time as I made my way from Gion to Pontocho.

Pontocho, which constists of two narrow streets along the Kamogawa river, is home to a collection of expensive restaurants and bars, hostess clubs, and various other sometimes-shady establishments. Here, too, the narrow roads and packed-in structures create the feel that one has been sent back to the 19th century - save for for the flashing neon lights and the crowds of men in dark suits and shades hanging around outside. Though I didn't get a chance to sample any of the food on this dim street, I spent an evening at A Bar, located on the back upper floor of a run-down building. Unlike many of the bars I went to in Japan, it had a relaxed atmosphere and was decorated with random pop culture memorabilia. The tables and benches were rough wood and the place was filled with both foreigners and Japanese, everyone as much off the beaten path as the place itself. It did nothing to immerse me in traditional Japanese culture, but between the food and the atmosphere, it was a place I would recommend to anyone spending an evening in Kyoto.

On New Year's Eve, I found myself once again in Gion's nightlife. This time, I made my way to Yasaka-jinja, a famous shrine that is host to the largest New Year's celebration in the area. We arrived early, and at first we were distracted by the brightly lit wall of lanterns, the food stalls, the variety of people milling around the shrine grounds. Soon, however, we were pushed by the increasing crowd to the main shrine building itself, were we would await the countdown to midnight and the "first" shrine visit of the new year. As we were pushed in so tightly we could hardly breathe, we screamed the countdown along with the hundreds of people around us, cheering in unison as shrine representatives jumped up on the stage to throw handfuls of coins down to us. They had no illusions about the size and threat of the crowd; the stage was also full of firefighters in riot gear and helmets, ready to jump in case of an emergency. As the excitement began to wear down after the new year had been rung in with coins and screaming, the crowd began to surge out the back of the shrine complex to drink beer, eat traditional New Year's food, and throw offerings into a bonfire. Though my friends and I had no scraps of paper or sticks with New Year's prayers written on them to throw in the fire, we still joined the crowd in drinking, stuffing our faces with corn-on-the-cob and fried octopus, complaining about the cold, and screaming New Year's wishes to each other. The party outside the shrine lasted into the morning hours, until daylight began to invade the scene and transform it into the utterly different picture of families dressed in kimono making their first shrine visits of the year.

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Contrasting with the bright lights and sparkling excitement of Gion at night was the vision of Gion in the day - back to drab concrete and dirty walls, everything tired and gray without the neon and crowds. I returned there on a misty afternoon, on my way to sights that proved to be more in line with our expecations of traditional Japanese culture.

Kiyomizu-dera, in the forests of Higashi-yama in eastern Kyoto, is one of the most famous Buddhist temples in Japan and has been well-known for hundreds of years. Since the Heian period, famous figures have made it their favored temple and it even still contains some historical figures' belongings that were left to it. Kiyomizu-dera also includes a sight now strange in Japan - a Shinto shrine located within the Buddhist temple. Prior to the Meiji restoration, this was nothing out of the ordinary, but with the restoration of the Emperor's authority, Shinto and Buddhism were also officially separated. The shrine in Kiyomizu is remarkable for another reason; namely, it is a shrine to the god of love, and is tremendously popular with young people. The love shrine includes are two stones several meters apart, and it is said that if one walks from one stone to the other with eyes closed, repeating the name of the object of love, the relationship will quickly progress to marriage. As my friends and I rounded the curve to this shrine, we did indeed see a group of giggling young women standing in line to try out this very tradition (albeit not successfully).

For me, the appeal of Kiyomizu was not its temple complex or its ornate Buddhist scupltures; rather, it was the view from the temple that caught my attention. It was a misty January day when I stood on the veranda outside the main building, several stories high and held up by a grid of heavy wooden stilts, and the forested mountains to the east stood shrouded in layers of blue haze. To the west, Kyoto was mostly hidden by the thickly humid air, but the close-by hills with their old-fashioned shops and carefully-manicured gardens stood out clearly. Presented with that scene, despite the crowd on the veranda with their shrieks of delight and rush of photographs, I felt that I had been transported somewhere else - somewhere beyond gritty urban Japan, somewhere more grounded in the dark forests and murmured Buddhist chants of the past.

In addition to Kiyomizu-dera, I visited another famous Buddhist temple, this one known for having the tallest pagoda in Japan: To-ji, just southwest of Kyoto Station. This temple is also very old, dating from around 800 AD. Its temple complex is small but very interesting; I spent over an hour going through the buildings housing golden Buddhist statues and artwork, and peering up at the decorative eaves on the main hall. Unlike what I was used to seeing in Japan, huge old trees arched overhead, full of quivering golden leaves shaking in the autumn breeze. Beyond the temple buildings, a pond with a decorative garden provide a spot for quiet reflection and picturesque shots of the pagoda looming over the miniature maple trees. Their leaves had just begun to turn scarlet, reflecting green and red against the gray sky on the rippling surface of the pond.

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The quiet grounds of To-ji were the perfect antidote to the stress the crowds of tourists at other Kyoto sights. After a quick view of the inside of the pagoda - visitors can only look at the first floor, as the rest is blocked with a shaky ceiling - I found myself drawn to the pond, quiet and still but for the ripples the cool breeze made on the surface. A few red leaves had shaken loose from the miniature maple tree above me, gliding around aimlessly on the water before being snapped up by the large carp (koi) that were making their lazy way past. The leaves were summarily spit back out, wrinkled and limp, tumbling as they fell to the murky bottom.

The majestic pagoda soared before me, and as I watched its reflection dance on the water, my mind was taken back to the Kyoto that existed when it was built - the new capital of Japan, headquarters of an Emperor that was still half-warlord, courtiers, aristocrats of powerful families, temples founded when Buddhism was still new and mysterious and esoteric. I could picture the dark, polished wood of the houses, smell the incense being burned, hear the dim babble of speech. I could smell the dirt, the squalor that the common people lived in beside the aristocrats who prided themselves on being able to identify the vaguest scent of perfume and match the colors of twelve robes perfectly. More than anywhere else I had been, somehow, To-ji brought me closer to that ancient world that I had dreamed of when I boarded the bullet train in the hot south; it brought me to the twilight world of shadows and whispers that could no longer survive in the bright, sharp world I had found here in Kyoto.

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Was my most enjoyable experience in Kyoto To-ji? A perfectly-formed garden, a preserved temple complex? No; my greatest experience was not anything planned or recommended to me by others, and it was not something that I had ever seen in a travel guide. We had found it by chance; it had caught my eye in a cursory glance over my visitors' extensive list of things to see before we decided to narrow it down.

It was the Kyoto Costume Museum.

I wasn't sure what to expect from it - full-sized ancient clothes in cases? Dioramas? A single exhibit set up in someone's converted garage? All of these things would be possible in Japan, and the museum's low-budget pamphlet didn't give many hints. The museum itself was located on the upper floor of a building in a business district north of Kyoto Station, in a jumble of shops and offices, not the quaint alleys and temples of more touristy areas. Despite the museum's advertisement that it was located in an area that was full of old shops dealing in Buddhist objects and antiques, it looked like any other city that I'd visited in Japan. We wondered how we'd find the building, as few were labeled with signs - "Keep looking for anything that looks like it has at least 5 stories," I told my visitors. "No, that one's too short, only 3 stories."

Eventually, we located the narrow office building and took a shaky elevator ride up to the museum. An old woman greeted us from the cash register next to the door, behind a single glass case of souvenirs and post cards. She smiled and took our four dollars (400 yen) each, and then gestured toward the enormous miniature in the center of the room. The musuem indeed consisted of just this one room, which contained a sprawling diorama of the "Spring Palace," the residence of the hero - Shining Prince Genji - of The Tale of Genji. This novel - arguably the first novel ever written, around 1015 - is the work of a court lady, Murasaki Shikibu, and describes in soap opera detail the lives of Heian aristocrats close to the Emperor. Here, the Costume Museum's curators had designed period clothing for the doll-sized replicas in their carefully arranged scenes. Each room of the palace showed a scene from The Tale of Genji, and the dolls and their clothes were meticulously detailed - so much so that I can still suspend belief when I look at my photographs and imagine that the figures were life-sized, not miniatures.

The real delight of the museum, however, was not the miniature scene (beautiful though it was). As we made our way to the rear of the room to take a closer look at one of the tiny costumes, we noticed an adjacent room with two life-sized mannequins draped in Heian robes. Next to the figures was a sign in Japanese and English: "Please try on the Heian costumes!" We looked at each other - did they really mean it? Just then, the woman from the register appeared. "Would you like to try them on? Come on, please try it," she said to us in Japanese. I shrugged. "Sure."

Goofy and slightly embarassing as it was to try on Heian costumes in the back room of the museum, and then to be posed and have our pictures taken by the old woman, it was the most enjoyable thing I had experienced in Kyoto. The woman was utterly enthusiastic; I imagine the museum didn't get so many visitors as the more mainstream attractions, and the sight of three foreign visitors having a fit over fabric and Genji references was probably more than enough entertainment for her boring afternoon. (We were, incidentally, the only people in the museum.) In any case, even if it was slightly ridiculous, we had an amazingly fun time burying ourselves in layers upon layers of heavy fabric, arranging ourselves to look as pensive as possible at the little writing desks, holding fans coyly over our faces. We were even instructed by the woman to have group photos, and some posed next to a male courtier mannequin - presumably we were to act like the objects of his unrequited affection. The woman didn't ask us the usual questions - where are you from, why are you here, imagine that! you speak Japanese! - but simply told us about the fabric, the designs, the museum, Genji. It wasn't about being a foreigner in Japan; it was about being a Genji nerd in a Heian clothing museum, sharing opinions with another Heian-obsessed eccentric.

After all, as I was beginning to discover elsewhere in Japan, the real delight of experiencing Kyoto and all of its culture and history was not in the impersonal viewing of famous landmarks and having my picture taken in front of ancient temples. It was, I found, being able to take a moment to interact with the real, live city, to talk about interests with others who share them, and to immerse myself personally in the city rather than simply take a picture. And, of course, to have my picture taken in Heian-period costumes while pretending to be courted by a plastic mannequin of the Shining Prince Genji of my daydreams.