Kyoto’s Renaissance: Ancient Capital for Modern Japan 9781898823933

Citation preview

KYOTO’S RENAISSANCE

“Kaisei saikoku Kyōto ku kumiwake saizu, Meiji 12” (Revised, reprinted map of Kyoto showing the details of ku and kumi, 1879.) (Source: Collection of Kanasaka Kiyonori) The map is on scale of about 1/7200, and shows Kyoto in transition from the early modern to the modern. For details of this map see, Kanasaka Kiyonori, Andō Tetsurō, and Kumitomo Yugō. “Miyako to shite no Kyōto no chizu no rekishi to kindai.” (Maps of Kyoto as the capital of Japan in history and the modern era) Chizu jōhō 33-1 (2013).

Kyoto’s Renaissance ANCIENT CAPITAL FOR MODERN JAPAN Y

Edited by

John Breen International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, Kyoto

Maruyama Hiroshi Meijo University

Takagi Hiroshi Kyoto University

KYOTO’S RENAISSANCE ANCIENT CAPITAL FOR MODERN JAPAN

First English edition published 2020 by RENAISSANCE BOOKS P O Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP Renaissance Books is an imprint of Global Books Ltd

ISBN 978-1-898823-92-6 Hardback 978-1-898823-93-3 e-Book © Renaissance Books 2020 (this collection) The authors retain their copyright © 2020 of the individual chapters All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Garamond 11 on 12.5 pt by Dataworks Printed and bound in England by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wilts

CONTENTS Y

Preface Introduction: In Search of the Kyoto Modern – John Breen, Maruyama Hiroshi, Takagi Hiroshi

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PART 1: Emperor, Rites, and Religion Chapter 1: The Emperor System and Kyoto: Images of the Ancient Capital Takagi Hiroshi Chapter 2: Performing History: Festivals and Pageants in the Making of Modern Kyoto John Breen Chapter 3: Buddhism and Society in Modern Kyoto Tanigawa Yutaka

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PART 2: Urban Spaces, Local Communities, and Cityscapes Chapter 4: The Modern Reorganization of Urban Space and Kyoto’s Historicity Nakagawa Osamu

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Chapter 5: The Eleventh-Centenary of the Founding of Heian and the Heian Shrine Kobayashi Takehiro

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Chapter 6: Kyoto’s Forest Policy: Scenic Beauty and Urban Fringe Forests Maruyama Hiroshi

146

PART 3: Industry, Arts, and Craftsmanship Chapter 7: Transforming Early Meiji Kyoto: Towards an“Industrial City” Takaku Reinosuke

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Chapter 8: Nihonga in Kyoto at the Dawn of the Modern Era Kuniga Yumiko

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Chapter 9: Trends in Modern Kyō-yaki Pottery: On Design in the Meiji Period Yoshii Takao

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The Contributors

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Index

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PREFACE Y

Kyoto’s Renaissance: Ancient Capital for Modern Japan has its origins in a series of pioneering research seminars conducted at the University of Kyoto’s Institute for Research in Humanities (Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho), led by one of the editors of this volume, Takagi Hiroshi. The outcomes of these seminars were two books in Japanese that focused exclusively on Kyoto’s modern history, Kindai Kyōto kenkyū and Miyako no kindai both published by Shibunkaku in 2008 and co-edited by Takagi Hiroshi with Maruyama Hiroshi and Iyori Tsutomu. Takagi Hiroshi subsequently edited a third collection of essays exploring the modern history of Kyoto alongside that of other cities such as Nara, Japan’s other “ancient capital” (Kindai Nihon no rekishi toshi: koto to jōka machi. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2013). The editors of the present volume are indebted to the work of all the scholars who contributed to these earlier volumes. Indeed, the research of several of these scholars appears in revised and updated form in the present volume. All the chapters in this book, except that by John Breen, were originally written in Japanese. Takagi Hiroshi’s contribution to the introduction and the chapters by Takagi Hiroshi and Kobayashi Takehiro were translated by Jennifer Shanmugaratnam; Tanigawa Yutaka’s chapter was translated by Ryan Ward and John Breen; the chapters by Nakagawa Osamu, Takaku Reinosuke and Yoshii Takao were translated by Julian Holmes and John Breen; the chapter by Maruyama Hiroshi was translated by Stephen Gill; and the chapter by Kuniga Yumiko was translated by Simon Breen. All the translations into English were funded by a generous grant from the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University. This book follows established practice in using the modified Hepburn system of Romanization. Note that all personal names are vii

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given in the traditional Japanese fashion of family name followed by given name. All dates are given in the Gregorian calendar. The cover image is Yoshida Hatsusaburō’s painting of the 1928 Kyoto Exhibition to commemorate the Shōwa emperor’s enthronement of that year: Shōwa sannen tairei kinen Kyōto daihakurankai (Courtesy of Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents). John Breen

INTRODUCTION

IN SEARCH OF THE KYOTO MODERN John Breen, Maruyama Hiroshi, Takagi Hiroshi Y

1. MODERN KYOTO RESEARCH

Japan is often cited as the one Asian nation to have modernized both successfully and swiftly in the nineteenth century. Modernization in this context refers to industrialization, and the rapid economic growth it brings. This narrative is dominant, for example, in the many commemorative events, lectures and exhibitions that are taking place at the time of writing to mark the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration. Typically, sponsors, lecturers and curators locate the Meiji Restoration as the starting point of Japan’s modernization process, before narrating tales of modern Japan’s success. The somber historical truth is that the Meiji Restoration left in its wake political and socio-economic chaos. The city of Kyoto, the spatial focus of this book, suffered grievous damage in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and yet in the midst of adversity it underwent a dramatic transformation. After the emperor and his court uprooted and left for Edo (Tokyo) in 1869, even the Imperial Palace fell into disrepair. But then the city began a process of rapid modernization; it modernized faster, in fact, than any city in the land. At the same time, it set out to demonstrate that its thousandyear history as the country’s imperial center was a legacy vital to the modern nation. It became a vibrant, modern “ancient capital.” Such was the trajectory of Meiji-period Kyoto’s ix

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renaissance. The trajectory was also one of sustained resilience, a term that implies a system’s capacity to function even as it is subject to environmental buffeting. There is no doubt that Kyoto was seriously buffeted, and no doubt that it proved resilient. Kyoto not only survived; it thrived in modern Japan. This book sets out to study the nature of Kyoto’s modern experience. Kyoto’s thousand-year history began in 794 when it was founded as the imperial capital Heian. The city became the political, financial and cultural center of Japan. And so it remained for eight hundred years, until the creation of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo in 1600. Japan’s political center shifted east now to Edo, and the financial hub relocated west to Osaka, following the development of east-west water routes in the early seventeenth century. Kyoto meanwhile retained its status as Japan’s cultural center, on account of the imperial presence. This separating-out of the three different functions, political, financial and cultural, fulfilled in an earlier age by Kyoto alone resulted in the birth of three thriving cities. If it also represented the end of Kyoto’s overarching influence in Japanese life, the city’s ultimate decline came with the Meiji Restoration, and the imperial court’s relocation to Tokyo. What remained behind in Kyoto was, of course, a rich cultural heritage, but even this was accorded little value – at least initially – by modern Japan’s imperial government. What then was the dynamic of Kyoto’s renaissance, and what the substance of its resilience? During the period of immediate post-Restoration decline, Kyoto made multiple attempts to become a modern, industrial city. As early as 1871, the city hosted the first of many Kyoto exhibitions; they became thereafter an annual event. Exhibitions were integral to the city strategy of attracting visitors – not only Japanese but foreign visitors now, too. The city sponsored the construction of hotels for tourists, and the publication of city guides. These included the pioneering English-language Guide to the Celebrated Places in Kyoto and the Surrounding Places, which appeared as early as 1873. Miyako no sakigake (The Capital as Forerunner) published in 1883, was the

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first guide to the city’s burgeoning commerce and industry as it underwent regeneration. In 1895, the city published the Heian tsūshi (A Narrative History of Heian) which was not only the first official history of Kyoto, but one of the first city histories in modern Japan. Kyōto meishō annai ki (Guide to Famous City Sites), which went through three printings in three months and sold 300,000 copies, was published in the same year; so too was the substantial English language Official Guidebook to Kyoto and Allied Prefectures. These publishing initiatives coincided with Kyoto’s hosting of the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition in 1895, and the celebrations for the Eleventh-Centenary of the city’s founding. After the Restoration, Kyoto set out on a path to promote industry and commerce, and redefine itself as a new and modern industrial city. It scored some major successes. Kyoto had Japan’s first state school, its first public library, its first hydroelectric power station, and its first street cars. Japan’s first town hall, its first film projection, and its first symphony orchestra were all to be found in Kyoto. At the same time, though, Kyoto made much of the fact that its history was inextricably linked to the imperial court. The city exploited its imperial legacy to claim a unique place in the life of modern Japan and become a modern functioning “ancient capital.” If Kyoto demonstrated now a voracious appetite for change, it was sustained by a deep-flowing tradition of continuous creativity. It was the accumulation of knowledge and the consolidation of traditional skills over generations that propelled Kyoto into the modern era. The city’s traditional Aoi and Gion Festivals, engendered a multitude of tangible and intangible industries and performing arts, which modern Kyoto inherited. The city’s many shrines and temples, survived as vigorous patrons of the arts, and as cultivators of some of the country’s finest gardens. This is not withstanding the fact that they were hit hard by the early Meiji government’s religious policies. Early modern industries grew up around the imperial court and religious institutions, and quarters were established in the city where artisans lived and worked, refining their skills often under

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the most difficult conditions. That traditional skills survived throughout the early modern period and into the modern period was owing not least to the fact that Kyoto was a nonmilitary city. Unlike all the other greater cities that flourished from the early modern period, its center was not a castle, but the imperial palace. The eleventh-centenary of the city’s founding merits a special place in any account of Kyoto’s modern history. The event celebrated the illustrious history of a great city, of course, but it was as much a celebration of modern Japan’s imperial character. This was an event of national import, and it served to re-locate Kyoto at the very center of Japanese culture. EleventhCentenary celebrations involved a re-imagining of Kyoto’s city space, with the development of land in the Okazaki district east of the Kamo River that runs through central Kyoto. This was the location for the brand-new Heian Shrine, an extraordinary structure built in the very image of the Heian period imperial court. The spirit of Emperor Kanmu, the city’s founder, was venerated therein; in later years, the spirit of Emperor Kōmei, the last emperor to reign from the Kyoto palace, was added to the shrine’s pantheon. The shrine now became the focus for a new city festival, the so-called Jidai (or Period) Festival. It was a history pageant, which recreated heroic and historic moments from the city’s imperial past. It was typical of the city’s approach to the modern age that it hosted Japan’s Fourth National Industrial Exhibition on the same site and at the same time as the eleventh-centenary foundations. The first three such exhibitions, in 1877, 1881, and 1890, had all been held in Ueno Park in the capital Tokyo. Kyoto, the city of imperial tradition, was now staking its claim to be a truly modern city alongside Tokyo. In terms of city planning, however, Kyoto lagged far behind Tokyo, which as the nation’s capital was the first to undergo the modern treatment. Tokyo’s unique position as modern imperial capital was consolidated by the Home Ministry with a city planning ordinance in 1888. The environs of the new Tokyo imperial palace and parts of downtown Tokyo were renovated

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to bring them into line with the major urban centers of Europe and the United States. Old roads were broadened and new roads constructed; rivers, bridges and parks were all subject to renovation. But it was not for another thirty years, namely in 1918, that a similar ordinance was applied to Kyoto. But Kyoto’s unique and vital place as the ancient capital of modern imperial Japan – indeed, one of the great cities of the world – was established long before 1918. 2. TOWARDS A MODERN HISTORY OF KYOTO

The present volume is the first in English dedicated exclusively to exploring Kyoto’s modern transformation.* It opens with the section Emperor, Rites, and Religion, the first chapter of which is Takagi Hiroshi’s “The Emperor System and Kyoto: Images of the Ancient Capital.” Takagi argues that the court’s connection with local society was severed with the emperor’s departure in 1869. He goes on to explore the process by which, in the 1880s, Kyoto’s character as ancient capital and home to a unique imperial cult-ure was consciously constructed to render it distinct from, but by no means inferior to, the capital Tokyo. This was a process which eventually bore fruit in the twentieth century with the performance in Kyoto of the enthronement rites for the Taisho and Showa emperors. In “Performing History: Festivals and Pageants in the Making of Modern Kyoto,” John Breen’s focus falls on Kyoto’s three great festivals, the modern Jidai Festival and the much older Aoi and Gion Festivals. Breen traces the trajectories of these festivals in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and argues that they – along with the imperial rites of enthronement – served a vital strategic function in the flourishing of modern Kyoto. In his chapter “Buddhism and Society in Modern Kyoto,” Tanigawa Yutaka is concerned with Buddhism as it re-energized itself during the adversity of the Restoration * After the completion of the manuscript for this volume, Alice Tseng published Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868–1940, University of Hawaii Press, 2018. For other work by Alice Tseng on modern Kyoto, see below p.xxii

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period. Tanigawa explores the dynamics of Buddhism’s modern transformation as it confronted the Meiji state’s anti-Buddhism, and the confiscation of vast tracts of Buddhist land. In the end, he shows that it was Kyoto’s rich and resilient religious culture that made the city indispensable to the modern state. The second section Urban Spaces, Local Communities, and Cityscapes comprises chapters by Nakagawa Osamu, Kobayashi Takehiro and Maruyama Hiroshi. Nakagawa’s “Embodying History: The Modern Reorganization of Kyoto’s Urban Space” explores Kyoto’s regeneration as it engaged with new approaches to urban space. He focuses on the so-called “three major construction projects” (sandai jigyō): the construction of a second Lake Biwa Canal, the sewage system as well as the broadening of streets and laying of street-car tracks. He finds that the key to success was the role played by Kyoto’s unique community organizations. In his chapter “The Eleventh-Centenary of the Founding of Heian and the Construction of Heian Shrine,” Kobayashi shows how the eleventh-centenary celebrations, launched as an attempt by Kyoto entrepreneurs to promote Kyoto, developed into a national commemoration. Government ministers and powerful bureaucrats became involved, as plans for celebrations merged with Kyoto’s bid to host the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition. Finally, Maruyama in his chapter “Kyoto’s Forest Policy: Scenic Beauty and Urban Fringe Forests” points up the wealth of natural beauty which Kyoto inherited from the forests belonging to the city’s shrines and temples on the outskirts of the city. He then explores the process by which scenic beauty came to be protected through the forest protection system (hoanrin seido) and the scenic area system (fūchi chiku seido). The forests of temples and shrines stand to this day as a protective buffer for classical Kyoto’s historic skyline. The final section Industry, Arts, and Craftsmanship begins with a chapter by Takaku Reinosuke, “Transforming Early Meiji Kyoto: Towards an Industrial City.” Takaku examines Kyoto’s engagement with industrialization and city regeneration, especially in regard to the construction of the Lake Biwa

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Canal engineering works. He plots the ups and the downs of the project, and argues that the construction of the canal itself, and the resulting switch to hydraulic power, left a lasting legacy on the Kyoto cityscape, and had a major impact on the Kyoto’s modernization. Kuniga Yumiko’s chapter, “Nihonga in Kyoto at the Dawn of the Modern Era” provides a critical overview of Nihonga painting in the modern era, arguing that this traditional form of Japanese art, originally developed for use in interior design, provided visual inspiration for export wares, which then contributed to government policies intended to promote industry. She traces the historical dynamic forward to the establishment of the concept of fine arts (bijutsu), and Japanese artists’ struggles to make sense of the new age. In his chapter “Trends in Modern Kyō-yaki Pottery: on Design in the Meiji Period,” Yoshii Takao shows how potters, the artisans of Kyoto’s great traditional industry, set out in search of design innovations to bring ceramics into the modern age. They obtained information from international expositions, and directly from European potters, in order to promote exports and develop traditional designs for an international market. Yoshii finds that the rich variety of twenty-first century Kyoto ceramics is rooted in innovations in the latter half of the Meiji period. 3. ANGLOPHONE RESEARCH AND THE ABSENT MODERN

The present volume may be the first volume in English dedicated solely to Kyoto’s modern experience, but Kyoto history has before now attracted the attention of many fine Anglophone historians. This section offers a survey of some of the most notable studies of the city. This, after all, is the intellectual context out of which the present volume emerges. The first-ever history of Kyoto in the English language was written by Richard Ponsonby-Fane in 1931. Kyoto: its history and vicissitudes since its foundation in 792 to 1868 was a compilation of four long articles on Kyoto, which the author had previously penned for the Japan Society of London. Ponsonby-Fane, who took up

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residence in the city in 1924, drew largely for his insights on the afore-mentioned Heian tsūshi, the first Japanese history of Kyoto. The year after Ponsonby-Fane published his Kyoto, he moved to a house near the Lower Kamo Shrine, and there he resided until his death in 1937. It is said he was “outrageously old-fashioned, and disliked everything modern.”1 It is ironical then that the city that he loved with a passion was one of the first to acquire all the trappings of urban modernity. Ponsonby-Fane ends Kyoto at the Restoration of 1868, and he has very little to say about the modern period. Each of his chapters offers “comprehensive accounts” of the palaces, temples, shrines, gardens of the city in the Heian period (749– 1229), the Middle Ages (1221–1582), the Momoyama period (1582–1615) and the Edo or Tokugawa period (1615–1869).2 Only occasionally does he follow the fortunes of these structures through to Meiji and beyond. This is the case, for example, with his discussion of the palace buildings abandoned by the emperor and his court in 1869. The several new shrines constructed in modern Kyoto to commemorate the great men of the city’s past – especially the Heian Shrine – fascinated him. But he has nothing more to say, good or bad, about the dramatic transformation that Kyoto underwent after the Restoration of 1868. Alex Kerr’s Another Kyoto is, at the time of writing, the latest book-length study of historical Kyoto. 3 Kerr shares with Ponsonby-Fane a distaste for the Kyoto modern. He delights only in Kyoto’s pre-modern past. Kerr knows the city as well as any foreigner since Ponsonby-Fane, and brings his insights to bear in a most novel way. The city’s gates, walls and floors are the spatial markers he deploys to unlock Kyoto’s historical riches. The temple-like gate at the Chion’in fascinates him, as do Tōfukuji’s door-less gate, thatched gates like those at Hōnen’in, and of course the ubiquitous torii or shrine gates, most con1 2 3

Britton 1997. Ponsonby-Fane 1931. Kerr and Sokol 2016.

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spicuous in the “gate-themed landscape” of the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Kyoto does not want for walls, either: “cosmic walls” delimit the spaces of the typical Kyoto temple with its meditation halls, pagodas, and sutra repositories, with Myōshinji offering what Kerr calls the “full wall experience.” Kerr reflects too on the floors of many of Kyoto’s historical structures. The black glistening wooden floors at Jissō-in impress him, and when it comes to the historically much later tatami floor, the imperial palace’s Tsune goten hall, the reception hall of Nijō Castle and, indeed, the Reikanji nunnery count among the city’s finest. For more conventional readings of Kyoto’s past, Kerr points the reader to Gouverneur Mosher’s Kyoto: A Contemplative Guide and John Dougill’s Kyoto: A Cultural History. 4 Mosher, it proves, has no more interest in modern Kyoto than Kerr or Ponsonby-Fane. For Mosher, Kyoto’s history grinds to a halt on the eve of the Restoration.5 His method is to negotiate urban history through specific landmarks. So, for example, the Shūgakuin Imperial Villa in the northeast, the shogun’s Nijō Castle in the west, and the nearby “fortified inn” known as Nijō jinya embody for him the city’s Edo-period, but this is as far as he goes. He even advises readers to avoid the Heian Shrine on the grounds that it was a Meiji invention. He laments its utter lack of cultural interest.6 Dougill begs to differ, and unlike Mosher, he finds much to admire in the Heian Shrine, its structures, its gardens and festivals. He notes with admiration how in Meiji, “almost overnight, [Kyoto] transformed itself from a city of tradition into the country’s leading modernizer.” He underscores the point with an inventory of some of the Kyoto city “firsts” referred to above.7 Dougill reflects with due awe on the late-nineteenth century Lake Biwa Canal project, a pioneering feat of engineering that cut a path through the mountains from the lake into the city. As he notes, the channeled 4 5 6 7

Mosher 1964. Plutschow 1992. Mosher 1964, p. 22. Dougill 2006, p. 198.

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water not only irrigated the city, it transformed it visually. The water drove Kyoto’s innovative hydro-electric power station, which ran Kyoto’s trams. All this Dougill admires, and his admiration for modern Kyoto makes his book the better by far of the two. Mosher and Kerr have both written short, digestible city histories for the general reader, and make no claims for originality. But the last two decades or so have seen a succession of insightful Kyoto studies written in English by academics from multiple perspectives. Much of the best work has an intriguingly medieval bias. There is Mary Elizabeth Berry’s masterful exploration of the convulsion of war and its impact on the imperial capital in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;8 Suzanne Gay has written on sake-brewing moneylenders and their place in the flourishing urban culture of late medieval Kyoto;9 and Matthew McKelway has penned the definitive work on the genre of medieval Kyoto folding screens, known as rakuchū rakugai zu.10 Matthew Stavros’ urban history of Kyoto deftly deploys textual, pictorial and archaeological sources to track the city’s spatial evolution from the eighth through the seventeenth centuries. Stavros interestingly concludes his book by casting forward to Kyoto’s modern experience. Modernity impacted profoundly on Kyoto’s urban and architectural heritage, he observes, and “on balance, it enhanced Kyoto’s cultural legacy.”11 Other studies have begun, albeit falteringly, to address Kyoto’s modern concerns more directly. Tamara Hareven’s The Silk Weavers of Kyoto is rooted firmly in postwar Japan, and she notes – albeit briefly – the transformation worked by the introduction into Meiji period silk-weaving of the jacquard and the power-loom. If history is not Hareven’s forte, her book nonetheless offers a vivid perspective on weavers and work in modern Kyoto’s Nishijin district, through insightful comparisons with Europe 8 9 10 11

Berry 1997. Gay 2001. McKelway 2006. Stavros 2015, p.184.

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and the USA.12 City history is precisely the strength of the fine collection of essays assembled by Nicolas Fiévé and Paul Waley. 13 Five of the fourteen chapters in Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective tackle Kyoto, but curiously not one explores its Meiji period transformation. In narrating the development of Kyoto’s Shimabara pleasure quarters, Fiévé does look ahead to the modern period, noting briefly how the construction of railways and roads led to Shimabara’s loss of both status and custom.14 And the editors in their introduction refer tantalizingly to Kyoto’s “major modernization scheme” that began with the construction of the Heian Shrine for the city’s eleventh centenary. But that is about it. In its otherwise thoughtful conclusion on memory, power and place, Kyoto’s Meiji experience does not merit a mention. For all its historical insights, Japanese Capitals has fewer references to Meiji period Kyoto than does Christoph Brumann’s Tradition, Democracy and the Townscape of Kyoto, which is not a history book at all. Brumann is an anthropologist with a sharp historical eye. His masterful study of postwar Kyoto explores the “social anatomy” of the city’s countless conflicts over planning and building. With skill, he sketches the historical contexts for his observations on the ill-fated plan for a Pont des Arts style footbridge across the Kamo River; on the Gion Festival and the social structures sustaining it in the postwar; on what he calls Kyoto’s “issue-oriented civic activism,” and on the revival of traditional Kyoto residential architecture, the distinctive machiya. The book succeeds in its portrayal of post-war Kyoto citizens as they struggle to “bring the past into the future.” In brief, until very recently there has been a Meiji-shaped hole in English-language studies of historical Kyoto. This makes Kyoto: Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji periods, a collection of essays edited by Morgan Pitelka and Alice Tseng, most 12 13

14

Hareven 2002. Fiévé and Waley 2013. Nicolas Fiévé is also the editor of the magnificently produced Atlas historique de Kyoto, Editions de l’Amateur, 2008. This, too, has a distinct medieval bias. Fiévé 2013, pp. 67–99.

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welcome.15 In their introduction, Pitelka and Tseng propose intriguing parallels between early Edo and early Meiji Kyoto. The Tokugawa regime set up its powerbase in the early seventeenth century in Edo, some 500 km east of Kyoto. In the wake of the 1868 Restoration, the emperor and his court vacated Kyoto for Edo, which duly became modern Japan’s eastern capital of Tokyo. Both historical junctures dislocated Kyoto from the political center, prompting in its citizens, entrepreneurs and proprietors an anxiety of loss and a longing for stability and prosperity. The volatility of both junctures triggered in Kyoto city dwellers “an upswing” in cultural activity and production, resulting in a “constellation of fine, decorative and building arts” that distinguished and sustained the city. Four essays in the collection explore this dynamic as it shaped Meiji period Kyoto. Alice Tseng cautions that the urban convulsion of early Meiji far exceeded that of early Edo, before exploring cultural revival in the construction of open public spaces. The city, bereft of emperor and court, imbued two sites anew with imperial associations: Kyoto Imperial Garden – a new type of urban space that vivifies the city’s “perishing center” – and Okazaki Park – a hybrid space, at once imperial and democratic, historical and modern, religious and secular. The development of such spaces constituted nothing less than a modern remapping of the ancient capital. Yasuko Tsuchikane writes boldly of Buddhism in Meiji period Kyoto, arguing that it underwent a crisis graver than at any time since its arrival in Japan in the sixth century. Her concern is to track the restoration of Buddhist fortunes, and the strategic use of works of art in this endeavor. She sees as symbolic of Buddhism’s post-persecution revival the early Meiji rebuilding, and the artistic decorating, of the Higashi Honganji Temple. Julia Sapin then focuses on the resurgence of Kyoto’s textile industry, which for her is key to the city’s modern economic development. Her interest is in textile production as a “site” where the naturalist painting style of classic Kyoto fused with modern artistic trends of a city-wide endeavor 15

Pitelka and Tseng 2016.

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to validate Kyoto’s past. Toshio Watanabe, in his concluding chapter, then focuses on modern Kyoto’s gardens. He is drawn to the Murin-an, a garden designed for statesman Yamagata Aritomo by Ogawa Jihei in the 1890s. He identifies its impact on other modern Kyoto gardens, like that of the Heian Shrine, before offering some provocative reflections on the modern reimagining of the famous Zen rock-garden at Ryōanji Temple.16 4. RESEARCHING MODERN KYOTO: STRATEGIES AND SOURCES

Kyoto’s modernizing endeavor in the Meiji period resulted eventually in the national government recognizing Kyoto for its history and traditions. This explains the dominant premodern focus of Kyoto studies. The ancient Heian, medieval Muromachi and early modern Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods have received most of the academic attention. Indeed, academic historians of Japan to this day set great store by empirical research into ancient and mediaeval history. Research into modern and current history is a much more recent phenomenon. A special feature of this volume, Kyoto’s Renaissance, is that it makes the empirical case for a multifaceted modern Kyoto, drawing as it does on a vast array of historical materials from local society. It acknowledges the aspects of tradition that endured from the Heian period through the medieval period and beyond, even as it sheds light on Kyoto’s modern renaissance after the Meiji Restoration. Kyoto was devastated in the fifteenth century Ōnin Wars and the great conflagration, caused by civil strife in 1864, but apart from some small-scale bombing in the Umamachi and Nishijin blocks of the city, Kyoto escaped the devastating bombing raids of the Asia-Pacific War. Kyoto was, in fact, the first choice for the detonation of the atomic bomb, but it was spared for political considerations, namely to ensure US hegemony in the post-war era.17 As a result, a wealth of historical documents 16

17

For a comprehensive overview of research on modern Kyoto in Japanese, see below. Yoshida 2002.

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relating to premodern Kyoto – as well as to the modern period – survive to this day. These include documents relating to various city neighborhood blocks (chō ), documents held by shrines and temples, and documents relating to the administration of Kyoto City and Kyoto Prefecture. The Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives, located in the city’s Sakyō Ward, makes public archives easily accessible to the researcher.18 Inaugurated by Kyoto Prefectural Governor Ninagawa Torazō in 1963, this was the first administrative archive opened to the public anywhere in Japan. The Kyoto Institute houses over 15,000 administrative documents from Kyoto Prefecture, dating from the Meiji period through until 1946; the collection is designated an important cultural property. Kyoto and, indeed, the adjacent prefectures of Nara and Shiga today boast a wealth of official documents on politics, the economy, culture and religion dating back to Meiji. The nearby prefectures of Hyōgo and Ōsaka, by contrast, lost much in the extensive bombing. Of especial value to researchers working on modern Kyoto are the diaries of Kitagaki Kunimichi. Kitagaki, the Kyoto prefectural governor who oversaw the construction of the Lake Biwa Canal project, set the tone for Kyoto’s enlightened prefectural administration in the first half of the Meiji period.19 The Kyoto Institute holds around 320,000 books, with a particular focus on reference materials relating to Kyoto. Included are early-modern publications, bound Japanese style, as well as more modern publications bound in the Western style. In addition, administrative documents from the city of Kyoto may be viewed at the Public Information Corner at Kyoto City Hall. The Kyoto Institute houses, moreover, the largest collection of magazines published in the Kyoto municipal area, including the art magazine, Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi (1892–1905) and 18

19

This archive, known in Japanese as Kyōto Furitsu Kyōtogaku Rekisaikan (Rekisaikan for short), opened in 2016. It stands on the site of, and replaces, the old Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives (Kyōto Fu Sōgō Shiryōkan). Kitagaki’s diaries have been published as Jinkai Kenkyūkai ed., 2010.

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the education journal, Kyōto kyōiku (1883–1943). Newspapers too are an essential resource for the study of modern Kyoto, and the Kyoto Institute holds original copies of many of the newspapers published in the Kyoto municipal area, including the Kyōto shinbun and its precursor the Hinode shinbun, first published in 1885. Microfilm versions of these newspapers are also kept at the major universities in Kyoto. The Miyako kioku (or Municipal memory) online archive is an indispensable tool for researchers looking for historical sources in all periods of Kyoto history. It is accessible though the Kyoto Institute webpage. Books, journals and documents can all be searched online, and there are visual images there aplenty too.20 The Kyoto Institute also hosts the archives of the Tōji Temple (Kyōō Gokokuji), one of the most powerful in the land from the ancient period until modern times. Another essential public archive is the Kyoto City Library of Historical Documents (Kyōtoshi Rekishi Shiryōkan), located by the imperial palace in Kamigyō Ward. The library has made available a collection of photographs of ancient documents, comprising around 210,000 separate frames in total, from the Kyoto municipal area. These were collected as part of editorial work that began in 1938, with the launch of the Institute for the Compilation of Historical Material on Kyoto (Kyōto Shishi Hensanjo). Its holdings compromise, moreover, some 90,000 historical documents, including the archive of the Restoration period courtier, Iwakura Tomomi (Iwakura Tomomi kankei shiryō ), which is designated an important cultural property. There are some 50,000 books at the archive, too. The historian Hayashiya Tatsusaburō played the leading role in collecting archival material on Kyoto city.21 His method was to set aside temple and shrine archives, and concentrate rather on the collection, copying and publication of historical records from city neighborhoods and surrounding villages. He reasoned that temples and shrines were insular by nature, 20 21

http://www.archives.kyoto.jp On this endeavor, see Kobayashi 2014.

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and access to their documents would be difficult. Since the Meiji period, the Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of Letters at Kyoto University have been collating and classifying ancient and mediaeval temple and shrine documents relating to Kyoto. Meiji period historians were clearly biased towards these earlier periods. As a result, the vast early-modern and modern collections of shrine and temple documents have remained to this day largely uncatalogued. However, there now exists a finite number of historical studies that draw on those long-neglected sources. Among those sites whose modern history has been the subject of recent research are the Upper Kamo Shrine, the Fushimi Inari Shrine, Kiyomizu Temple, the Honganji Temple and the modern Heian Shrine.22 In addition, the temples of Daigoji, Tōji, Sennyūji, Honganji, Shōkokuji, and Kiyomizu each have permanent treasure houses of archival material for which they employ a curator. It is worth noting that these temples and shrines were encouraged to establish such archives within their precincts for the preservation of historical documents during the 1920s. The initiative came from the historian Kuroita Katsumi, who was inspired by the German Heimatschutz movement. When it comes to published work on modern Kyoto, there is a growing body of material. A standard resource is Kyōto no rekishi published in ten volumes by Gakurin Shobō between 1973 and 1976. Based on exhaustive research conducted throughout the city, the clear, accessible text is aimed at Kyoto citizens. The coverage of modern and contemporary history in volume 7 on the Meiji Restoration (Ishin no gekidō), volume 8 on the modernization of the ancient capital (Koto no kindai), and volume 9 on Kyoto in world history (Sekai no Kyōto) is comprehensive. These volumes are an invaluable guide to understanding the basic historical facts, and the issues at stake in the study of Kyoto’s modern history. The city subsequently 22

Ōyama, 2006; Fushimi Inari Taisha ed., 2011; Kiyomizudera 1997; Sennyūjishi 1984; Honganjishi 1969; and Heian Jingū 1997.

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published a sequel, Kyōto shiseishi in five volumes, covering the history of the municipal government.23 Other published collections include Shiryō: Kyōto no rekishi by Heibonsha in sixteen volumes (1979–1994), which comprises key documents from each ward of the city. This was in fact a by-product of the afore-mentioned Kyōto no rekishi series. Shinsen: Kyōto sōsho, published in twelve volumes by Rinsen Shoten (1984–1989), contains such modern historical sources as the afore-mentioned Keika yōshi and Miyako no sakigake. The Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives – forerunner of the Kyoto Institute – abandoned its attempt to compile a hundredyear narrative history of Kyoto Prefecture, but their endeavors nonetheless resulted in a valuable ten-volume prefectural chronology, styled Kyōto fu hyakunen no nenpyō (1970–1971). Volumes are devoted to such topics as modern governmental administration and commerce and industry. For each item in the chronology, the primary sources – administrative documents, private documents, and newspaper articles – are cited, making this an indispensable guide. The Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives also published multi-volume collections of basic sources. These include the nine volume Kyōto fu hyakunen no shiryō (1972), a collection covering a century of Kyoto Prefecture, and the four volume Kyōto fu tōkei shiryōshū: hyakunen no tōkei (1969–1971), a compilation of statistics for the same period. These volumes constitute evidence of the energy and the editing skills of the staff at this pioneering archive. When it comes to the history of research on Kyoto, the archive’s catalogue, styled Kyōto fu shiryō mokuroku (1983), classifies research papers and historical documents from the early-modern period to the current day. This is so vital a guide for pinning down historical Kyoto research, that it raises questions about the present-day reliance on digitalization and the internet. Otherwise, useful reference works relating to modern Kyoto include Kyōto shi no chimei (Heibonsha, 1979), Kyōto fu no chimei (Heibonsha, 1981), and Kadokawa Nihon chimei daijiten: Kyōto in two volumes (Kadokawa Shoten, 1982), 23

Kyōto Shi Kyōto Shiseishi 2003.

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all of which relate to the history of place names. Meanwhile, the Kyōto rekishi atorasu, an historical atlas edited by Ashikaga Kenryō and published by Chūō Kōronsha in 1994, offers an excellent understanding of Kyoto spaces. The great fires that blazed through Kyoto in 1864 in the wake of battles between troops of Chōshū domain on the one hand and the armies of the bakufu fighting alongside Satsuma and Aizu domains on the other caused the most significant destruction to the city since the Ōnin Wars of the fifteenth century. This conflagration and then the transfer of the emperor and his court to Tokyo in 1869 were decisive moments in Kyoto’s decline. Numerous publications in recent years have retold the narrative of Kyoto’s fall and subsequent rise. Kobayashi Takehiro in his Meiji ishin to Kyōto (Rinsen Shoten, 1998), sees the eleventh-centenary of the founding of Heian in 1895 as the point at which regional society, and most notably, the old courtier class and their families, finally rallied. And Takagi Hiroshi in his Kindai tennōsei no bunkashiteki kenkyū: tennō shūnin girei, nenjū gyōji, bunkazai (Azekura Shobō, 1997) identifies the revitalization of the ancient capital of Kyoto in the 1880s, as a strategy for presenting traditional Japanese culture to international society. Meanwhile, Kindai Kyōto no kaizō toshi: keiei no kigen 1850 – 1918 nen (Minerva Shobō, 2006) is a useful collection of essays on the history of Kyoto city government, edited by Itō Yukio. Various works examine the shift in the emperor system between the early modern and modern periods and its impact on Kyoto. Notable in this regard are the afore-mentioned history of the Sennyūji temple where the ancestral spirits of the imperial family were accommodated; Fujitani Takashi’s Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (University of California Press, 1996); a study of the Yase dōji by Uno Hideo (Yase dōji rekishi to bunka. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2007); Itō Yukio’s book on modern emperors and Kyoto (Kyōto no kindai to tennō. Chikura Shobō, 2010); Takagi Hiroshi’s work on the modern emperor system and ancient capitals (Kindai tennōsei to koto. Iwanami Shoten, 2006), and John Breen’s study of

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imperial ritual (Girei to kenryoku: tennō no Meiji Ishin (Heibonsha, 2011). Then there is a selection of more focused studies on Kyoto’s modern transformation. There are books on Kyoto’s three great infrastructure projects (Kyōtoshi sandai jigyōshi, Kyoto City Hall, 1912); on the history of electricity in Kyoto (Kyōto shiei denki jigyō enkakushi, Kyōto Denkikyoku, 1933); on civilization and enlightenment (Tanaka Ryokkō, Meiji bunka to Akashi Hiroakira ō, 1942); on the Lake Biwa Canal project (Biwako sosui no hyakunen, Kyōto Shinbunsha eds., Kyōtoshi Suidōkyoku, 1990); on the modern sewage system (Kyōtoshi gesuidōshi, Kyōto Shi Gesuidōkyoku eds., 2001), and on local development across the prefecture (Takaku Reinosuke’s Kindai Nihon to chiiki shinkō: Kyōto fu no kindai, Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2011). The history of education in Kyoto has received much attention in recent years. There is Tsuji Michiko’s Tenshō no machi Kyōto: minshū no shakai to seikatsu (Aunsha, 1999), which discusses the pioneering establishment of primary schools in early Meiji. Elsewhere, many of the universities in Kyoto have published their own official hundred-year histories. These include Kyōto daigaku hyakunenshi (1997-present), Ritsumeikan hyakunenshi (1999-present), and Dōshisha hyakunenshi (1979). In addition, there is Motoyama Yukihiko’s edited volume, Kyōto fukai to kyōiku seisaku, (Nihon Tosho Sentā, 1990), a history of educational administration. Tanaka Tomoko’s Kindai Nihon Kyōiku taisei no reimei: kōsaku suru chiiki to kuni to Kirisutokyōkai (Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2012) draws on primary sources to track the development of higher education up until the 1880s, for which Kyoto Prefecture – rather than the national government – was responsible. Finally, Matsuo Takayoshi’s Takigawa jiken (Iwanami Shoten, 2005) is an indispensable work for reflecting on the tradition of democracy and university autonomy in Kyoto. When it comes to the history of museums, Tokyo inevitably leads the way, but for the Kyoto National Museum there is now a hundred-year history, the Kyōto kokuritsu hakubutsukan hyakunenshi, published by Benridō in 1997. It makes use

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of the museum’s own archives to construct an empirical account of the museum’s development from the Meiji Restoration to the present day. The situation of fine arts in modern Kyoto is unlike that in Tokyo, where the Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō took the lead. In Kyoto, fine arts were closely related to crafts and the export industry, as in the case of Nishijin textiles and Kiyomizu ceramics. In addition, the Nihonga school of Japanese painting from the time of the Shijō faction and the Nanga school, as represented by Tomioka Tessai, forged their own unique path of development. There are important studies of the artists and their works of art. A representative inventory might begin with Tanaka Hisao’s biography of Takeuchi Seihō, the leader of modern Kyoto’s art scene (Takeuchi Seihō, Iwanami Shoten, 1988); Oka Yoshiko’s study of the modern potter, Ninsei (Kokuhō Ninsei no nazo, Kadokawa Shoten, 2001); Tamamushi Satoko’s study of the impact of Rinpa artists on Japonism in Europe and the US (Ikitsuzukeru Kōrin: imēji to gensetsu o hakobu norimono to sono kiseki, Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2004). Shimada Yasuhiro’s study of modern Nihonga paintings (Kyōto no nihonga: kindai no yōran Kyōto Shinbunsha, 1991), and Namiki Seishi’s introduction to traditional Kyoto crafts (Kyōto dentō kōgei no kindai, Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2012) are valuable. Inaga Shigemi’s edited volume on traditional crafts, Dentō kōgei saikō: Kyō no uchisoto: Kako hakkutsu, genjō bunseki, shōrai tenbō (Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2007), has set a new benchmark. When it comes to performing arts and entertainment in Kyoto, especially the activities and achievements of the postwar research group, there is a good deal on the Geinōshi Kenkyūkai established in 1963. Their magazine Geinōshi kenkyū frequently carries pieces on modern Kyoto, but especially useful for their adoption of a chronological approach are three volumes: Moriya Takeshi’s Miyako no geinō: ōchō kara ishin made (Chūkō Shinsho, 1979); Okada Mariko’s Kyōmai Inoue-ryū no tanjō (Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2013); and, of course, the Kyoto volume of the modern kabuki chronology published as Kindai kabuki nenpyō: Kyōto hen by Yagi Shoten (1995–2005). Kyoto folk customs and traditions feature in

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Tanaka Ryokkō’s Ryokkō sōsho in fifty-four volumes published by Kyō o Kataru Kai from 1957 through 1972). Tanaka’s concern for urban customs is quite different from that of the great folklorist, Yanagita Kunio. Ema Tsutomu was lecturer at Kyoto’s municipal art and crafts school and founder of the Kyoto folklore society, and his collected works are published as Ema Tsutomu chosakushū in twelve volumes by Chūō Kōronsha (1975–1978). The authoritative pre-war voice is Inoue Yorihisa’s Kyōto koshūshi (Kanyū Shinshoku Kai, 1940). Otherwise, two works on the Gion Festival merit attention: Gion matsuri (Gion Matsuri Hensan Iinkai and Gion Matsuri Yamabako Rengōkai eds., Chikuma Shobō, 1976) and Yama, hoko, yatai no matsuri: furyū no kaika (Ueki Yukinobu, Hakusuisha, 2001). Kyoto’s modern architecture is dealt with by Nakagawa Osamu in his authoritative Kyōto modān kenchiku hakken (Tankōsha, 2002), and the same author’s Kyōto to kindai: semegiau toshi kūkan no rekishi (Kashima Shuppankai, 2015); there are also Kyō, machizukuri shi by Takahashi Yasuo and Nakagawa Osamu (Shōwadō, 2003), and Kinsei kindai machiya kenchiku shiron (Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2004) by Ōba Osamu. Meanwhile, Amasaki Hiromasa and others examine Kyoto’s modern landscape and scenery in Ueji no niwa: Ogawa Jihē no sekai (Tankōsha, 1990). For Kyoto’s modern gardens more specifically, Kindai Nihon kōenshi no kenkyū by Maruyama Hiroshi (Shibunkaku, 1994) and Higashiyama: Kyoto fūkeiron by Katō Tetsuhiro, Nakagawa Osamu and Namiki Seishi (Shōwadō, 2006) are also valuable. Population studies of Kyoto that span the early modern and modern include Hamano Kiyoshi’s Kinsei Kyōto no rekishi jinkōgakuteki kenkyū: toshi chōnin no shakai kōzō o yomu (Keio University Press, 2007). Meanwhile, there is important work on the history of social movements in modern Kyoto. Essential are Watanabe Tōru on labor movements (Kyōto chihō rōdō undōshi (Sangatsu Shobō, 1959), and two collections on the struggles of Kyoto’s discriminated communities: Suihei undōshi no kenkyū, published in six volumes by the Buraku Mondai Kenkyūjo (1971–1973), and the ten

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volume Kyōto no burakushi published by the Kyōto Burakushi Kenkyūjo (1977–1995). Finally, we might note the vital contribution made by university research centers in promoting research into modern Kyoto history. Kuromatsu Iwao of the Doshisha University Institute for the Study of Humanities and Social Sciences published a collection of essays on industry in the Nishijin quarter of the city as Nishijin kigyō no kenkyū (Minerva Shobō, 1965). The same research unit then published Senjika teikō no kenkyū: kirisutosha, jiyūshugisha no baai (Misuzu Shobō, 1968–1969), a series of reflections on resistance by Kyoto Christians and liberals during the war time. Ritsumeikan University’s Institute of Humanities, Human and Social Sciences published seventeen volumes of local history as Kyōto chiiki kenkyū between 1986 and 2003. The greatest body of work has come from the Institute for Research in Humanities (Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūsho), at Kyoto University. The pioneering historians, Hayashiya Tatsusaburō and Asukai Masamichi, were both based there, and their collaborative research was published respectively as Bunmei kaika no kenkyū (Iwanami Shoten, 1979) and Kokumin bunka no keisei (Chikuma Shobō, 1984). Both volumes explore Kyoto culture in the context of the Meiji Restoration. Takagi Hiroshi of the same institute has headed multiple projects that have resulted in multi-authored, interdisciplinary collections that argue for the universality and the particularity of Kyoto’s modern history. With Maruyama Hiroshi and Iyori Tsutomu, he has edited Kindai Kyōto kenkyū and Miyako no kindai, both published by Shibunkaku in 2008. Takagi subsequently edited a second collection exploring modern Kyoto’s history alongside that of Nara, the other ancient capital (Kindai Nihon no rekishi toshi: koto to jōka machi, Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2013). The present volume, Kyoto’s Renaissance, draws on this wealth of work – edited primary sources, as well as critical writings – in order to offer the reader a new empirically-based, historical exploration of the quintessentially modern “ancient capital” of Kyoto.

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REFERENCES

Berry 1997 Mary Elizabeth Berry. The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto. University of California Press, 1997. Britton 1997 Dorothy Britton. “Richard Ponsonby-Fane: A Modern Scholarly William Adams.” In Ian Nish ed., Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits 2. Japan Library, 1997. Dougill 2006 John Dougill. Kyoto: a cultural history. Oxford University Press, 2006. Fiévé 2013 Nicolas Fiévé. “Social discrimination and architectural freedom in the pleasure district of Kyoto in early modern Japan.” In Nicolas Fiévé and Paul Waley eds. Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective, pp. 67–99. Fiévé and Waley 2013 Nicolas Fiévé and Paul Waley eds. Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective: Place, Power and Memory in Kyoto, Edo and Tokyo. Routledge, 2013. Fushimi Inari Taisha 2011 Fushimi Inari Taisha ed. Fushimi inari taisha gochinza sensanbyakunenshi. Fushimi Inari Taisha, 2011. Gay 2001 Suzanne Gay. The Moneylenders of Late Medieval Kyoto. Hawaii University Press, 2001. Hareven 2002 Tamara K. Hareven. The Silk Weavers of Kyoto: family and work in a changing traditional industry. University of California Press, 2002. Heian Jingū 1997 Heian Jingū shi hyakunen shi. Heian Jingū, 1997. Honganjishi 1969 Honganjishi (3 vols.). Jōdo Shinshū Honganjiha Shūmusho, 1969 Jinkai Kenkyūkai 2010 Jinkai Kenkyūkai ed. Kitagaki Kunimichi nikki Jinkai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2010. Kerr 2016 Alex Kerr with Kathy Arlyn Sokol. Another Kyoto. Sekai Bunka Publishing, 2016. Kiyomizudera 1997 Kiyomizudera shi (2 vols.). Hōzōkan, 1997. Kobayashi 2014 Kobayashi Takehiro. Kyōto ni okeru rekishigaku no tanjō: Nihonshi kenkyū no sōzōshatachi. Minerva Shobō, 2014. Kyōto Shi Kyōto Shiseishi 2003 Kyōto Shi Kyōto Shiseishi ed., Kyōto shiseishi (vols.1-5). Kyōto Shi, 2003. McKelway 2006 Matthew McKelway. Capitalscapes: Folding Screens and Political Imagination in Late Medieval Kyoto. Hawaii University Press, 2006.

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Mosher 1964 Gouverneur Mosher. Kyoto: a contemplative guide. Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1964. Ōyama 2006 Ōyama Kyōhei ed. Kamigamo no mori, yashiro, matsuri. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2006. Pitelka and Tseng 2016 Morgan Pitelka and Alice Y. Tseng eds. Kyoto Visual Culture in the Early Edo and Meiji periods: The Arts of Reinvention. Routledge, 2016. Plutschow 1992 Herbert Plutschow. Historical Kyoto. The Japan Times, 1992. Ponsonby-Fane 1931 Richard Ponsonby-Fane. Kyoto: its History and Vicissitudes Since its Foundation in 792 to 1868. Rumford printing Press, 1931. Sennyūjishi 1984 Sennyūji shi. Hōzōkan 1984. Stavros 2015 Matthew Stavros. Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital. Hawaii University Press, 2015. Yoshida 2002 Yoshida Morio. Nihon no koto wa naze kūshū o manugareta ka. Asahi Shinbunsha, 2002.

PART I

EMPEROR, RITES, AND RELIGION

CHAPTER 1

THE EMPEROR SYSTEM AND KYOTO: IMAGES OF THE ANCIENT CAPITAL Takagi Hiroshi Y

INTRODUCTION: THE ORIGINS OF THE ANCIENT CAPITAL KYOTO

In January 1883, the courtier, Iwakura Tomomi, argued that “Heiankyō is the only city since the time of Emperor Jinmu’s eastern expedition where one can still see vestiges of imperial rule.” 1 Indeed, if we accept that the origin of Japan’s cities is to be found in ancient capitals and domain castle towns in the Edo period, then only Heiankyō – or Kyoto as it is now known – is distinct. Only Kyoto survived the transformations of the middle ages and of the Edo period to emerge and flourish as a modern city. 2 The Meiji period mantra was that Kyoto refused to decay as the city of Nara had. Kyoto, after all, was a city layered like no other: ancient capital, castle town and modern city. It was home to the Jurakudai Palace built in 1587 by the military overlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and to Nijō Castle built by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603. What was the secret to its perpetual prospering? The explanation can only be that it remained throughout its history as the “seat” of the emperor. 1 2

Tada 1906 (vol.2), p. 992. Takahashi 1993, p.2. 3

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Kyoto in the Warring States period, following the Ōnin War of 1467–1477, comprised the two autonomous towns of Kamigyō and Shimogyō, with the street Muromachi Street running four kilometers along the central north-south axis from Kuramaguchi dōri to Matsubara Street (or Gojō Street as it was known in the middle ages). The two towns were surrounded by earthen walls, and city walls punctuated by wooden town gates and turrettopped gates. Each town had its own festivals and was responsible for the welfare of its own people.3 From the fourteenth century, the eastern side of Kamigyō accommodated the Tsuchimikado Dairi or imperial palace, while court nobles, warriors, and merchants, such as the confectioner Kawabata Dōki, lived in neighboring Rokuchō. The building of the Edo period palace went hand-in-hand with the founding of early modern Kyoto. In 1603, at the very start of the period, the Tokugawa constructed Nijō Castle at the end of Nijō Street in the very north of Shimogyō; it was intended to rival the imperial palace. The south of Gojō at the southern end of Shimogyō was where Toyotomi Hideyoshi constructed the Nishi Honganji Temple in 1591, and where Tokugawa Ieyasu built Higashi Honganji Temple in 1602. Both became symbols of the secular power of Edo period Buddhism. In this chapter, I understand the “classic city” of Kyoto as comprising the two component parts of Kamigyō and Shimogyō, and as bound by the earthen embankments – known as o-doi – erected in 1591. This classic city had its origins in the sixteenth century, and endured until the onset of industrialization at the start of the twentieth century. Let us begin with a spatial orientation. Figure 1 is a map produced by the imperial army in 1889. The black outline marks the area that had existed from the time of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, stretching approximately two kilometers from Senbon Street in the west to the Kamo River in the east; it extends some six kilometers north-south from Kuramaguchi Street in the north to Kyoto’s railway station (built in 1877) in the south. The imperial court constituted a unique urban space 3

Takahashi 1983, pp.291–301.

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under the Tokugawa shogunate, but after the relocation of the imperial capital to Tokyo in 1869, that space was reborn as the Imperial Garden (gyoen), a site for modern state ceremonial. The old o-doi earthen embankments survived in part, and can still be seen today along Senbon Street and the Kamo River. Kyoto city space is structured about the emperor’s palace as sacred center, but its periphery extends out to pleasure quarters and polluted places, and beyond to the afterworld. The cemeteries of Toribeno and Rendaino were established at the edge of the city in the early thirteenth century, when Kyoto was known as Heiankyō.4 Looking again at the Meiji map, we can see Yumiya-chō just across the Kamo River to the east, along Matsubara Street, which leads to the Kiyomizu Temple. Yumiya-chō accommodated descendants of the hinin and inujinin outcaste communities from the medieval Gion Shrine. Behind Miyagawa-chō, we find Monoyoshi Village, which accommodated sufferers of Hansen’s disease, who venerated Abe no Seimei and traveled through the city of Kyoto soliciting alms. The village survived until the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate. Moving still further east is the Rokudō crossing, which functioned as the boundary between this world and the next, where the townspeople of Kyoto would pass their dead bodies to the Buddhist priests. Toribeno, where the deceased were put to rest, lies to the south of Kiyomizu Temple in Higashiyama. Still further to the south is Sennyūji, the family temple of the Edo period imperial household. On the outskirts of the city along Senbon Street in the direction of Tanba is the outcast settlement of Rendaino, a communal cemetery during the middle ages. At the city exit that leads off north east to Ōhara is the village of Tanaka-mura; then, in bustling Higashiyama Sanjō at the end of the Tōkaidō highway, there is Amabe Village, which had jurisdiction over the outcasts in western Japan. The Tōkaidō railway line, built in 1877, ran from Kyoto Station to Fushimi through the outcast settlement in Yanagihara at the southern end of the city. The faded pleasure quarters 4

Katsuda 2003, pp.213–220.

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of Shimabara, surrounded by a moat, were situated west of the Nishi Honganji Temple. To the east of the city was Gion, which flourished in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, and Miyagawa-chō south along the river, which leads to the pleasure quarters of Shichijō Shinchi. The Imperial Palace was thus located at the center of the city of Kyoto, while prostitutes, clergy, and members of the lowest classes of society lived on the periphery of the city where the gay quarters, outcast settlements, shrines and temples were located.

Figure 1: Kyoto at the Meiji Restoration (Reproduced from an Imperial Army map of 1889 by Oka Keiko, with the advice of Takaku Reinosuke)

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The inner part of this classic city that lasted from the sixteenth century until the start of the twentieth century was devastated first in the fifteenth century Ōnin Wars and then by the fires that broke out during the civil strife of 1864. These conflagrations explain why no buildings have survived from the middle ages, let alone from the Heian period. Today’s high school textbooks all feature works of art from the so-called “national culture” (kokufū bunka) period of the tenth to the twelfth centuries: the Phoenix Hall (Hōō dō) at Byōdōin Temple in Uji, the Hōkaiji Temple in Hino, and the Heike nōkyō scrolls now at Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture. These treasures did survive, but only because they were all situated at various distances from the city. The classic city, with its limited confines, was forever deeply imbued with the culture of the Heian court and aristocracy. The great Kyoto historian, Hayashiya Tatsusaburō, once observed that the period from the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries (Azuchi-Momoyama culture to Kan’ei culture), when the classic city was established, was the time of a renaissance in “national culture.”5 It was only with the advance of industrialization and capitalism in the twentieth century that the classic city was transformed. The streets Kitaōji, Nishiōji, Kujō and Higashiyama were all revived in the town planning of those years in imitation of the Heiankyō grid system. The city outskirts were incorporated now into the city proper. In 1929, the town of Fushimi was also absorbed into the great Kyoto metropolis. 1. THE COURT AND PALACE: THE EDO PERIOD AND BEYOND

Until the 1960s, little research was done on the imperial court during the Edo period, and the general impression obtained that the court performed a merely decorative function, but this image changed in the 1970s with the groundbreaking work of the historian, Miyachi Masato.6 Miyachi made it clear that the court played what might be described as ecclesiastical func5 6

Hayashiya 1962, p.6. Miyachi 1981.

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tions, which went beyond the mere exercise of religious authority. This is evident in the court’s determination of regnal era names, and its granting of official rank to members of the guild of the blind throughout the country, to itinerant biwa players, and to artisans, painters and physicians. Miyachi showed that it was the nobility who held dominant positions in the fields of poetry, divination (onmyōdō) and biwa playing. He also demonstrated that the temples whose abbots were imperial princes, the so-called monzeki jiin, stood at the pinnacle of all the Buddhist sects in the land. The image of the imperial court that emerged from Miyachi’s studies was, in European terms, akin to that of papal authority in its relation to the secular authority of royalty. Takano Toshihiko then examined that authority over the span of the Edo period.7 From the years of the first shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu until the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, the shogunate held sway over the imperial court through the regent families (sekke) and other specialist families such as the buke tensō, charged with communication between the Kyoto court and the Edo military. The imperial court was contained, as it were, by the Tokugawa Regulations for Emperor and Nobility (Kinchū narabi ni kuge shohatto) of 1615. The first Edo period change, then, was a transition from a strictly “militaristic” government, via the rule of the fourth shogun Tokugawa Ietsuna, to the “peaceful” rule of the fifth shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi around the year 1700. It was now that the Kyoto-based imperial court assumed an essential position within the early modern polity. These times of flux saw the restoration of the Daibutsu den (Great Buddha Hall) at Tōdaiji Temple, and the revival of numerous court rites. These included the reihei rite at the Hōjōe autumn festival at Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine in 1679; the daijōsai enthronement rite revived in 1687, and the reihei ritual at the Kamo Festival in 1694. This was an age in which society was governed through learning, etiquette and religious practice rather than military might. One reflection of this new culture was the diffusion of rites of mourning (bukkiryō). 7

Takano 1989, pp.60–73.

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Originally, mourning for the deceased – not to mention sacred rituals concerned with childbirth – was the preserve of the imperial court and nobility, but at by the end of the seventeenth century, these customs had spread amongst the military class in Edo castle. Mourning as a custom adopted by a class of men who originally made a living from killing one another was a conspicuous outcome of this peaceful age. Kyoto underwent a further phase of change in the 1780s and 1790s. These were the years of the Hōreki and Meiwa Incidents, in which courtiers were punished by the bakufu for advocating an imperial restoration. The background was the growing financial demands of the court nobles (kuge) and an increase in their absolute number. There then followed the Songō Incident, in which Emperor Kōkaku boldly proposed that he award his father the title of “retired emperor” (daijō tennō gō), only for the bakufu to dismiss his proposal. These incidents gave a voice to courtiers of junior rank, who had no access to regular court councils. At the start of the nineteenth century, the imperial court acquired its own authority which provided the impetus for the court activism in the 1850s and 1860s. The courtier Iwakura Tomomi became involved in politics, and imperial princes (miya), such as Prince Asahiko, and even the daimyo gained access to court councils. Ever since the seventeenth century the court was effectively controlled by the hereditary regent families (sekke) and the afore-mentioned buke tensō families. This practise now began to crumble. In brief, it is clear that the imperial court did not rise to prominence suddenly upon the arrival of Commodore Perry and his black ships in the 1850s nor did the bakufu, all of a sudden, consult the imperial court on diplomatic policy. There was already a complex relationship between the court in Kyoto and the bakufu in Edo that stretched back to the start of the Tokugawa period. At this point, let us fix the physical space of the imperial palace within early modern Kyoto. The early modern palace had its origins in the Tsuchimikado Dairi of the middle ages, but until the seventeenth century it only occupied the northern half of what is now the Kyoto Imperial Garden. It was after a great fire in

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1708 that the emperor’s residence and the nobility’s residential quarter came to occupy the present site. A series of measures respecting the culture and religion of the court coincided with the expansion south of the courtiers’ residential quarter as it grew to incorporate ever growing numbers of courtiers. Townhouses were ejected from the southern half of the city, and relocated east along the Nijō Street over the Kamo River and also west to Uchino. Interestingly, these areas subsequently developed into the Nijō Shinchi and Kitano Goban chō licenced pleasure quarters. What then of the relationship between this imperial court and Edo period society at large? The imperial estate (kinri goryō) comprised land yielding approximately 30,000 koku of rice. Most of this land was located in Yamashiro Province at the heart of the Kyoto basin; but it also included Yamaguni-gō in Tanba Province north of the city. This was the home of the Yamaguni troop of peasant farmers, who famously followed the imperial army to the northeast during the civil war of 1868.8 Yamashina gō in Yamashiro Province was an imperial estate exempt from the systemization of arable land into villages (mura giri), which Toyotomi Hideyoshi had imposed in the sixteenth century. And although local rule passed to the Tokugawa bakufu, people maintained routine contact with the imperial court through offerings of local produce and the provision of services of different sorts. In 1848, for example, the people of Yamashina gō donated 7,406 trunks of bamboo, two pack-loads of chinquapin (shiiba), and 154 trunks of Japanese cedar to commemorate emperor Kōmei’s daijōsai accession rite in that year. Neighboring farming communities routinely supplied goods for the everyday life of the court as well for annual court festivities. Residents of Ono Village in Kadono County, for example, had been official suppliers to the court (kugonin) since the middle ages, serving at the rice planting festival and at funeral rites held at the Sentō Palace buildings, where abdicated emperors and empresses resided. They also supplied sweet flag (shōbu) for the annual fifth month festival. The festival was a roof-thatching 8

Nakamura 1968, pp. 139–193

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event. Artisans deployed sweet flag as well as mugwort (yomogi) on the roofs of the Shishinden and Seiryōden Halls of the palace, and on the gates at the western wing of the Naishidokoro (the palace shrine dedicated to the Sun Goddess). These plants were believed to expel noxious vapors and poisonous air.9 Other than this, villagers from Nose in Settsu Province provided the court with rice cakes known as inoko mochi; others from Suita in Settsu Province supplied arrowhead root (kuwai). There was ayu fish from Yasu, and earthenware from Iwakura. In addition, residents (kobōshiyaku) from the outcast settlement of Rendaino were employed to clean the paths within the nine gates that marked the limits of the palace grounds. The afore-mentioned confectioner, Kawabata Dōki, official supplier of chimaki rice cakes to the court, was just one of many Kyoto merchants dealing in goods demanded by courtier society. Did common people from further afield feel any sense of reverence for the imperial court in Kyoto? It is impossible to say with conviction, but one indicator might be the diaries of generations of village headmen from Yukinobu Village in Mimasaka Province (modern day Okayama Prefecture). The diaries, which span the late seventeenth century until the nineteenth century Meiji Restoration, contain only the curtest references to the deaths of emperors, fires at the imperial palace and changes in era name. By contrast they have much to say about the Tokugawa shogun.10 Elsewhere, villagers had to shoulder the burden of the road and bridge repairs ahead of the imperial progress from Tokyo to Kamakura in April 1873, and regarded the progress as “a nuisance.” Such expressions of disapproval seem to reflect the fact that people in the east of Japan, for example, took a very different view of the emperor than those in the five provinces in the Kyoto area: Yamato, Yamashiro, Kawachi, Izumi and Settsu in the Edo period.11 In the modern period, the emperor embarked on six grand imperial tours of the realm, that took him from 9 10 11

Tsugunaga 1980, p.186. Yabuki 1990, p.67. Obinata 1989, p.69.

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Kyushu in the south to Hokkaido in the north between 1872 and 1885. The rationale for these tours was for the emperor to be seen in, and to familiarize himself with, Japan beyond the provinces, his base throughout the Edo period. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the financial heart of the country shifted from Kyoto to Osaka with the establishment of the Dōjima rice exchange. Tourism in Kyoto flourished as the city and its court society were promoted as a unique “brand.” The Honganji Temples and the shrines and temples of Higashiyama became essential tourist spots, as did the Imperial Palace grounds within the nine gates, and the courtiers’ residential area. Just as people visited Edo castle to see the daimyo entering the castle with a book of heraldry in hand, so people gathered in front of the Kugyō Gate, at the southwest of the imperial palace to watch the nobles entering the palace compound, their attire and the number of their attendants in keeping with their social standing. People set up permanent teahouses (higaki chaya) and peddled sake and snacks in front of the Kugyō Gate so that visitors could take refreshments while courtier-watching (Fig. 2). The Kyoto townsfolk were free to enter the palace grounds through the Nakadachiuri Gate on the west side – the gate used by bakufu emissaries from Nijō Castle – the Sakaimachi Gate to the south, and the Imadegawa Gate to the north. Paths leading from the outer nine gates through the courtier residential area to the palace itself were bordered by imposing roofed mud walls (tsuijibei) on either side. However, outlying streets such as Imadegawa Street and Marutamachi Street had neither roofed walls nor the stone walls that were constructed at the start of the Meiji era, so they were seen as part of the city. Not only were people allowed to come and go through the palace grounds, but they were also permitted to enter the palace compound itself for annual events, including the noh theatre viewing at New Year, the Naishidokoro pilgrimage on the last day of winter in the lunar calendar, and the Tōrō lantern festival in summer. Visitors could even pay a fee to attend imperial accession ceremonies. The townspeople had religious affiliations to Shirakumo Shrine in the Saionji family residence, the Benzaiten Shrine at

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Figure 2:

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Courtiers attend the palace (Source: Meisho tebiki kyōzukan kōmoku, 1754)

the residence of the Fushimi no Miya family in Demachi, and Itsukushima shrine at the Kujō family residence. Kyoto city residents had access then to the abodes of princes and nobles. 2. THE MEIJI RESTORATION, THE IMPERIAL COURT AND RELIGION

Commodore Perry and his black ships arrived in Uraga in 1853. When, five years later, the bakufu sought imperial sanction for the Treaty of Amity and Commerce Between the United States and the Empire of Japan in 1858, Kyoto emerged as the political center. Control of the court by the regent and buke tensō families – in place since the seventeenth century – held firm at first, but steadily courtiers of middle rank and below acquired a voice. A new age for the court dawned with the activities of young, lower rank courtiers opposed to imperial sanction of the treaty, and with the emergence of Iwakura Tomomi from the Urinke family. As Kyoto assumed its role as political center, so daimyo set about enlarging their Kyoto residences. Between 1861–1864, Chōshū domain and proponents of sonnō jōi – a slogan advocating reverence for the emperor and the expulsion of foreigners – like Sanjō Sanetomi came to exert a powerful influence at court. Emperor Kōmei summoned the fourteenth shogun Tokugawa Iemochi to Kyoto, and himself made historic progresses to the Kamo and Iwashimizu Shrines to pray

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for the expulsion of foreigners from Japan. Satsuma domain and other proponents of a coalition between the imperial court and the bakufu expelled Chōshū influence from Kyoto in what was a coup on the 30 September, 1863. In January 1867, after Iemochi’s death, following two calamitous bakufu expeditions to punish Chōshū for its insolence, Tokugawa Yoshinobu became the fifteenth shogun. Emperor Kōmei died soon afterwards. On 3 January 1868, the new government formally declared the Restoration of Imperial Rule. The government announced that, inspired by Emperor Jinmu’s foundation of the state in mythical times, it was inviting full and open public debate amongst court nobles (kugyō) and samurai (buke), regardless of their social rank. At the same time, it announced the abolition of traditional court offices. From the Heian period, Emperor Kanmu, the founder of Heian-kyō was understood as a descendent of Emperor Tenji, and Tenji as the founding father of the imperial family. Tenji’s mausoleum in Yamashina was maintained according to Buddhist traditions. But in 1867, Emperor Jinmu was officially declared the founding father of the imperial family, and the ancient system of direct imperial rule was resurrected. With the court’s political emergence and growing proximity of court and bakufu in the early 1860s, the bakufu had sponsored repairs to the mausoleum of Emperor Jinmu in Takaichi District, Yamato Province (now Nara Prefecture) at a cost of more than 10,000 ryō. These movements culminated in the emergence by 1867 of a new political culture of Restoration, that advocated direct imperial rule in the manner of Jinmu, the newly-invented imperial ancestor. In 1868, the government issued a series of edicts that sought to separate out “Shinto” shrines from Buddhist temples (shinbutsu bunri rei). On 9 April, Buddhist priests from shrine-affiliated temples (jingūji) were obliged to return to secular life. On 20 April, the government banned the use by shrines of such Buddhist nomenclature as gongen and Gozu tennō, and ordered the removal from shrines everywhere of Buddhist statues, temple gongs, altar fittings, and temple bells. Then, on 28 May, the government banished the Buddhist notion of ritual pollution,

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which paved the way for imperial mausolea to be re-imagined as holy sanctuaries according to the principles of Shinto. This was but one aspect of the religious policies of the new era. Their impact is best understood by means of a brief detour back to pre-Meiji times. The Edo period Kitano Tenmangū Shrine, north west of the city center, offers abundant evidence of the combinatory nature of premodern Japanese religious culture. The shrine had on display in its inner sanctum an eleven-faced statue of Kannon (Jūichimen Kannon), attended by two Buddhist figures, Fudō and Bishamon. A ten-faced statue of Kannon (Jūmen Kannon) was the principal image in the shrine’s Asahi Kannondō Hall. The shrine also accommodated a Bishamon Hall, a library for sacred Buddhist sutras and books (rinzō) – the setting for the noh play Kyōdō – a Buddhist belfry, and a two-story pagoda. All the Kitano Tenmangū shrine families had a Buddhist altar in their households. All this was lost when the Shinto-Buddhist Separation Laws were enforced after September 1868. Again, there is Iwashimizu Hachimangū Shrine, beyond the city’s southern limits, at one time deified Emperor Ōjin, Ōjin’s mother Empress Jingū, and the goddess Himeōkami. A gold statue of Amida Buddha and the Aizen Myōō (Rāgarāja) mandala were enshrined in the shrine’s inner sanctum on the mountain top. Hachimangū was managed by religionists of kengyō rank. Indeed, from the time of Hachimangū’s founding in the ninth century, Buddhist buildings, large and small, sat side by side atop Otokoyama mountain. The Gokokuji Temple oversaw the entire complex. In the late Edo period, monks from twenty-three sub-temples (bō), including Hōzō and Takimoto, cooperated with Shinto priests who lived at the foot of the mountain. Following the 1868 separation edicts, however, the Gokokuji and Kegonji temples in Otokoyama and various sub-temples were all lost. Temple buildings, altar fittings and statues were sold off. People lamented that “the age is one of unremitting chaos; it is as though we live in a demon world.”12 12

Tsuji 1983, p.278.

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Hachiman, the Great Bodhisattva, was restyled with the Shinto title, Great Kami Hachiman, and offerings of fish were placed before him. In the Edo period, on the occasion of Iwashimizu’s autumn Hōjōe Festival, Buddhist monks and Shinto priests would progress down from the mountain to a shrine (Tongū) at the foot of the mountain, bearing the bodhisattva Hachiman. An imperial envoy would welcome Hachiman there, where the Konkōmyō saisho ōkyō state-protecting sutra would be recited. The envoy would proclaim an imperial message, and release fish back into the River Hōjō, and birds into the skies. From 1868, however, birds and fish were killed and presented as offerings to the new kami. The Shinto practice of sacrificing living animals offered a sharp contrast to the Buddhist veneration of life, and the release of captive animals in the hōjō rite. After the Restoration, the Buddhist structures responsible for administering the Gion Shrine, namely the Kanshin’in and Hōju’in, were abolished. The land on which they once stood became Maruyama Park in 1886, following a decree issued by the Grand Council of State in 1873. The temple’s mud walls were lost, and only the weeping cherry trees remained as towering relics of historical interest. At the Upper Kamo Shrine north east of the palace, too, shrine-affiliated temples, the scripture hall (kyōzō) and the two-storied pagoda were removed from the precinct, as were temple-buildings in the shrine priests’ quarters. This “separation” was also implemented, albeit in somewhat delayed fashion, at the imperial court. In April 1871, government bureaucrat Etō Shinpei proposed that Shinto and Buddhist separation be followed through at court. The first concrete result was that the o-kurodo prayer rooms, which housed Shingon Buddhist altars for ancestral tablets, were abolished. Meanwhile, the titles of monzeki (that is, a temple whose head monk was of imperial descent) and ama monzeki (imperial nunneries or convents) were outlawed. The performance of esoteric Buddhist rites to protect emperor and realm, namely the daigennohō and the goshichinichi mishiho seven-day New Year ritual, had already been abolished on the 15 October. On the 21 December, the construction

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of Kyōmeigū to the south of the Hōkōji Temple (where the Kyoto National Museum stands today) was completed. To this site, the memorial tablets (ihai) and Buddhist statues (nenjibutsu) belonging to the imperial family were removed. Later, they were all transferred to the Sennyūji Temple.13 The court’s ties with Buddhism were never completely severed, however. Buddhist faith survived in the private world of the Tokyo court. 3. RELOCATING THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL TO TOKYO AND REORGANIZING THE EMPEROR SYSTEM

On the 13 February 1867, Emperor Meiji inherited the sword and jewel and seal of state in the first of three accession rites known as senso. He was then enthroned on the 12 October the following year in the sokui rite. The Boshin War, which started in January 1868 with the battle of Toba-Fushimi, continued with a clash between imperial forces and a northern alliance of domain lords (Ōetsu reppan) in June, and in September the unstable city of Edo was renamed Tokyo. The siege by the imperial army of Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle in northern Japan was already underway as the emperor was being enthroned. For the enthronement ceremony, the emperor discarded the Chinese-style konben court robes in favor of Japanese kōrozen no hō dress. The practice of burning aromatic wood in the incense burners in the Shishinden Hall was also abandoned on account of its Chinese associations. The original plan was to deploy a large globe at the ceremony, one donated to the court by Tokugawa Nariaki of Mito domain. Had the weather been fine, the emperor was to have touched Japan three times with his foot, much in the manner of a Charlie Chaplin-style dictator. Modern Japanese imperial enthronements substituted for Chinese practice a modern rite inspired by the direct imperial rule of ancient times (Fig. 3). The Meiji enthronement also marked the start of the modern practice of assigning a single era name to each imperial reign. The new Meiji era officially thus began on 23 October 1868. On 4 November, the emperor left for Edo on an historic progress to consolidate his rule over the eastern provinces of his realm. 13

Haga 1982, pp.90–93.

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Figure 3:

KYOTO’S RENAISSANCE

The 1868 Enthronement Rite (Reproduced with the permission of The Sagawa Memorial Museum of Shinto and Japanese Culture, Kōgakkan University)

Edo was restyled Tokyo and declared the nation’s capital in April 1869. However, this was not an official decree from the Grand Council of State relocating the seat of government permanently to Tokyo; it was a provisional transfer of the capital. It was anyway a move which Kyoto citizens sorely resented. But relocating the imperial capital to Tokyo – however provisionally – served several political purposes: asserting control over the recalcitrant eastern provinces, securing command over the port of Yokohama for reasons of diplomacy, as well as undermining the influence of the ultra-conservative Kyoto court over the emperor. The relocation of emperor and court to Tokyo meant an end to their intimacy with the central provinces as mediated both by people and by material objects; it was a severing of connections with influential shrines and temples in and around Kyoto, such as the Enryakuji Temple on Mt. Hiei, Tōji Temple, the Upper and Lower Kamo Shrines, Iwashimizu Hachimangū Shrine, and the Sennyūji Temple. All these connections had developed over the centuries as the outcome

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of daily rituals and religious practice. The reorganization of the base of the emperor system in a new Tokyo-center was more thorough-going than anything imagined at the time of the Restoration. Let us consider but one example. On the fifth day of the lunar New Year in pre-Restoration times, senzu manzai performers from Manzai Village in Hashio and Kubota Village in Kitakatsuragi District would dance to the beat of drums in the garden of the palace’s Sandaiden (visitor’s hall). On that same day, a performing monkey from Mibu Village would dance with a sacred staff (hei) in hand. The fifteenth day of the New Year saw the Kissho Sagichō rite, the ritual burning of the first writing of the year. Then, on the seventeenth day of the New Year, actors would disguise themselves as the deity Daikoku, and dance around wearing a shaguma red headdress in the east garden of the Kogosho Hall of the palace; yin-yang diviners would prostrate themselves on the ground and utter incantations. In the pre-Meiji court, Buddhist priests from Tōji Temple would pray for the emperor’s good health and an abundant harvest for seven days at New Year. Throughout the New Year period, priests from the monzeki temples, from Enryakuji, and from Kyoto’s five great Zen temples would visit the imperial palace to offer their congratulations to the emperor. Such traditional practices became impossible at the Tokyo palace following the separation of Shinto and Buddhism. Again, residents of the outcast village of Rendaino were responsible for cleaning the grand paths leading to the palace, while yinyang diviners divined suitable locations for burying the afterbirth, following the birth of an emperor. Responsibility for delivering to the court the sandals (called omebuto) for the emperor to wear during his enthronement fell to the Himeguri family from an outcast settlement called Umedo in Shikige District of Yamato Province. (This is present-day Kawanishi machi in Shiki District of Nara Prefecture.) In his study of the relationship between the emperor and the non-farming population in the middle ages, the historian Amino Yoshihiko found that imperial power was realized through the emperor’s cultivation of religious figures and entertainers –

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people endowed with special powers – and of diverse agents within commerce and industry, who became official suppliers to the imperial court.14 The senzu manzai performers and yin-yang diviners referred to here were not outcasts, but they were still despised as members of the lowest class of society. The New Year celebrations involved congratulations and prayers for the health of the emperor’s sacred body, offered by these skilled religious figures and entertainers. In the middle ages and the early modern period, the emperor’s well-being was linked to peace and order in the realm and an abundant harvest. The emperor’s body was connected to the world inhabited by the common people.15 An extraordinary incident happened at the imperial palace in 1787. Between fifty and seventy thousand people circled the mud walls of the palace to pray to the emperor for a bountiful harvest and peace in the realm. These pilgrims circumambulated the palace periphery time after time, in a phenomenon known as sendo mairi. And in 1862, merchants from Takeya-chō in the Shinmachi quarter of Kyoto applied for an audience with Emperor Kōmei to offer him their respects, as he agonized over “expelling the barbarians” from Japan. It should now be clear how different early modern emperors were from the modern emperors, who took up residence in an imperial palace surrounded by castle walls, as sacrosanct, military sovereigns. Rather, they were emperors in touch with the common people. After the relocation of the court to Tokyo, however, outcast entertainers and religious figures were excluded from the imperial palace, and new purificatory events, including a new New Year’s ceremony, were created that made sense in the new international environment. At the time of the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923, and the great Tokyo air raids of 1945, the gates to the imperial palace remained closed and victims were offered no assistance. How different this was from the situation after earthquakes in the late middle ages, say, when the court built huts in the garden south of the Shishinden Hall to accom14 15

Amino 1984. Kuroda 1993.

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modate victims. And when Oda Nobunaga threatened to raze the Hokke sect temples of Kyoto, women and children of the town took refuge in the palace beyond the reach of secular power. In Meiji, influential families and Buddhists from the monzeki temples stopped offering their congratulations to the emperor at New Year, and imperial envoys were no longer dispatched to the Kamo Festival and the Hōjōe Festival at the Iwashimizu Shrine, ending a practice that had endured for centuries. Shrines in the central provinces were no longer incorporated into the annual cycle of ritual events held in the imperial palace. At the Kamo Festival, for example, an envoy dispatched from the imperial palace delivered gifts and a written paean (saimon) to the Kamo gods. Various types of ceremony were performed in the centuries between the founding of Heian capital in the eighth century and the relocation of the capital to Tokyo in the nineteenth. There were gift-giving court ceremonies, splendid street-side events in which envoys and other courtiers were adorned with hollyhock, and rites performed at the two Kamo Shrines involving the dedication of gifts, the presentation of prayers, not to mention traditional horse-racing and azuma asobi dances. In pre-Meiji times, annual events held at the Upper and Lower Kamo Shrines were organically linked to the annual cycle of events at court such as the Shihōhai ceremony on New Year’s Day (in which the emperor paid his respects to the deities in all directions), the New Year shrine visit, the Sagichō Fire Festival, and setsubun, the last day of winter in the traditional lunar calendar. Indeed, the Kamo Festival was performed as a court festival. But in 1871, following the relocation of the court to Tokyo, a new system of shrine ranking was created which located the Ise Shrines at the pinnacle. The special festive links between the court and the Upper and Lower Kamo Shrines, the Iwashimizu Shrine and the Kasuga Shrine – established centuries before in the Heian period – came to an end. The establishment of this new Ise-topped shrine ranking was the basis for the invention of new imperial festivals and rites that were to be performed throughout modern Japan. Following the emperor’s secular enthronement in Kyoto in 1868, the sacred daijōsai rite was held in Tokyo in December

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1871, shortly after the dispatch to America and Europe of the so-called Iwakura mission. At the banquet that accompanied the daijōsai, Minister of Foreign Affairs Soejima Taneomi addressed foreign diplomats, declaring the new ideal of the “entire realm being ruled by one emperor.” Soejima’s intention was to show the world that Japan had broken away from the ancient, Kyotobased system of order. The daijōsai not only marked the completion of the emperor’s enthronement rites, it was a demonstration, too, that the emperor ruled a new Japan – centralized after the abolition of the feudal domains in 1871 – from the new capital of Tokyo. The Edo period daijōsai used offerings of millet and rice from designated fields in the provinces of Ōmi and Tanba, adjacent to Kyoto. Rice for the 1871 daijōsai, however, was offered by the provinces of Kai (modern-day Yamanashi) and Awa (modern-day Tokushima), which had been selected by divination from across the entire nation using a green turtle shell. The daijōsai can be seen, then, as a ceremony performed by the new emperor of a modern nation in response to the expectations of international society. This differed greatly from the ancient form of the rite, which still had its advocates in the 1870s such as Yano Harumichi and other followers of the Hirata school of nativists. Adherents of that school were rounded up in April 1871 on suspicion of treason. Indeed, a different group of activists from the same nativist school, along with discontented Kyoto courtiers like Otagi Michiakira, were arrested for treason in the same month, following the assassination two months earlier of state councilor Hirosawa Saneomi. At this juncture, it will be instructive to comment on the question of the title tennō, which is rendered to English as “emperor.” From the tenth century onwards, all emperors excepting Godaigo were referred to not as tennō but with the title in, attached to a place name or the name of their residence. In 1841, however, Emperor Kōkaku revived the use of the title tennō for the first time in a thousand years. As seen in the 1869 “Official Notice to the People of Mutsu and Dewa” (Ōu jinmin kokuyu), however, the title most familiar to the common people was not tennō, but tenshi sama and shujō. According to British Embassy archives,

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by October 1873 the title kōtei heika (His Imperial Majesty) had become standard in international contexts. This was a move designed to achieve conformity with the practices of international law. Hereafter all sovereigns of all states – from Britain to China – would be referred to as kōtei heika.16 The 1889 Constitution of Japan (Meiji Constitution) subsequently brought together the “government” and “rebels,” so divided by the civil war of 1868 and the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, as “subjects” (shinmin) of the tennō. The title of tennō thus came to be used domestically, while the title of kōtei was used outside Japan in diplomatic contexts.17 4. THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF KYOTO AND THE MODERN EMPEROR SYSTEM

The relocation of the imperial court to Tokyo in 1869, and the advent of the bunmei kaika (civilization and enlightenment) movement meant the severing of ties between the imperial family and Kyoto. Temples and shrines and in the Kyoto area, such as Enryakuji, Tōji and Sennyūji and the Kamo and Iwashimizu Shrines, faced hard times. Temples faced the violence of the anti-Buddhist haibutsu kishaku movement, and both temples and shrines had their land confiscated by the state. And then between 1871 and 1872, the Kyoto Imperial Garden itself became the site of bunmei kaika with the installation of gas lamps and the construction of exhibition spaces, zoological gardens and museums. The Kyoto Imperial Garden was so-named at the end of the 1870s by the prefectural governor, Makimura Masanao. Makimura oversaw major maintenance and preservation works within the nine gates: that is the Kyoto Palace proper, the Sentō Palace for retired emperors and empresses, and the courtier residential area. The aim was to create a new public garden. Emperor Meiji’s 1877 progress from Tokyo to Kyoto was a landmark event 16 17

Sugimoto 1988, pp.43–47. Asukai 2002.

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of this period. The new government had rejected the history and traditions of Kyoto with the edicts separating Shinto and Buddhism in 1868, the relocation of the court to Tokyo in 1869, and the abolition of feudal domains and establishment of prefectures in 1871. This all changed after Emperor Meiji’s 1877 progress to Kyoto and Nara. The event was the prompt for a new recognition of the value of Kyoto’s history and traditions and a new honoring of “old customs.” The emperor attended the grand opening ceremony for the Kyoto-Kobe railway, and visited other places that exemplified civilization and modernity, including the Kyoto prefectural offices, the courthouses, a girls’ school, and the Bureau for Scientific and Industrial Development (Seimikyoku). In Nara, he opened the Shōsōin Imperial Repository, and performed rites at the mausoleum of Emperor Jinmu. In Kyoto, he visited the Kamo Shrines, the Byōdōin Temple and the Katsura-no-miya estate, as well as the mausoleum of his father, Emperor Kōmei. There he performed ancestral rites to mark the tenth anniversary of his father’s death. While staying in the dilapidated palace, the emperor announced his intention to disburse 4,000 yen per annum for the next twelve years to maintain the palace.18 This honoring of tradition developed further in the 1880s, as Japan responded to the leading nations of the world (Europe and America) by reconstructing the essence of Japan and of Kyoto. There began now concerted efforts to preserve Kyoto’s history and traditions by restoring the Kyoto Imperial Garden, reviving the Aoi Festival and providing financial support to old temples and shrines. During his 1877 progress, the emperor viewed Japan’s history and traditions through historical sites and places of scenic beauty, including the imperial properties and the antiquities in the Shōsōin Repository. But he also visited places exemplifying civilization and modernity: industrial sites, railways, exhibitions and schools. Imperial progresses coincided with the formative years of the Japanese constitution, and they demonstrated that the emperor was to rule over historical time and national space. 18

Kunaichō 1970, p. 48.

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Kitagaki Kunimichi replaced Makimura Masanao as governor of Kyoto Prefecture in January 1881, and in 1883 Iwakura Tomomi submitted his memorandum for a fundamental restyling of the imperial garden. His idea was to transform it from a “public garden” under the jurisdiction of the prefecture into an estate of the imperial household, to be used as a site for state ceremony, especially for rites of enthronement. The concept was inspired by Russia in the 1880s, where Moscow was the ceremonial city, and Saint Petersburg the political capital. With an eye to the development of the constitutional system, the idea was to resituate Kyoto as ancient imperial capital, a place that preserves imperial tradition. Iwakura proposed that future emperors perform the daijōsai enthronement rite at the Kyoto Imperial Palace rather than in Tokyo. His purpose was to draw the world’s attention to Japan’s cultural traditions. As Japan’s Minister to Russia, Yanagihara Sakimitsu, noted, the nineteenth century coronations of the Habsburgs in Austria saw torches lighted to replace gas lamps on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, with the new king issuing commands from horseback in a Spanish-style procession of horse-drawn carriages. The king and queen attended St. Stephen’s Cathedral where they washed and dried the feet of the poor to show benevolence. Here was evident the essence of Austrian culture. There was no single culture in Europe; indeed, there was rivalry between the different cultures of Austria, Russia and Britain, say. The international arena provided the stage for competitive displays of national culture. For Japan to become a first-class power, it needed not only to adhere to the universal systems and norms of civilized nations, but also to safeguard its own unique traditions and culture.19 In ancient times, when a castle town was moved, the same wood was used in the building of the new castle town; the old capital was discarded.20 Unlike the new imperial capital of Tokyo where Edo Castle had been absorbed into the creation of the new imperial palace, the old capital of Kyoto was to be strategically preserved to epito19 20

Fujitani 1994; Takagi 1997. Itō 2010, p.35.

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mize Japanese history and tradition. Thanks to Iwakura’s 1883 intervention, this was the first time in Japanese history that an old capital was preserved. If we turn our attention to the spatial arrangement of shrines established in Kyoto in the modern era to honor emperors and their meritorious vassals (kōshin), we can see the emergence of a commemorative space for the honoring of meritorious subjects. At the center of this space was the Kyoto Imperial Palace and the Imperial Garden, reduced to a cultural device now that the emperor was no longer in residence. Surrounding the palace were the Kenkun Shrine, established in 1877, dedicated to Oda Nobunaga; the Goō Shrine, constructed in its current location in 1886, dedicated to Wake no Kiyomaro; the Nashinoki Shrine, established in 1885 to venerate Sanjō Sanetsumu and Sanjō Sanetomi; the Shiramine Shrine, constructed in its current location in 1868 to venerate Emperor Sutoku; the Toyokuni Shrine rebuilt in 1880, and dedicated to Toyotomi Hideyoshi; and the Heian Shrine established 1895 to venerate Emperor Kanmu. Prior to the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in 1889, the emperor moved from the Akasaka Detached Palace to the brand-new Tokyo Imperial Palace, and the “Meiji palace,” as it was also known, with its shrine complex comprising three sites dedicated, respectively, to the Sun Goddess, the imperial ancestors, and the kami of heaven and earth, was formally opened. 21 The Imperial Palace now stood at the center of the modern imperial capital of Tokyo. The Imperial Household Law (Kōshitsu tenpan) enacted in 1889 contained a simple notice to the effect that the emperor’s accession rites would in future be held in Kyoto. The 1909 Regulations Governing the Accession to the Throne (Tōkyoku rei) were applied for the first time to the enthronement of the Taisho emperor in 1915. It was now that the layout of Kyoto Imperial Garden, as we know it today, was completed. The Taishō enthronement rites symbolized the new Japanese empire as it was in the 21

These shrines were collectively known as kyūchū sanden.

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aftermath of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars. The rites were a turning point, too, in city planning for both Kyoto and Tokyo. Kyoto Station was renovated; a new Tokyo Station was constructed; and there was new infrastructure for both cities as new roads extending out from their imperial palaces were built. EPILOGUE: IMAGINING THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF MODERN KYOTO

Finally, it will be instructive to consider how the image of the ancient capital, the erstwhile imperial seat of the emperor, was constructed in the modern era. The image is one that accommodates two earlier eras: that of Kyoto as capital city on the one hand, and that of the Jurakudai and Nijō Castle on the other. The former era was the age of elegant national culture in the latter half of the Heian period (eleventh and twelfth centuries), symbolized by the Aoi Festival, The Tale of Genji, and Byōdōin architecture; the latter era was from the Azuchi-Momoyama culture of the late sixteenth century, when tradespeople were at the helm of the Gion Festival, when Christians arrived in Japan in the age of discovery, which led to grand castle architecture flourishing, through to the Kan’ei era of the early seventeenth century, symbolized by the cultural salon of Emperor Gomizunoo. In his 1882 lecture “Bijutsu shinsetsu” (The Truth of Art), Ernest Francisco Fenollosa looked for the first time at art and culture in a way that remains relevant to this day. Art, he argued, is an act in which the utmost value is placed on the “idea”; its focus is on creativity or “inventiveness.” Here emerged the idea of art as a “creative” act, and of art history as constantly subject to innovation and rewriting through the ages. The principles of art history were further developed through Okakura Tenshin’s lectures on “A History of Japanese Art” at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1890. Okakura divided that history into the Suiko (Asuka), Tenji, Tenpyō, Kūkai, Kōnin (Kokufū), Kamakura, Toyotomi and Tokugawa periods. He espoused a modern view of time, which flows from the ancient past into the future in linear and uniform fashion. No less modern is the ideological

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emergence of Nara as the sacred site of the accession of Emperor Jinmu, an ancient, classical site, comparable to ancient Greece and Rome. This then was the context in which Kyoto came to be seen as emblematic of the distinctly high culture – known as kokufū culture – of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Kyoto sought to stress this aspect of its past in direct contrast both to Nara with its more ancient culture, and to the eastern provinces with their samurai culture dating to the medieval Kamakura period. Kyoto’s modern image was thus formed at the intersection of historical time and national space. As we noted above, the many wars in the city explain why there survived no traces of this high kokufū culture within Kamigyō or Shimogyō. The Hōkaiji Temple in Hino, the Byōdōin Temple in Uji and the Heike nō kyō sutra scrolls at Itsukushima Shrine survived because they were outside the city. A fantasy-based image of Kyoto and high kokufū culture was thus constructed out of such modern institutions as Heian Jingū and Kyoto Imperial Garden, and by means of such devices as historical texts, festivals and crafts. At the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, Japan was represented by a model of the Phoenix Hall (Hōōden) at the Byōdō-in Temple in Uji (Fig. 4). It was Okakura Tenshin, who proposed the model of the Phoenix Hall, on a scale never before exhibited overseas, and in so doing he chose to dis-

Figure 4:

The Hōōden at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893 (Source: Tokyo National Museum; TNM Image Archives)

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play a pure “Japanese” culture, one dislocated from the continental mainland. Craft works from Kyoto were also on display at the exposition. For the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition in 1895, the Heian Shrine was built in the Ōtō district of Okazaki, east of the Kamo River. It was an imitation of the Great Audience Hall (Daigokuden) in the ancient capital of Heian. There was now, too, the first Jidai or Period Festival, a new historical pageant offering a picture-scroll perspective on Kyoto history since ancient times. Yumoto Fumihiko also now compiled a regional history of Kyoto, which he styled Heian tsūshi, in which art from the Heian period was lauded as the epitome of refined elegance. The eleven hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Heian capital in the same year thus culminated in the visualization of the “essence of Kyoto.” The first history of Japanese art published in Japan, however, was a translation of the Histoire de l’Art du Japon compiled for the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The Japanese version was published in 1901 under the title Kōhon Nihon teikoku bijutsu ryakushi (Brief History of the Fine Arts of Imperial Japan).22 Its publication in French was a cultural strategy for presenting Japanese culture to the outside world. It was thus in the 1890s that Japanese culture was first subdivided into historical periods from Asuka to Edo, and the erstwhile capital of Nara was first identified specifically with the ancient era. The capital of Kyoto, meanwhile, augmented its unique association with high kokufū culture, as the original native Japanese culture at the very moment the modern nation-state came into being. The policies for reviving Kyoto put in place after the relocation of the court to Tokyo in 1869 culminated in the 1895 National Industrial Exhibition and festival to mark the eleventh-centenary of Kyoto’s founding. In the imperialistic era that started in the 1910s, new prestige was accorded to the sixteenth century overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi and to the European and Christian culture brought to Japan by Portuguese visitors in the same century. Similarly, late 22

The afore-mentioned “History of Japanese Art” by Okakura Tenshin was presented in lecture form at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1890, but never published.

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sixteenth century Azuchi-Momoyama culture was praised now as the starting point of the modern era, including its popular culture. It was in this very period, in the early twentieth century, that the three major construction projects – the second Lake Biwa Canal, water supply and sewerage, and streetcars – were brought to completion, and roads were widened as part of urban regeneration. Then, in 1931, following the absorption of Fushimi City, Kyoto became a great metropolis of one million people. The ancient capital of Kyoto thus represented itself both with high kokufū culture and with Azuchi-Momoyama culture, two trailblazing historical peaks. The “elegance” of the former was emphasized in research on the Tale of Genji during the 1930s, while the latter lead to the civic culture of the urban-based tradespeople (machishū) in the era of rapid economic growth as discussed by the historian, Hayashiya Tatsusaburō. The former was symbolized by the elegant Aoi Festival, and the latter by the Gion Festival with local tradespeople at the helm. Herein lies the origin of today’s layered image of Kyoto. This re-imagined Kyoto made its way into literature that continues to be read to this day. In 1912, shortly after being discovered by Nagai Kafū, the young Tanizaki Jun’ichirō wrote the Kyoto travelogue Suzaku nikki (Red Phoenix Diary), in which he commented that “people who share romantic notions of life in the Heian period praise the Heian Shrine as a ‘splendid scheme’ steeped in an idealized ‘kokufū culture’.” 23 He wrote: “While staying in Kyoto, I visited the place time and again, and I would sit down on the flagged stone floor to think of the old days.” Tanizaki also twice visited the Byōdōin Temple in Uji, which he saw as a dream-like place: “I lose myself in a daydream when buildings that have scarcely survived the past eight centuries appear as a vision of the Heian period with a shadow on the surface of the water.” The author, Nishiguchi Katsumi, also drew a contrast between the Gion Festival, as representative of Azuchi-Momoyama culture, and the imperial procession at the heart of the Kamo Festival, as representing high kokufū culture. 23

Tanizaki 1981.

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In his 1956 work Gion matsuri, inspired by the Marxist National History Movement (Kokuminteki rekishigaku undō) of the 1950s, he wrote: “The Gion Festival has been truly a festival for the tradespeople of the town, quite unlike the Kamo festival with its procession featuring an imperial princess.”24 REFERENCES

Amino 1984 Amino Yoshihiko. Nihon chūsei no hinōgyōmin to tennō. Iwanami Shoten, 1984. Asukai 2002 Asukai Masamichi. Nihon kindai seishinshi no kenkyū. Kyōto Daigaku Gakujutsu Shuppankai, 2002. Fujitani 1994 Fujitani Takashi. Tennō no pe-jento. NHK Shuppan, 1994. Fujitani 1998 Fujitani Takashi. Splendid Monarchy. University of California Press, 1998. Haga 1982 Haga Shōji. “Meiji Jingikan sei no seiritsu to kokka saishi no saihen (2).” Jinbun gakuhō 51 (1982), pp. 27–84. Hayashiya 1962 Hayashiya Tatsusaburō. Kyōto. Iwanami Shinsho, 1962. Itō 2010 Itō Yukio. Kyōto no kindai to tennō. Chikura Shobō, 2010. Katsuda 2003 Katsuda Itaru. Shishatachi no chūsei. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2003. Kobayashi 1998 Kobayashi Takehiro. Meiji ishin to Kyōto. Rinsen Shoten, 1998. Kunaichō 1970 Kunaichō ed. Meiji tennō ki 4. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1970. Kuroda 1993 Kuroda Hideo. Ō no shintai ō no shōzō. Heibonsha, 1993. Kyōto Shi 1974 Kyōto no rekishi 7. Gakugei Shorin, 1974. Kyōto Shi 1975 Kyōto Shi, ed., Kyōto no rekishi 8. Gakugei Shorin, 1975. Miyachi 1981 Miyachi Masato. Tennōsei no seijishiteki kenkyū. Azekura Shobō, 1981. Nakamura 1968 Nakamura Ken, Yamagunitai. Gakuseisha, 1968 Nishiguchi 1966 Nishiguchi Katsumi. Gion matsuri. Kōbundō, 1966. 24

Nishiguchi 1966.

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Obinata 1989 Obinata Sumio. “Minshū wa tennō o dō miteita ka.” Nihonshi kenkyū 323 (1989), pp.67–71. Sugimoto 1988 Sugimoto Fumiko. “Tennō gō o megutte”.” Rekishi Hyōron 457 (1988), pp.43– 47. Tada 1906 Tada Kōmon et al. eds. Iwakura Kō Jikki (2 vols.). Kōgōgūshoku, 1906. Takagi 1997 Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei no bunkashiteki kenkyū. Azekura Shobō, 1997. Takagi 2006 Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei to koto. Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Takahashi 1983 Takahashi Yasuo. Kyōto chūsei toshishi kenkyū. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1983. Takahashi 1993 Takahashi Yasuo et al., eds. Zushū Nihon toshi shi. Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppan Kai, 1993. Takano 1989 Takano Toshihiko. “Edo bakufu no chōtei shihai.” Nihonshi kenkyū 319 (1989), pp. 60–73. Tanizaki 1981 Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. “Suzaku nikki.” In Tanizaki Junichirō Zenshū 1. Chūō Kōronsha, 1981. Tsugunaga 1980 Tsugunaga Yoshiteru, ed. Zusetu kyūchū gyōji. Dōmei Tsūshin, 1980. Tsuji 1983 Tsuji Zennosuke, ed. Meiji ishin shinbutsu bunri shiryō, Vol. 7. Meicho Shuppan, 1983. Yabuki 1990 Yabuki Osamu. “Kinsei ni okeru tennō to shōgun to nōmin.” Nihonshi kenkyū 332 (1990), pp.66–73. Translated by Jennifer Shanmugaratnam

CHAPTER 2

PERFORMING HISTORY: FESTIVALS AND PAGEANTS IN THE MAKING OF MODERN KYOTO John Breen Y

In November 1915, the man known to history as Emperor Taisho underwent his enthronement rites in the halls and pavilions of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. These were extraordinary events. They transformed the man into a modern monarch, investing him with cosmic as well as earthly powers. It could be argued that these rites constituted the first truly national, ritual performance in Japanese history. It is ironic, then, that they took place not in the nation’s capital of Tokyo, but in Kyoto. For the sevenday sequence of enthronement events, Kyoto was once more Japan’s vital imperial center, as it had been until the Restoration of 1868. Kyoto’s staging of the emperor’s enthronement rites marked the triumphant climax of a festive strategy intended to restore meaning to the modern city of Kyoto. The origins of this strategy can be traced back to the 1880s, and to a very specific vision articulated by ex-courtier and modern statesman, Iwakura Tomomi (1825–83). Well before 1915, the fruits of that strategy had become elsewhere evident. Kyoto was already marketing itself as a city of “three great festivals” (sandai matsuri). The Aoi Festival in May, the Gion Festival in July and the Jidai Festival in October, were those festivals, and by now they had all acquired renown far beyond Kyoto’s city limits; these events were 33

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frequently graced by the presence of imperial princes, foreign dignitaries and citizens from far and wide.1 Festivals’ dynamic role in the making of towns and cities in postwar Japan is well known, and much discussed in both English and Japanese. The work by Ashkenazi, Kawano, Roberston, and Schnell comes to mind.2 This work was preceded by ground breaking work in Japanese, such as that by Yoneyama Toshinao.3 Kyoto was pioneering in terms of festive strategy, and here I explore the dynamic workings of the strategy to argue that festivals were indeed vital to the renaissance of Kyoto in the aftermath of the Restoration. The theoretical point to stress is that festivals and rites are types of performance, and as such they are always strategic ways of acting.4 They involve multiple agents as designers, producers, actors and spectators, and multiple agendas. They have a purpose, then, which always has as much to do with the dynamic making and remaking of the social order as it does with representing it as it is. These performances are concerned with transformations: of people, their bodies and dispositions, and of the urban spaces in which they operate.5 Modern Kyoto’s revival of the Aoi and Gion Festivals; the invention of the Jidai Festival and the city’s reclaiming of imperial enthronement rites were vital components in Kyoto’s strategic search for meaning in modern Japan. In their performance, these several events fashioned for the city a distinct identity: vibrant in its traditions, vital to Japan’s imperial agenda, and more festive than any other city in the land. 1. IWAKURA’S INTERVENTIONS

Courtier, revolutionary and statesman, Iwakura Tomomi was perhaps the first to see Kyoto’s festive possibilities. He was certainly the 1

2 3 4 5

See for example the guidebook Kyōto meisho chō edited and published by the Kyoto City Office in 1907. The guidebook was reprinted in 1911, and again 1927, with updated photographs. It was subsequently re-titled Kyōto meisho shashinchō. Ashkenazi 1993, Kawano 2005, Robertson 1994, and Schnell 1999. Yoneyama 1979 and 1986. This is a point made eloquently and forcefully by Kawano in Kawano, 2005. I am informed here by Bell’s reflections on performance and practice (Bell 1997, pp. 72–83).

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most articulate advocate of a festive revival in the city. In January 1883, he set forth his views in a position paper styled “Memorandum Concerning the Preservation of the Kyoto Imperial Palace” (Kyōto kōkyū hozon ni kanshi ikensho).6 The title suggests it was one man’s opinion regarding the preservation of the Kyoto palace; in fact, it was much more. It was a lament for an abandoned city, and for a lost Japan. Iwakura knew of Emperor Meiji’s own concerns for Kyoto’s future as he had voiced them on his return to the city three years earlier.7 Iwakura drew on the emperor’s personal observations of the city in 1878, and was informed, too, by his discussions with Kyoto governor, Kitagaki Kunimichi. There is an urgency about Iwakura’s memorandum, which is explained both by the city’s failure to respond to the emperor’s concerns, and Iwakura’s knowledge that he himself was terminally ill.8 Iwakura noted that Kyoto was the Japanese capital founded by Emperor Kanmu (r.781-806) 1,100 years ago; its mountains and rivers were then resplendent; great shrines and temples embellished the cityscape; the people knew correct etiquette, and they were thrifty. This state of affairs endured for a millennium and more. But with the Restoration of 1868, the emperor left the Kyoto palace for Tokyo, taking 80-90% of the court with him. The palace now became – in Iwakura’s words – “a den for foxes, a warren for rabbits”; the erstwhile city of renown was worn and weary. Such was the lament with which Iwakura began his memorandum. He proposed that the sure strategy for preserving the palace, and injecting life into the city, was none other than ritual, festive performance. He called for the revival of great events abandoned in the 1860s, and the invention of others. Only thus would people from across Japan and beyond flock back to the city once more. Iwakura proposed that the three great rites, namely the secular sokui rite of enthronement, the more sacred daijōsai rite and the rikkō empress-making rite, should be restored to the halls of the 6 7

8

Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai 1927, pp. 991–6. On the emperor’s deep concern for Kyoto, the place of his birth and his early teens, see Itō 2010, pp. 28–30. On this petition, see also Fujitani 1996, pp. 57–59. On Iwakura’s memorandum in particular and his understanding of court ritual in general, see Takagi 1997, pp. 75–87.

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Kyoto palace. “This item is the fundamental one; from this everything flows.”9 On a visit to Kyoto in October 1878, the emperor had in fact made the very same point. He further suggested Japan might learn from Russia, where the state capital was St. Petersburg, but the tsar’s enthronement rites took place in Moscow. Might Kyoto not play a ritual role akin to that of Moscow? For Iwakura, who picked up on this idea, enthronement rites in Kyoto would constitute a display before the nation at large of emperors’ loyalty and piety to their imperial ancestors. This, of course, was a proposal for Meiji’s successor, but Iwakura had ritual plans for the present as well. They concerned first of all celebrating and commemorating Emperor Kanmu, Kyoto’s illustrious founder. Despite his legacy, nobody knew the location of his remains. The remedy for this lamentable situation was to “construct a shrine within the Kyoto palace grounds [and dedicate it] to Emperor Kanmu’s great spirit, establish for it an annual festival, and have the masses venerate him there.”10 The revival of rites at the great Kamo and Iwashimizu Shrines in Kyoto, which had once enjoyed the most intimate links to the imperial court, was also high on Iwakura’s immediate agenda. The court-shrine linkage had been severed with the emperor’s departure in 1869. New year rites of the court such as the aouma no sechie, the gantan sechie and the fumiuta sechie which were discontinued in 1869 should now be revived, and be staged at the Kyoto palace as imperial performances; the common people should be admitted as spectators. The great oharae purification in June should once again be made a public spectacle, hosted in the palace grounds. Kyoto (not Tokyo) should be the stage for rites to commemorate the modern state’s three great feast days: New Year (shinnen), State Foundation (kigen setsu) and the Emperor’s Birthday (tenchō setsu). Iwakura had plans for re-designing the palace grounds, refurbishing the main ceremonial halls, and constructing new Western style buildings nearby to host festivities and accommodate foreign dignitaries.11 9 10

11

Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai 1927, p. 993. Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai 1927, p.993. The context to this proposal was the enthusiasm of the Meiji government for erecting shrines dedicated to great loyalist figures of the past. Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai 1927, pp. 995–6.

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Iwakura Tomomi’s 1883 memorandum matters because it had a direct impact on modern Kyoto. In April, of the same year, it was debated in the Grand Council of State (Dajōkan) in Tokyo, and it led directly to the establishment in Kyoto of a branch office of the Imperial Household Ministry to oversee palace preservation; the office was placed in the charge of Kyoto Governor Kitagaki.12 In the same month, the emperor issued a rescript announcing that future enthronements would, indeed, be held in the halls of the Kyoto palace. The rescript received legal underpinning in February 1889 in the body of imperial household law known as the Kōshitsu tenpan. Iwakura’s idea for a shrine to Emperor Kanmu in the palace grounds was not immediately realized, although as we shall see his enthusiasm for commemorating Kanmu reverberated on. Iwakura’s memorandum also prompted a strategic rethink of the Kamo Festival, and it added vital impetus to a process already underway to transform the spaces of the palace, and its place within the city of Kyoto.13 The memorandum generated the response it did because it chimed with profound concern in government, in the imperial court and in society at large, about Japan’s relentless pursuit of Westernization. The invigoration of the old imperial capital Kyoto, and the redefining of Japan around Kyoto as a national ritual centre, seemed to constitute a solution of sorts. For now, though, Kyoto was part of the problem. In the wake of the emperor’s departure for Tokyo in 1869, Kyoto had embarked on a frenetic programme of Westernization and modernization. In an effort to find meaning in the emperor’s absence, Kyoto transformed itself at a faster rate than any other city in Japan. Within a decade of the emperor’s departure, a train station, hospitals, alms-houses, schools, and colleges all appeared on Kyoto’s cityscape. Japan’s first ever regional exhibition (Kyōto hakurankai) was held in the city as early as 1871. Thereafter, Kyoto set about assimilating Western technology and encouraging enterprise with annual industrial exhibitions. This devotion to Westernization was still striking in the 1880s when Iwakura 12 13

Itō 2010, pp. 34–5. On the transformation of palace spaces, see the pioneering work by Takagi Hiroshi (Takagi 2001).

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penned his memorandum. In 1890, engineers completed a canal linking Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture to the city, supplying it with clean water, powering Japan’s first ever hydro-electric power station, which by 1895 was driving Japan’s first ever street-cars.14 Kitagaki Kunimichi, the Kyoto governor through the 1880s, oversaw much of this change. And for Kitagaki, there was no contradiction in importing Western models on the one hand, while on the other pursuing the (no less modern) task of preserving tradition.15 He and Iwakura saw eye to eye, and it was under Kitagaki’s stewardship that Iwakura’s festive theory began to transform into festive practice. It should be pointed out here that Iwakura makes no reference at all to the Gion Festival. Gion became one of Kyoto’s three great festivals to be sure, but it had little immediate connection to the imperial court, and so did not enter Iwakura’s purview.

Figure 1: Genkon Kyōto shigaizu, 189516 (Source: Kyoto Institute Library and Archives) 14 15 16

For a handy overview of the Meiji modernization of Kyoto, see Kobayashi 1998. Kitagaki Kunimichi was Kyoto governor 1881–1892. Kyōto Shiyakusho, 1907.

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2. JIDAI FESTIVAL: “A KYOTO INSTITUTION”

Figure 1 is a map of Kyoto in 1895. The Imperial Palace occupies the centered blank rectangle shaded, to which the viewer’s gaze is first drawn. To the northeast of the palace, in the fork of the Kamo and Takano rivers, is the Lower Kamo Shrine; the Upper Kamo Shrine is off picture further north on the banks of the Kamo River. These Kamo Shrines were the site of the Aoi Festival. Yasaka Shrine, of Gion Festival fame, is located south and east of the palace. This map features an entirely new space, however, carved out of the Kyoto landscape in the early 1890s. It lies directly east of the palace, north of the Yasaka Shrine. What occupies that space can be seen in Figure 2: an extraordinary, multi-segmented, festive complex unlike anything else in the realm. It is here on this site that the Jidai Festival had its beginnings. The southernmost segment is the arena for Japan’s Fourth National Industrial Exhibition, the first national exhibition to

Figure 2: Dai yonkai naikoku hakurankai (Heian Jinja Daigokuden) no zu, 1895 (Source: Kyoto Institute Library and Archives)

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be held outside Tokyo; the arena is testament to Kyoto’s modern enterprising spirit. The central segment is a scaled down replica of the Daigokuden, the ritual centre of the eighth-century Heian Palace constructed by the great Emperor Kanmu.17 The northern most segment is Heian Shrine, the sacred site where Emperor Kanmu himself is venerated, restored now to the capital he founded 1,100 years before.18 There was, of course, nothing inevitable about this extraordinary site. Kyoto had to fight off alternative bids from Osaka to stage the exhibition in the first place. There was contestation over the location: alternative sites – notably the original site of Kanmu’s palace, several kilometres west – were debated and finally defeated. There was, moreover, much disputation about the shrine itself. A decade earlier, Iwakura had proposed building a shrine to Kanmu, but Kyoto had not pursued this. In the end, it was Tokyo bureaucrats who made the running here, with Kyoto City showing little enthusiasm for either the site, or indeed the festival that was, in time, to invigorate the city.19 On 15 March 1895, the spirit of Kanmu, Kyoto’s founder, was borne in a horse-drawn carriage, escorted by a personal envoy dispatched by the Meiji emperor, from the Kyoto palace to the new Heian Shrine, its final resting place. Kanmu’s cortege on this extraordinary occasion comprised some 2,500 state and city dignitaries. Kyoto Governor Watanabe Chiaki, and Chief Priest Mibu of the new Heian Shrine greeted Kanmu’s spirit at the shrine’s magnificent gate.20 As the Hinode shinbun reported, thousands of people flocked to the shrine that day. The banks of the new canal were lined with stalls; 17

18

19

20

The Daigokuden was designed by Itō Chūta, who later disowned it. It was, however, admired by men as diverse as Tanizaki Jun’ichirō and Richard Ponsonby-Fane. For Tanizaki, see Fujiwara 2008; see also Ponsonby-Fane 1922, pp. 389–92. For details of the creation of this site, see Heian jingū hyakunen shi hensan iinkai 1997. On these disputations, see Kobayashi 2007 and Kobayashi’s chapter in this volume. Hinode shinbun, 10 March 1895; 16 March 1895.

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there were firework displays, too: all in all, there was “an extraordinary bustle.”21 With Kanmu now restored to the city he founded, Prince Yamashina formally opened the National Industrial Exhibition on 1 April. By the time it closed in July, well over a million people had visited the exhibition arena, and the adjacent Daigokuden. But all of this was a mere prelude to the official celebrations to mark Kyoto’s eleventh-centenary, which began in earnest in October. Representing the emperor, Prince Yamashina Akira presided over three days of state performances, solemn and celebratory, that commenced on 22 October. The Hinode shinbun was anticipating something of “truly unprecedented grandeur.”22 There is no indication that it was disappointed. These events were, after all, the culmination of a remarkable year in Japanese history: victory in war over China and the procurement of empire; the resounding success of the recent national exhibition; and, now, this celebration of 1100 years of illustrious imperial history. Solemn rites were performed before Kanmu’s spirit on each morning, feting his return to the city he had founded. The first morning saw Prince Yamashina Akira take his seat on a throne in the Daigokuden where, like Emperor Kanmu before him, he granted audiences to Kyoto’s finest. The Kyoto governor addressed him in a speech identifying modern Kyoto with the eight century city of Heian, and the present emperor with Kanmu. The prince then read a celebratory rescript from Emperor Meiji himself. Home Minister Nomura Yasushi sent a congratulatory missive, describing Kyoto as the “imperial capital for all ages.” Prince Komatsu Akihito dwelt in his speech on Kyoto as evidence of the incomparable glory of Japan’s imperial institution. After the speeches there was horseracing, sumo wrestling and military music; and sumptu21 22

Hinode shinbun, 16 March 1895. Hinode shinbun, 12 June 1895. Note that the Heian shrine was not the only site for these celebrations. Shrines and temples across Kyoto were instructed to celebrate the occasion.

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ous feasting, too. Britain, France and Russia dispatched delegations to Kyoto. City offices, banks, businesses and schools closed for the period.23 Then on the morning of 25 October, there took place an extraordinary event in which Kyoto citizens played a vital role: an historical pageant that wended its way through the city’s main thoroughfares. This was the first ever Jidai Festival. On the morning of 25 October, some 800 men – dressed as courtiers and warriors from ancient, medieval and early modern Japan – gathered outside Kyoto City Hall. Led by Fujiwara Momokawa (732–779), loyal advisor to Emperor Kanmu, the pageant proceeded east across the city to the new Daigokuden. The pageant comprised Kanmu’s barbarian-subduing generals, and there were Fujiwara courtiers, who had loyally served emperors from Ichijō (r.986–1011) to Antoku (r.1180–85); present too were armour-clad, spear-bearing Kamakura warriors, loyal defenders of Emperor Gotoba (r.1183–98). Oda Nobunaga, the late-sixteenth century savior of the imperial court, and Tokugawa court emissaries from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, were all scripted a role.24 The pageant entered the Daigokuden through the Ōtenmon Gate. Participants proceeded to pray to Emperor Kanmu’s spirit in the Heian Shrine’s inner sanctuary, before setting off once more for the city centre. This pageant was no aimless recreation of Kyoto’s past. It was thoroughly imperial in its purpose (Figure 3). Here was a millennium of history retold as an unbroken sequence of loyal acts. The pageant proved that Kyoto’s illustrious history began with Emperor Kanmu’s act of city founding. It rooted the modern Heian Shrine in the city’s ancient past, recalling that Japan’s imperial history was also Kyoto’s history. The pag23

24

Hinode shinbun, 20 October 1895; 22 October 1895; 24 October 1895; 25 October 1895. On this inaugural festival, see the extensive preview in Hinode shinbun, 22 October 1895, and the coverage in Hinode shinbun, 27 October 1895.

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Figure 3: Heian Jingu jidai matsuri gyōretsu no zu (Source: Fūzoku gahō 94, 1895).

eant made of Kyoto a site of national historical memory. What did observers make of it all? A Hinode shinbun writer acknowledged its “truly significant” potential, and pleaded with the organisers to transform it into a real “festival for the realm” (tenka matsuri). He regarded the absence of any representation of Japan’s conquests of the Korean peninsular in ancient and more recent times as a serious shortcoming, however. The pageant lacked refinement, too. But, he concluded, of the many plans afoot to secure Kyoto’s future prosperity, none was more meaningful than developing the pageant.25 Lessons were duly learned, and the next year’s festival was very different. It was the participation of Kyoto-founding Emperor Kanmu himself that made it so. 25

Hinode shinbun, 27 October 1895

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The 1896 Jidai Festival began in the innermost sanctum of Heian Shrine with Chief Priest Mibu summoning Kanmu’s spirit on to a sakaki branch, which he then placed in a small palanquin. Carried on the shoulders of priests, and surrounded by servants, Emperor Kanmu then set off across the city. This new emperor-led pageant featured a new archery unit, and the Tokugawa segment was bolstered by long-spear bearers. Banks, businesses, and schools closed for the day. From 6am, City Hall overflowed with spectators, as did the main streets, Shijō and Teramachi. Lanterns lined the route for Emperor Kanmu at every turn, but Shijō and Karasuma were especially festive, as shops displayed folding screens of great vintage, laying out red carpets as at both Gion and, latterly, the Aoi Festivals. Crowds milled about the Heian Shrine, too, where food stalls stood side by side along the banks of the canal. Prince Yamashina was a spectator there, as were many foreign guests.26 By the next year, 1897, the Hinode shinbun was referring to the Jidai Festival as “a Kyoto institution.”27 It earned this epithet after a second year of huge crowds, who hailed now from as far afield as Ise, Owari and Tokyo. The pageant acquired a new segment, the drum-beating, whistle-blowing Yamaguni-tai, a Kyoto unit that had taken to the battlefield on behalf of the imperial forces in the Boshin War of 1868. Prince Komatsu was there to observe. The festival’s growing status was confirmed in 1898, when Crown Prince Yoshihito, the future Emperor Taisho, attended. Seated in his horse-drawn carriage outside the Nijō Imperial Villa, he witnessed Emperor Kanmu pass by in a magnificent new phoenix palanquin. The Hinode shinbun reported that every house along the pageant’s path sported the national flag and a celebratory lantern, and everywhere the “bustle was extraordinary” – even if stallholders’ takings were “disappointing.”28 26

27 28

For a detailed preview and a vivid description of the event and the crowds, see Hinode shinbun, 22 October 1896 and 23 October 1896. Hinode shinbun, 23 October 1897. Hinode shinbun, 21 October 1898, 23 October 1898.

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3. AOI: “THE MOST ELEGANT AND SPLENDID FESTIVAL IN THE LAND”

In the new state-determined shrine hierarchy of early Meiji Japan, the Upper and Lower Kamo Shrines acquired elite status as kanpei taisha, “great shrines meriting state offerings.” They received from the state a stipend, and were honoured with the attendance of a gift-bearing bureaucrat on the shrines’ annual feast day. These modern privileges, however, had come at a price. The early Meiji government first stripped the Kamo Shrines of all Buddhist traces. The priests’ practice of making daily offerings to the Bodhisattva, Fuken Bosatsu, was terminated; their engagement with local Buddhist nenbutsu and jizō fraternities was banned. The Buddhist ring to local street names, like Jūrakuji and Daijōji, was silenced, and the shrine’s abundant Buddhist statuary and sutras was sold off or burned.29 The government then confiscated the Kamo Shrines’ very extensive landholdings, estimated at around 3,000 koku. The shrine’s hereditary priesthood was dismissed, and replaced by priests recruited from elsewhere. There was a final readjustment concerning ritual. The Kamo Shrines’ priests were required now to perform an entirely new cycle of state-approved rites; it was a cycle that allowed some space for traditional rites, it is true, but it incorporated new rites celebrating the Sun Goddess, and her creation of the imperial line. All this turmoil took place in the first four years after the Restoration. What, then, was to be the fate of the great Aoi Festival? When the emperor and his court relocated to Tokyo in 1869, the festival dropped from the court’s ritual cycle, severing the historic link between court and shrine. In former times, emperors had personally dispatched emissaries from the palace to the Lower and Upper Kamo Shrines; these emissaries had been the focal point of grand processions that had animated the entire city of Kyoto. But the Restoration of 1868 put an end to this. Things got worse when the government refused to reschedule the Aoi Festival to take account of the 29

On these and other anti-Buddhist measures in the Kamo shrines, see Takagi 2006a, pp. 199–201.

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switch from the lunar to solar calendar in 1873. The result was that the festival now took place before the aoi flower – a species of hollyhock which was a key ritual symbol – blossomed. All that was left of the Aoi Festival in early Meiji was a colourless, shrine-based rite attended by a state bureaucrat. The city lost interest. In his memorandum of 1883, Iwakura Tomomi had reminisced: People from neighbouring provinces once flocked to Kyoto to gaze on the imperial emissary’s magnificent procession [at the Aoi Festival]. His entire route, from the gates of the imperial palace to the Kamo shrines, was lined with men and women, old and young.

The loss of this once-great festival was, for Iwakura, linked intimately to Kyoto’s post-Restoration decline.30 But shortly before Iwakura’s death from cancer in July 1883, the national press announced that preparations were underway for the festival’s revival the following year.31 Iwakura’s influence had been clearly decisive. The Asahi newspaper kept its readers informed of developments as they began in earnest from New Year 1884.32 The resurrected Aoi Festival duly took place on 15 May of that year, reset finally for the solar calendar. A parade of some 300 dignitaries, clad in the garb of the Heian court, provided the escort for the emperor’s personal emissary as he left the Kyoto palace’s Gishūmon Gate; there was the ponderous ox-drawn cart, too, which used to bear emperors to the Kamo Shrines. The cortege headed northeast over the Aoi Bridge into the Lower Kamo Shrine. This solemn progress of just three kilometres took three hours to complete. There, on the emperor’s behalf, the emissary made offerings and recited prayers to Tamayori hime and Kamo Taketsunumi, the Kamo kami. Then, with a sprig of aoi fixed to his court cap, the emissary witnessed the dramatic highlight of the day: horse races 30 31 32

Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai 1927 p. 994. Osaka Asahi shinbun, 6 June 1883. See, for example, Osaka Asahi shinbun, 8 January 1884: 20 January 1884; and 10 April 1884; 13 April 1884; 25 April 1884.

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along the shrine’s banba path. The imperial cortege next made its stately way north along the banks of the Kamo River to the Upper Kamo Shrine, for more prayers, offerings and celebrations. What interested the Asahi shinbun were the imperial emissary’s ritual role, the presence of Prime Minister Sanjō Sanetomi, and the ox-drawn cart. The local Hinode shinbun meanwhile drew its readers’ attention to the crowds lining the route. Kyoto city had declared the day a holiday. Indeed, so many people turned out on the streets that pickpockets had a field day.33 In 1886, the Kyoto governor again declared 15 May “an extraordinary holiday.” That year, two imperial princes and an imperial princess were in Kyoto to observe the Aoi pageant.34 The following year rumour spread that the Aoi Festival was to be scrapped; this was to be the last ever. If this was a tradesman’s ploy to swell the crowds, it worked a treat. The palace grounds overflowed with a crowd “many times more than last year”; people from as far afield as Osaka and Shiga lined the streets to the Lower Kamo Shrine in huge numbers. They were catered for by food stalls in the grounds of the Lower Kamo Shrine.35 It was, reported the Hinode shinbun, “a flawless day.”36 People along the parade route subsequently began the practice of decking their houses with banners, and laying out carpets of red, adding to the events “a splendour much greater than that of previous years.”37 In future years, foreign diplomats, imperial princes and even the emperor and empress came to observe the imperial emissary’s progress from palace to the Kamo Shrines.38 Steam trains brought people in from far and wide for the Aoi Festival, and parts of the city would become so clogged with spectators that rickshaws and trams ground to a halt.39 33 34 35 36 37 38

39

Osaka Asahi shinbun, 16 May 1884; Hinode shinbun, 16 May 1884. Hinode shinbun, 16 May 1886; Osaka Asahi shinbun, 16 May 1886. Hinode shinbun, 17 May 1887. Chūgai denpō, 17 May 1887 Chūgai denpō, 16 May 1889 On the diplomatic and imperial presence at the Aoi Festival, see for example Hinode shinbun, 16 May 1889, 16 May 1895, 16 May 1897, 16 May 1905, 16 May 1906, 16 May 1911; Asahi shinbun, 16 June 1912 Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 16 May 1895, 16 May 1905.

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Figure 4:

Aoi Festival (early twentieth century?)

(Source: International Research Center for Japanese Studies)

Thanks to the intervention of Iwakura Tomomi in 1883, the Aoi Festival recovered from the post-Restoration crisis, and became great once more.40 It was an imperial festival, which gave new life both to the Kyoto Palace and its spaces, and to the Kamo Shrines. It dramatized the splendours of a distant imperial past when palace and shrine were intimately linked, and when the city was the centre of the realm. Above all, it engaged the modern citizens of Kyoto, even as it attracted tourists in the tens of thousands. It was an occasion for much merry-making, and it stimulated the economy. As the Kyōto meisho chō informed its readers in 1907, the Aoi Festival was now quite simply “the most elegant and splendid festival in the land.”41 40 41

Hinode shinbun, 16 May 1887 and 15 May 1888. Kyōto meisho chō, p. 21.

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4. THE GION FESTIVAL: “THE GREATEST FESTIVAL IN THE WORLD”

What made the Jidai and Aoi Festivals “great”? It was partly their connection to Japan’s imperial past and so to its imperial present; it was also, of course, the crowds. These were both spectacles that beckoned huge numbers into the city and onto its streets. By this latter reckoning, at least, the Gion Festival qualifies as the greatest of them all. The images below suggest that the Gion Festival, which traces its origins to the ninth century, flourished in Meiji; and it did. But Meiji was, of course, a new age; modern Kyoto was a new city with new priorities. Gion had to reinvent itself as a new festival to survive, and in so doing it encountered multiple crises. These were intimately related to Gion’s very distinctive local character. The festival was not, of course, immune to bureaucratic interference or indifference, but it remained a local event as it sought a national appeal. Yasaka Shrine, whose kami launch the Gion Festival as they travel the city streets borne on mikoshi palanquins, suffered mightily in the 1868 Restoration. The author of the Meiji guidebook, Miyako kenbutsu, went straight to the point: “It used to be called Yasaka Kanshin’in or Gionsha, and it was a Buddhist temple. Now it is called Yasaka Shrine and is state-funded.”42 State bureaucrats ordered the name change, and they determined that this Tendai Buddhist site, dedicated to the deities Gozu tennō, Hari sainyo and – Hari Sainyo’s father deity – Shagara ryū ō, was now a Shinto shrine for the worship of the kami Susano’o, Kushinada hime (Susano’o’s bride according to the myths), and their eight children, the so-called Yahashira no miko. To be sure, Gion monks had made associations between Gozu tennō and Susano’o prior to the Restoration, but in post-Restoration Gion all traces of Gozu tennō were purged from the site. The Buddhist hall and bell tower were pulled down. Bells and Buddhist statuary were sold off; the performance of assorted Tendai Buddhist rites was banned. Having confiscated most of the site’s extensive landholdings – much of which is now Maruyama Park – and dismissed the hereditary priesthood, the state compensated 42

Miyako kenbutsu, p.79.

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Yasaka with new status as a “state shrine of middle rank (kanpei chūsha).”43 The first task for its new priests was to perform the new cycle of imperial rites approved by the modern state for all Shinto shrines.44 In its original ninth century form, the Gion Festival involved locals carrying the pestilence-defying god, Gozu tennō through the city streets of the capital on a palanquin. In time, festival floats, originally representing all sixty-six provinces of Japan, joined in; their task was to purify the path along which Gozu tennō would pass. In later years, the palanquin phase and the float phase were uncoupled; the former became the responsibility of Gion Shrine monks and priests, and the latter the responsibility of Gion’s parishioners. The palanquin and the floats eventually followed different routes around the city. But from the spectators’ perspective, there is no doubt but that Gion floats constituted the festival’s main attraction. These floats were of two types: the towering, extravagant ones known as hoko (after the vertically erected halberds which they sport), and the more diminutive and manageable yama. On the eve of the 1868 Restoration, this historic festival was already facing unprecedented crisis. Festival floats were each the property of a Kyoto ward. Thirty four wards laid claim to thirty four floats, but none maintained their float alone. All were reliant on additional assistance, financial and physical, from clusters of other wards within Gion’s extensive parish boundaries. These clusters were known as yorichō. The yorichō system began early in the seventeenth century, and for the next 250 years guaranteed the festival’s flourishing.45 The problem with the system was that different hoko and yama incurred different costs, and there was no equal distribution of the burden among the yorichō. For some, the cost remained minimal; for others, it became astronomical. In 1864, the majority of these 43

44 45

For Tokoro Isao these measures constitute but “a diluting of Buddhist influence.” (Tokoro 1996, p. 155.) On these rites, see Breen and Teeuwen 2010, Chapter 3. Yorichō residents paid a “festival tax” known as ji no kuchi mai. On festival funding in pre-modern times, see Kawashima 2010, pp. 22–29.

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floats were anyway destroyed or seriously damaged in fires that spread through the city. Japan’s revolution had started, and the conflagration was caused by men fighting for control of the imperial palace. Of the nine hoko floats, six were lost; ten of fourteen yama were ruined.46 At the 1865 festival, just two yama floats took to the streets. The festival was then abandoned till 1869, when just one of the towering hoko and two yama made their way through Kyoto streets. Neither local nor central government offered any financial assistance to redeem the Gion Festival. Indeed, in 1872, Kyoto Prefecture abolished the city officers who had been responsible for running the festival, and then prohibited the hiring of outside labour to shoulder the mikoshi palanquins, and tug the floats through the city streets. In early 1872, it certainly seemed that Gion faced the real threat of extinction. Tsuchida Sakubē, a ward elder, articulated his sense of crisis at a council meeting of ward elders just weeks before the 1872 festival was due to begin: If the [shrine’s festival], splendid and beyond compare in this imperial realm, is allowed to decay, people from surrounding provinces will no longer fight to get into Kyoto to watch the spectacle. Inevitably, not only the parish of Yasaka Shrine, but the entire city, too, will lose their vigour. Outlying villages will also suffer economic hardship.47

Tsuchida understood the crisis to be principally financial. Its causes were specific: the enduring economic distress in the aftermath of the 1864 conflagration, and then, of course, the relocation of emperor and court to Tokyo in 1869. There were simply no funds to repair damaged floats or prepare those that survived; there was the manpower problem, too, since outside muscle was no longer available. To the many ward elders who had abandoned hope for the festival, Tsuchida offered a radical solution: the abolition of the yorichō system, ending 250 years of Gion tradition. Henceforth, he proposed, all Yasaka Shrine parish wards would share between them equally the festival’s financial and physical 46 47

Tomii 1979, p.287. “Shuki” cited in Tomii 1979, p.283.

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burdens. There and then, Tsuchida estimated the festival’s total cost at around 500 yen, a sum which included 50 yen for each of five hoko and 12–13 yen for each yama.48 If the total were shared evenly between all blocks of Yasaka parish, it would amount to a manageable 1 yen per block per year. This figure was subsequently revised up to 2 yen 50 sen per block, but Tsuchida’s intervention reassured the elders, and meant that five hoko and eight yama took to the streets in 1872.49 They were pulled through the streets by shrine parishioners on 7 July and then again on 14 July. They were preceded by Yasaka shrine’s three palanquins, shouldered by parishioners and accompanied by ward elders. In 1874, ward elders joined the pageant wearing the eboshi hats and hitatare gowns of the imperial court. This was an innovation, which prompted Tsuchida to reflect that this part of the proceedings, at least, was more splendid than ever in the past.50 The initiative here was taken entirely by ward elders. Neither city bureaucrats nor Yasaka Shrine clergy were party to discussions.51 But the new arrangement was sufficient to see the Gion festival through the 1870s and into the 80s. In the middle years of that decade, however, financial problems once again became acute. Tsuchida had estimated festival costs at 500 yen in 1872, but by 1885 they had soared to something between 3,000 yen and 5,000 yen.52 In July of that year, Kyoto was deluged by heavy rains; many homes in Yasaka parish suffered serious flood damage. The festival went ahead after much bickering amongst the organizers.53 The crowds failed to 48 49

50

51 52

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“Shuki” pp.284–5. Kawashima 2010, p. 117. The numbers of hoko and yama changed over time. In the 1890s there were six hoko and twenty one yama. (Hinode shinbun, 17 July 1891). “Shuki” pp. 286–7. As late as 1893, the Hinode shinbun acknowledged the splendor of the palanquin parade, but insisted it fell far short of what it had been prior to the Meiji Buddhist purge. (Hinode shinbun, 18 July 1893). Tomii 1979, p.298. Osaka Asahi shinbun, 18 July 1885. However, the Hinode shinbun estimates the costs much higher. See, for example, Hinode shinbun, 22 July 1885. Some argued festival funds should be diverted to help those in distress; others insisted that festivals were intended precisely for such critical times as these.

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show, however, and tradesmen’s sales were down 70% according to a report in the Asahi shinbun.54 The next year, 1886, huge losses were incurred again when the festival was postponed owing to a cholera outbreak. It was now that an association of Yasaka Shrine believers, established over a decade before in 1875, came to the rescue. The association in question was the Seisei kōsha; it was a typical shrine-related fraternity. Members paid a fee that helped provide for the upkeep of Yasaka Shrine. Some members were, indeed, Yasaka parishioners, but others were not. In time, the Seisei kōsha accumulated significant savings, and in 1887, those savings were used for the first time to redeem the festival.55 Once again neither Kyoto City nor Kyoto Prefecture offered any financial or other assistance.

Figure 5: The Halberd float (Kyōto Gion-e zue, 1894) (Source: Kyoto Institute Library And Archives)

54

55

Osaka Asahi shinbun, 22 July 1885. On the thin crowds, see also Hinode shinbun, 17 July 1885, and 23 July 1885. Business evidently picked up the following day. For which, see Osaka Asahi shinbun, 24 July 1885. On the intervention of the Seisei kōsha, see the arguments of Tomii 1979, pp. 300–02.

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Festival organizers were left in no doubt about bureaucratic priorities at the end of Meiji, when Gion faced yet another crisis. After the Russo-Japanese War, Kyoto City finally approved plans to widen Kyoto’s major thoroughfares, not least to allow for the running of streetcars.56 Shijō was to be widened to three times its present width and become the city’s new shopping district. Shijō was on the route taken by Gion floats; it was also where the tabisho, the temporary lodge for the shrine palanquin at festival time, was located. In summer of 1910, Kyoto City informed the festival organizers that the tabisho would be relocated far west to the village of Mibu. The organisers retorted that the wishes of thousands of “believers” were being ignored. “Place” was vitally important to sacred sites; the present tabisho had been in Shijō since the sixteenth century, and it now attracted vast crowds during the festival, stimulating the business around that street. They appreciated the city’s need for road widening, and so would not oppose the tabisho being shifted back from its present site to allow for it.57 It still took a full year’s negotiation before Kyoto city grudgingly relented. Worse was to come. In June 1912, Kyoto celebrated the completion of the roadwidening, track-laying project. No sooner was the first streetcar running along Shijō than Kyoto Governor Ōmori Shōichi banned the Gion parade. He could not, he insisted, shut down the entire streetcar network for what he dubbed “the private festival of one city shrine.” The festival organizers responded by reminding the governor of the vast crowds that descended on Kyoto at festival time, and of the 2–3 million yen the festival was worth to city businesses ever year. They suggested the streetcars be stopped along Shijō and nowhere else; to this the gover56

57

This was a vital component in Kyoto’s “three major projects” (sandai jigyō), intended to maintain the city’s profile as one of Japan’s most modern cities. Other projects involved building a second canal link to Lake Biwa, and the construction of city sewers. Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 17 July 1910. To understand the governor’s inflexible stance here (and below), it helps perhaps to know that the city’s three great projects cost more than thirty times the amount of the city’s tax revenue. To fail would mean bankruptcy (see Itō 2010, p.94).

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nor retorted it was not technically possible.58 Why not in that case, he proposed to the organizers, re-route the Gion parade? The costs would be prohibitive, they retorted. Or find somewhere to park the floats so visitors might view them? As the Kyōto Hinode shinbun reported, it was a question of priority: streetcars or floats; transport networks or festival merry making. Nor was Governor Ōmori moved to reconsider when the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce came out in support of the festival organizers.59 The Kyōto Hinode shinbun headed the anti-ban campaign. It published a series of critical pieces by eminent scholars, the most impassioned of which was that by Kyoto University professor, Ichimura Mitsue. He wrote that people flooded into the city at festival time; foreigners even came from overseas just to see the Gion Festival; Gion was simply the most effective advertisement for Kyoto; nothing exerted a stronger pull. The ban on the float parade meant the death of the Gion Festival, and the death of Gion was the death of Kyoto. What better argument could there be for stopping the streetcars for the city’s most profitable day of the year? The professor reminded the governor that the electricity grid was, anyway, operated by a private company; it was not in his power to influence its decisions.60 In the end, Governor Ōmori buckled under intense pressure from the campaign. Streetcars along Shijō Street would be halted for a single day; the floats and their thousands of spectators would get priority. But this had been a genuine crisis. Kyoto Prefecture and Kyoto City had been prepared to stand by and see Gion’s demise. Little wonder, then, that great joy greeted campaign victory in July 1912. Under the headline “Hoko! Hoko! Hoko!” the Kyōto Hinode shinbun reported on the huge crowds that gathered to inspect the floats on the night before the festival in that year. There were imperial princes there, and also a large number of foreigners in the 58 59 60

Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 12 June 1912 Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 13 June 1912 Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 14 June 1912. Others to speak out were historian Miura Hiroyuki (Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 16 June 1912.), engineering professor Nanba Tadashi (Kyōto Hinode shinbun, 17 June 1912) and professor of literature Tanimoto Tomeri.

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crowds that wandered from one float to the next. The newspaper was in no doubt: “Kyoto’s flourishing is dependent upon the yama and hoko of the Gion Festival.”61 But the festival never happened. On 20 July, the palace announced that the emperor was gravely ill. The floats were promptly dismantled before they had a chance to take to the streets; the mikoshi palanquins were returned to Yasaka Shrine. The following summer, the Kyōto Hinode shinbun looked back on the events of June and July 1912. It had been a crisis, one caused by a confrontation between civilizations. It was “the Gion Festival as a relic of Japan’s classical civilization versus the new civilization, represented by public transport.” The newspaper verdict: The Gion Festival is the pride of Kyoto; the pride of classical Japanese civilization. … It is known as one of the three great festivals in Japan. But it is unique to Japan, unique in the world... The Gion Festival, without parallel anywhere, sacrificed for the streetcar?! How joyous that this never came to pass. The festival’s long term future is now secure… Impossible to deny feelings of overwhelming joy! Kyoto, welcome back from the dead!62 5. KYOTO AS IMPERIAL CAPITAL

In his memorandum of 1883, Iwakura Tomomi had insisted that in future emperors return to the Kyoto palace to perform rites of enthronement. From this, he had said, all else flows. Iwakura was as concerned about the revitalising of Kyoto as he was about “correct” ritual performance, but his proposal duly worked its way into the body of imperial household law of 1889 known as Kōshitsu tenpan, Article 11 of which says simply: “The sokui (enthronement) and the daijōsai rites will take place in Kyoto.” The realization of Article 11 came in 1915, when the emperor known to history as Taishō was enthroned. Emperor Taishō progressed to Kyoto by steam train on 6 November; he performed the sokui rite in the Kyoto palace on 10 November; the more “mystical” daijōsai then took place in the daijō pavilion complex 61 62

Kyōto hinode shinbun, 18 July 1912. Kyōto hinode shinbun, 14 August 1912.

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on the night of 14–15 November.63 It is clear that this enthronement did, indeed, have the effect that Iwakura desired; it marked a decisive tilt in the national axis back to the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto, away from the modern metropolis of Tokyo. Taisho’s enthronement rites were extraordinary; they may perhaps be understood as the first ever rites in Japanese history performed on a truly national scale. A national rite – as opposed to a state rite, an imperial rite, or a popular rite – is one in which the nation represents itself to itself. The roles scripted for emperor and prime minister, but above all for the Japanese masses – both on the mainland and in the colonies – ensured its “national” quality. A national rite strikes a “ritual beat” at the national centre, which then reverberates out across the nation, generating a resonance, a response.64 Iwakura’s point of course was to have the emperor strike the ritual beat in Kyoto. The effect was that Kyoto metamorphosed – momentarily at least – into the centre of the imperial realm.65 A suitable spatial transformation was worked upon the city. Spatial transformations actually began two decades earlier with the development of the Okazaki quarter of the city, and the building of Heian Shrine in the 1890s. The desired effect was to de-center the abandoned palace. The palace needed now to be re-centered. Such a plan, long in the gestation, was finally approved by Kyoto Prefecture in 1909, after the Russo-Japanese War. The key was transforming Karasuma, the road running north from Kyoto station to the palace into a miyuki michi, an imperial boulevard. Other streets in the Kyoto city grid parallel to it – Senbon and Higashiyama – were also to get the boulevard treatment. Tranches were also to be carved out of the city along the east-west axis to accommodate the broadening of Imadegawa, Marutamachi, and Shijō. The emperor’s access to the palace was central to the thinking here. Emperor and empress would alight at Kyoto Station, pass under a new specially constructed “wel63

64 65

Contemporary commentaries regularly referred to the daijōsai, in which the emperor communes with the Sun goddess, his ancestress, as “mystical” (shinpiteki). Ben-Amos and Ben-Ari 1995, pp.163–91. This is the explanation offered in the Tairei no yōshi, a pamphlet published by the Education Ministry in September 1915.

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come arch,” head north up the imperial Karasuma boulevard – alive with lanterns and flags – east along Marutamachi – its telegraph poles all painted white – and then north into the palace through Sakaimachi Gate, on through the palace grounds to the palace’s new, grand entrance. This vastly expensive work was completed in June 1912, just in time for the Taishō emperor’s enthronement. A major redesign of the palace grounds was implemented to accommodate both imperial family and adoring public. It involved expanding three times the width of the boulevard that extended from the Sakaimachi Gate through the palace grounds to the Kenreimon Gate; and the widening-out of the spaces from the Sakaimachi Gate to the Ōmiya annex. A network of broad pedestrian paths was laid, and all were packed with pebbles and grey gravel drawn from the bed of the Kamo River. Ponds in the palaces grounds were filled in, and new recreational spaces provided. 24,000m2 of lawn was laid, and 2,000 trees – plums, firs, cypresses, laurels, oaks – as well as hundreds of shrubs were planted.66 A grand new porch, with access for the emperor’s limousine, was added to the palace, and a temporary abode for the Sun Goddess – who always accompanied the emperor on his travels- was erected; this was the Shunkōden.67 These were permanent changes, of course, but the daijōsai rite necessitated further the construction within the palace grounds of a cluster of temporary wooden structures, most importantly the Yuki and Suki pavilions to house the offerings of rice from the Yuki and Suki districts of the realm These were erected adjacent to the Sentō Palace, a palace annex originally built for retired emperors. The succession of enthronement rites of 1915 aimed to focus the attention of the modern Japanese nation, its colonies and, indeed, the entire civilized world on the emperor, the palace and the city of Kyoto. How successful were they? The answer must be that they were extremely so. Let us consider, in turn, each of the major players in this Kyoto-centred event, and the contributions they made 66 67

On these transformations to Kyoto city, see especially Itō 2010, pp. 99–103. On the initial 1870s phase and the later 1890s phase of refashioning the palace grounds, see Takagi 2006b, Chapter 3, and Itō 2010, Chapter 1.

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to rendering this a truly national performance. The emperor is the main player here; he comes to Kyoto in order to be transformed from a mere mortal into a king, his authority straddling earthly and cosmic realms. He undergoes this transformation in two linked phases: the daytime secular sokui rite on 10 November and the night time mystical daijōsai on 14–15 November. The Meiji emperor had performed these two rites three years apart in two different cities. Now for the first time the two rites were collapsed into a single, heady enthronement sequence, newly styled tairei or “great rite.” In the sokui, the emperor first declared to his ancestress, the Sun Goddess, his succession, before literally ascending the throne to survey his realm. In the daijōsai, he offered directly to the Sun Goddess, his ancestress, and to the myriad kami of heaven and earth, the first fruits of the harvest – rice and rice wine – and then partook of them himself.68 There was in the 1915 enthronement a vital role scripted for Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu, too. On the morning of 10 November, he accompanied the emperor into the presence of the Sun Goddess in the Shunkōden hall. In the afternoon, he stood before the emperor who, from his throne in the Shinshinden Hall, read out the enthronement rescript to the assembly of 3000 guests. Ōkuma received the rescript from the emperor, and responded with a congratulatory address (yogoto) of his own. Then in a loud voice, he shouted “Banzai (Long live the emperor)!” three times. Each time, the assembly of guests – including many foreign ambassadors – responded with the same “Banzai!” Prime Minister Ōkuma later compared this event with the enthronement of the twelfth-century Mongol warlord, Gengis Khan.69 Ōkuma was also an intimate witness to the emperor’s performance of the daijōsai on the night of 14–15 November. For Ōkuma, the rite was the ultimate expression of the emperor’s filial piety to the Sun Goddess: “When ritual is present, filial piety is nurtured, and thus

68

69

Such are the explanations offered by the Education Ministry’s pamphlet Tairei no yōshi. See Breen and Teeuwen 2010, p. 182.

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is perfected the way of man. With the perfection of the way of man comes stability in the politics of the realm.”70 What is most striking about the 1915 enthronement sequence is that, partly owing to the Prime Minister’s active participation, it reverberated out from Kyoto across Japan and beyond, engaging vast numbers of imperial subjects. Imperial subjects constituted the third major player in these rites. The government and the press were instrumental here. The government halted the passage of ordinary time, declaring 10, 14 and 16 November national holidays. Ōkuma earlier in the year instructed prefectural governors to spare no efforts in ensuring people everywhere displayed “devout sincerity.” The government made a particular point of involving school children across Japan in this Kyoto-centred event. The government published a teachers’ guide styled, Tairei no yōshi, which was distributed to all schools with orders for teachers to provide “constant instruction” through till November. School children were passive recipients of new knowledge, then, but they were active participants, too. Take the case of Shiga Prefecture: on 10 November pupils from across the prefecture gathered in schoolyards, and at precisely 3.30 pm, led by head teachers and local bureaucrats, raised three shouts of Banzai. In the evening, they paraded to Ōtsu City Office bearing lanterns, creating a sea of fire. Zeze Middle School students processed to Takebe Shrine on 14 November to pray for the emperor; at the shrine there was a twenty-one canon salute. Other schools organized athletics competitions, and celebratory parades. This celebratory behavior was the “resonance” to the “reverberation” of the ritual beat struck in the Kyoto palace, and it was replicated the length and breadth of Japan. It was planned by bureaucrats and promoted by the press. For example, from New Year of 1915 the Yomiuri and Asahi both carried articles providing the most extraordinary detail of the enthronement rites, and of the palace. They were often abundantly illustrated so that readers could imagine themselves as intimate spectators, even at a remove of hundreds of miles. The press broadcast and then reported on 70

Asahi shinbun, 15 November 2016.

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local celebrations in places as far apart as Hokkaido and Okinawa. The involvement of the periphery was most innovatively evident in the daijōsai. The government encouraged prefectures to send samples of local produce, which would be displayed in front of the Yuki and Suki pavilions for the emperor’s pleasure. Shiga Prefecture, for example, sent adzuki beans, turnips and carp from Lake Biwa. But there was also produce from Japan’s colonies. From Korea, there was dried abalone, cabbages, pears, and apples; from Taiwan, there was dried bonito, buntan, and bananas; from Canton, supplied bream, pears and apples; and from Sakhalin came dried cod, seaweed and potatoes.71 Kyoto citizens were, of course, more intimately engaged in this Kyoto-centered event than most. The palace grounds were filled with seats for Kyoto citizens, representing local military associations, youth groups, schools, and universities. Karasuma and Marutamachi boulevards were lined with spectators hoping to catch sight of the emperor and empress as they arrived in the city, and then again as they headed to Ise to pay their respects to the Sun Goddess. As many as 150,000 people packed the streets around the palace on the afternoon of the sokui rite; they shouted “Banzai!” in response to the prime minister. Kyoto City organized numerous lantern processions as well: on 7, 10, and 16, 17 and 20 November. These engaged mostly but not exclusively school children. Participants entered the palace grounds bearing their lanterns, and one procession at least involved 20,000 people. The palace was sealed off for the solemn daijōsai, but afterwards both palace and daijōsai pavilions were opened for viewing by the public. They remained open till the end of April 1916; over 2.5 million Japanese visited.72 CONCLUSION

There are many ways to make a city. Kyoto bureaucrats filled the void of the emperor’s departure from the city with “moder71 72

See Breen and Teeuwen 2010, pp. 180–81. Itō 2010, p.119.

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nity.” The relentless pursuit of the modern was a response to the profound trauma prompted by the relocation of the emperor and his court to Tokyo. Kyoto had to transform to survive and, in terms of physical appearance and day-to-day experience, it transformed more quickly than any city in Japan.73 Iwakura Tomomi, the statesman Kyoto-born and bred, was one of the first to ponder the cost. He was certainly the first to articulate a solution for it. His articulation was striking for the emphasis it placed on ritual performance within the spaces of the city: the performance of enthronement rites in the palace grounds, and the restoration of the Aoi Festival at the Kamo Shrines. He also called for the creation of a sacred site where Kyoto citizens and visitors might venerate the spirit of the city’s founder, Emperor Kanmu. If Iwakura made no reference at all to the Gion Festival, it was because Gion was a festival with few connections to the imperial court and Japan’s imperial past. Iwakura, who reflected the emperor’s views and found a ready audience in the Kyoto governor, argued that Kyoto’s illustrious imperial history made the city unique. In Kyoto’s history lay the city’s distinct identity, and its hopes for the future. This was an imperial history, a past of unmatched cultural achievement that drew on imperial patronage. This unique heritage – not Kyoto’s modern obsessions – made Kyoto vitally relevant to the imperial present. Iwakura saw ritual-revival as the technique to restore this past to Kyoto’s present. Kyoto’s modern transformation would continue, of course; indeed, the ritual performance of past imperial glories was itself an essentially modern enterprise. But the enthronement rites and the three great festivals opened up a succession of dynamic time-spaces to accommodate the past, give it meaning, and make of Kyoto a city festive beyond compare. Kyoto had suffered massive trauma in early Meiji with the emperor’s departure for Tokyo. The festive strategy was meant to heal the trauma, recover the loss, and assure the city’s thriving close to the heart of modern Japan. 73

According to Ōsaka nippō (17 February 1878), “One has to say that the enlightenment of the Western capital [Kyoto] is a pioneer within the imperial realm.” (Cited in Kobayashi 1998, pp. 152–3.)

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REFERENCES

Ashkenazi 1993 Michael Ashkenazi. Matsuri: Festivals of a Japanese Town. University of Hawaii Press, 1993. Bell 1997 Catherine Bell. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford University Press, 1997. Ben-Amos and Ben-Ari 1995 Avner Ben-Amos and Eyal Ben-Ari. “Resonance and reverberation: ritual and bureaucracy in the state funerals of the French Third Republic.” Theory and Society 24, (1995), pp.163–91. Breen and Teeuwen 2010 John Breen and Mark Teeuwen. A New history of Shinto. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Chūgai Nippō Fujitani 1996 Takashi Fujitani. Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. University of California Press, 1996. Fujiwara 2008 Fujiwara Manabu. “’Mukashi no Tōkyō’ to iu Kyōto imēji: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō no Kyōto e no manazashi.” In Takagi Hiroshi et al eds. Kindai Kyōto kenkyū. Shibunkaku, 2008. Heian jingū hyakunen shi hensan iinkai 1997 Heian jingū hyakunen shi hensan iinkai ed. Heian jingū hyakunen shi (jō). Heian Jingū, 1997. Hinode shinbun Itō 2010 Itō Yukio. Kyōto no kindai to tennō: gosho o meguru dentō to kakushin no toshi kūkan. Chikura Shobō, 2010. Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai 1927 Iwakura kō kyūseki hozonkai ed. Iwakura kō jikki (ge). Tōmyō, 1927. Kawano 2005 Satsuki Kawano. Ritual Practice in Modern Japan: Ordering Place, People, and Action, University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Kawashima 2010 Kawashima Masao. Gion matsuri: shukusai no Kyōto. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2010. Kobayashi 1998 Kobayashi Takehiro. Meji ishin to Kyōto. Rinsen Shoten, 1998. Kobayashi 2007 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Heian sento sen’hyakunen kinensai to Heian jingū no sōken.” Nihonshi kenkyū (538), 2007, pp. 1-28. Kyōto Shiyakusho 1907 Kyōto Shiyakusho ed., Kyōto meisho chō. Kyōto Shiyakusho, 1907. Ōsaka Asahi shinbun

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Ponsonby-Fane 1922 Richard Ponsonby-Fane. “The capital in peace.” Transactions of the Japan Society of London, 25 (1922). Robertson 1994 Jennifer Robertson. Native and newcomer: making and remaking a Japanese city. University of California Press, 1994. Schnell 1999 Scott Schnell. The Rousing Drum: Ritual Practice in a Japanese Community. University of Hawaii Press, 1999. Takagi 1997 Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei no bunkashiteki kenkyū: tennō no shūnin girei, nenchū gyōji, bunkazai. Azekura Shobō, 1997. Takagi 2001 Takagi Hiroshi. “Kinsei no dairi kūkan, kindai no Kyōto gyoen.” In Shimazono Susumu et al ed. Iwanami kōza Kindai Nihon no bunkashi 2. Iwanami Shoten, 2001. Takagi 2006a Takagi Hiroshi. “Meiji ishin to Kamo sai.” In Ishikawa Toshio et al ed. Kamikamo no mori, yashiro, matsuri. Shibunkaku Shuppan. 2006. Takagi 2006b Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei to koto. Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Tokoro 1996 Tokoro Isao. Kyōto no sandai matsuri. Kadokawa Sensho, 1996. Tomii 1979 Tomii Yasuo. “Ishinki no Gion’e ni tsuite.” In Akiyama Kunizō sensei tsuitō kai ed., Kyōto chiikishi no kenkyū. Kokusho Kankōkai, 1979. Yoneyama 1979 Yoneyama Toshinao. Tenjinsai: Ōsaka no sairei. Chūkō Shinsho, 1979. Yoneyama 1986 Yoneyama Toshinao. Toshi to matsuri no jinruigaku. Kawade Shobō Shinsho, 1986. Yumoto 1895 Yumoto Fumihiko. Heian tsūshi. Kyōto Sanjikai, 1895.

CHAPTER 3

BUDDHISM AND SOCIETY IN MODERN KYOTO Tanigawa Yutaka Y

INTRODUCTION

Kyoto is often referred to as the “city of temples.” This appellation is more aptly applied to Kyoto than to any other city in the Japanese archipelago. As of March 2019, the number of Buddhist temples in the city (i.e., those recognized as official legal religious entities) numbered some 1,662.1 In a statistical sense, this number may not seem overwhelming when we consider that there are over 76,000 such sites across Japan. However, Kyoto is home to many temples that have played a vital and colorful role in Japanese history; and many Buddhist denominations, Shingon, Rinzai, Jōdo, Jōdo Shin sects have their head temples in Kyoto. Moreover, there are in Kyoto multiple Buddhist universities, with a vital connection to the education of Buddhist clerics, whose histories stretch back for several centuries years or even a millennium. In this regard, the relationship between Kyoto and Buddhism is indeed unique. To this day, Kyoto temples maintain a prominent role as tourist sites. The figures in Table 1 show the premium tourist sites, and it is clear that such temples as Kiyomizudera, Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji still play a vital role in the formation and development of the contemporary image of Kyoto. 1

These numbers are based on a 2019 survey conducted by Kyoto Prefecture. 65

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Table 1 The Most Popular Tourist Destinations in Kyoto, 2001–2011 2001

2011

Kiyomizu Temple

33.0

1

Kiyomizu Temple

21.0

Arashiyama

17.0

2

Arashiyama

16.1 11.3

Kinkakuji Temple

14.7

3

Kinkakuji Temple

Ginkakuji Temple

14.4

4

Nijō Castle

9.0

Nanzenji Temple

13.2

5

Ginkaku Temple

8.9

Yasaka Shrine

12.1

6

Nanzenji Temple

8.4

Kurama, Kibune

11.5

7

Yasaka Shrine

7.7

Tetsugaku no michi

11.2

8

Kōdaiji Temple

6.7

Heian Shrine

11.2

9

Heian Shrine

6.0

Sagano

10.3

10

Sagano

5.6

Numerals are given as percentage; respondents supplied multiple responses. (Source: Kyōto shi Kankō chōsa nenpō Heisei 22nen)

The narrative that Japanese Buddhism fell into disarray during the Tokugawa period and then largely disappeared in modern times is now considered nothing more than antiquated popular opinion. Many Kyoto temples saw their vast compounds, land holdings, and assets diminished through government policy in the early years of the Meiji period, it is true, but many of these same sites gradually reconstituted themselves so that by the late 19th century, if not before, they came to be justifiably recognized for their value as treasure troves of important cultural property. Yamaori Tetsuo, renowned scholar of Japanese religion, has offered some insightful observations concerning Kyoto and religious sites.2 He proposes we hold the Kyoto Imperial Garden or gyoen to constitute the northern pole of the central rakuchū district of Kyoto. We then see that what occupies the southern pole are the West and East Honganji Temples. Yamaori argues that modern Kyoto is an elliptical sphere formed by these two poles. Modern shrine Shinto was classified by the Meiji government as “non-religious”; it was constructed politically as a belief system 2

Yamaori 2007, pp.3–6.

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common to all subjects, ruling supreme over all religions. This so-called “State Shinto” increasingly imposed itself on the public sphere, and eventually too in the private and individual spheres. By contrast, modern Buddhism was dislocated, in theory at least, from the public role it had legitimately performed in the premodern period. Despite this, Japanese Buddhist denominations have continued to maintain deep connections with important members of both the national and Kyoto governments. Notable Buddhist leaders in this regard were the Higashi and Nishi Honganji Temples, that is the Ōtani and Honganji schools of the Jōdo Shin sect. Like these Shin Buddhist schools, other Kyotobased Buddhist groups maintained mutual channels of communication, and became important agents of charitable work, education and social welfare. And, of modern Kyoto’s industries, there were several connected intimately to Buddhist institutions from before the Restoration. Buddhist organizations continued to exert an influence in Kyoto after the Restoration, and to a considerable extent they do so in the present day. Yamaori’s observations, referred to above, hint that even in the modern period, Kyoto should be understood as a “religious city” (shūkyō toshi). Kyoto developed as a modern city propelled along, as it were, by both the emperor system and by Buddhism. As it is impossible to portray the history of pre-modern Kyoto without discussing temples and Buddhism, the same holds true for the modern period as well. That said, and despite a number of historical studies of individual temples, research on the role of Buddhism in modern Kyoto is surprisingly sparse. One of the main factors behind this paucity of research is that many temples decline to make public their post-Meiji archival records and documents. Most contemporary Japanese, like their predecessors, maintain personal ties with specific temples as parishioners and believers, at least in so far as they entrust to temples funerary rites and ancestor worship. There is inherent in this relationship a financial dimension, which means that there are issues concerning parishioners’ privacy. It is on this account that temples are reluctant to make their historical sources public. This is also no doubt a manifestation of an understanding that the

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modern period is not yet part of “history.” As a general point, the relocation of temples, inheritance of the head-priest functions, not to mention the aerial bombardments during the Asia-Pacific War, have all often led to the dispersal, loss and destruction of historical materials. The fact is, though, that Kyoto temples did not suffer greatly in the war. It is evident that the majority of contemporary Japanese – including Kyoto citizens – do not as a rule possess strong religious beliefs or have a strong identity with specific religious groups. And yet, still fresh in the memory is how the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 prompted priests from temples from the devastated areas and elsewhere to construct networks, and engage in wide-ranging support for victims, regardless of their religious affiliation. The fact is that we are now finally at a stage where we can consider modern Japanese Buddhism and its role within Japanese society as a part of “history.” Reflecting on the modern history of Kyoto from this Buddhist vantage point is therefore essential and timely. There are critical studies of this problem by scholars such as Fujii Manabu and Kobayashi Takehiro; they are still serviceable and of value.3 Here I take a different perspective and examine Buddhism’s social standing in modern Kyoto in light of its relation to politics, education, and the publishing industry. To others I will leave a discussion of Kyoto Buddhism’s role in tourism and of temples as sites of cultural heritage. 1. BAKUMATSU POLITICS AND TEMPLES I. THE KYOTO TEMPLE AS MILITARY CAMP

In the political process that led from the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853 and the “opening of Japan,” through the signing of the trade treaties in 1858 to the assassination of the government leader, Ii Naosuke, in 1860, the political authority of the Tokugawa military regime suffered one heavy blow after another. At the very same time, the political status of the imperial court 3

See for example Fujii 1974, Fujii 1975 and Kobayashi 1991.

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in Kyoto grew proportionately. In this late Edo period, Kyoto suddenly came to life as a political stage. From the late 1850s to the early 1860s, retainers and senior vassals, powerful daimyo and samurai activists poured into Kyoto. In 1863, the shogun Tokugawa Iemochi became the first shogun to visit Kyoto since the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, 230 years before. This only added impetus to Kyoto’s growing status as a vibrant political center. It was in Kyoto temples that the various domain (han) representatives now stationed themselves. The Hitotsubashi family and Fukui domain resided in the Higashi Honganji Temple; the Mito family in Honkokuji; the Chōshū domain in Tenryūji; and the Kumamoto domain in Nanzenji. Although all of these domains already had residences in Kyoto, they now established tactical headquarters and new residences within the compounds of Buddhist temples. One of the reasons cited for this phenomenon was the historical precedent of sixteenth century daimyo using temples as the bases of their operations, when they lodged in Kyoto. This pattern of entering Kyoto to approach the court in an effort to increase domain political authority, and so exert influence on the central government, was analogous to what happened in Kyoto during the medieval Warring States period. Domain incursion into the compounds of Kyoto temples, many of which were bound tightly to the imperial court, was the first step to achieving the political goal of influencing the court. How then, did the daimyo select specific temple sites? In the case of Satsuma domain, which established its headquarters in the Shōkokuji compound, for example, domain rulers had enjoyed personal ties with the Konoe family of court nobles ever since the medieval period, and the Konoe, who were closely connected to Shōkokuji Temple, made the necessary introductions. Shōkokuji monks, moreover, evinced a keen interest in late Edo period politics. In 1862, before Shōkokuji played host to troops from Satsuma domain, the future shogun, Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu, sent a request to the temple for permission to use its compound, and the temple began to prepare for the arrival of Hitotsubashi troops. In the end, the Hitotsubashi family withdrew its request. Shōkokuji

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in the meanwhile had declined a similar approach from Owari domain, whose lords were relatives of the Tokugawa family.4 Shōkokuji did, however, grant to the warriors of the Bizen domain permission to use its temple grounds as lodgings. We get the sense that temples themselves were making judgments based on issues of political power in choosing who to accommodate. II. BUDDHIST CLERGY AS POLITICAL AGENTS

The Buddhist clergy are not to be understood merely as religious practitioners; they were political agents, too. The Higashi Honganji Temple firmed up its links to both the bakufu and the Hitotsubashi family, and offered use of their compound as headquarters to the Shinsengumi, a group of activist samurai commissioned to eliminate anti-bakufu, loyalist activists at work in the city. At the same time, the monk Gesshō born in Suō in the west of Japan, worked on Kōnyo, the head of the Nishi Honganji Temple, to adopt a loyalist rather than a bakufu-inclined political position. Gesshō had intimate links with influential courtiers like Sanjō Sanetomi, and he penned a tract known as Buppō gokokuron (Dharmic defense of the nation), which exerted a great influence over activist, anti-bakufu monks from other denominations. He also exerted an intellectual influence on Yoshida Shōin, renowned for his loyalist, anti-foreign thought. Shimaji Mokurai (Fig. 1) and Ōzu Tetsunen, both pro-emperor monks from Chōshū domain, formed armed groups of Buddhist monks and engaged in political agitation. Through their political activities, these Buddhist monks made contact with Kido Takayoshi, Itō Hirobumi and other Chōshū leaders who were to become powerful politicians in the future Meiji government. These monks later became the leading lights in Nishi Honganji and Buddhism more generally. Their political stance differed from the pro-bakufu position taken by Higashi Honganji, and gave rise to differences in terms of their postRestoration fortunes, and of the political influence they were 4

Sasabe 2010, pp. 90–91.

BUDDHISM AND SOCIETY IN MODERN KYOTO

Figure 1:

71

Shimaji Mokurai

(Source: Kyūkōshaku Kidoke shiryō, National Museum of Japanese History)

able to exert in modern Japan. The pro-emperor Buddhist clergy in particular shared in common a desire to eliminate the Christianity that had entered Japan following the opening of the ports in the 1850s, and to defend Buddhism against its threat. They shared, too, a belief that devotion to both activities was for the greater benefit of Japan. The clergy who advocated these ideals gathered in Kyoto at the end of 1868 following the Restoration, and founded a Buddhist organization called the Buddhist Ethical League (Shoshū dōtoku kaimei), and as its name suggests, it was a non-sectarian Buddhist alliance that transcended sectarian boundaries. It proclaimed an association of Buddhist monks, which would meet the needs of the new era. The alliance, based in such temples as the Myōhōin and Kyōō gokokuji (Tōji) were dedicated to “defense of the dharma” activities, but within just three years of activity, the alliance dissolved. Nonetheless, the Buddhist clergy involved in this group would later become central figures in the modernization of Japanese Buddhism.5 These monks, who were now awake to their capacity 5

Tanigawa 2011, pp. 21–26.

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for political agency, aligned themselves to trans-sectarian visions and endeavored to restructure the post-Meiji Japanese Buddhist sangha. Pre-Restoration Kyoto, it can be said, was the seismic center, the arena that gave birth to modern Japanese Buddhism. 2. CHAOS IN THE MEIJI PERIOD AND THE HIGASHI AND NISHI HONGANJI I. THE INFLUENCE OF THE AGECHI LAND CONFISCATION LAWS

The Meiji Restoration brought upheaval to Kyoto’s Buddhist temples and to the lives of the Buddhist clergy. Until the Meiji period, all inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago were assimilated into the temple-parishioner system (danka seido). The head clergy of each temple functioned as a kind of local bureaucrat for the Tokugawa bakufu, charged with the task of managing and updating local citizen registries in their respective parishes. Large temples drew an income from “donations” from local parishioners, as well as from vast tracts of arable land and mountain and forest property. The Buddhist clergy’s social status differed from that of the warrior and merchant class in that they were seen as “outside” of, or autonomous within, the secular sphere. (We should note here that the latest research on the Tokugawa period no longer considers the concept of “social status” as being nearly as fixed or monolithic as it was portrayed in earlier scholarship.) This “outsider” situation drastically changed during the first ten years or so of the Meiji period. The first major event to consider in this period is the unleashing of the anti-Buddhist campaign directly following the Restoration. In 1868, the fledgling government, still at war with armies fighting for the bakufu, promulgated the shinbutsu bunri edicts, which literally sought to “separate” (bunri) kami (shin) from buddhas (butsu). The edicts enforced a strict physical separating out of “Shinto” shrines from Buddhist temples where none had previously existed. This was the case at “multiplex” sites, known as jingūji, where temples were located on shrine grounds, and in other cases where Buddhist temples had assumed control of shrine affairs. “Separation” was driven by nativist scholars within

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the government, whose ideal was the construction of a modern emperor system based on the closest unity of (Shinto) ritual and politics. In some regions of Japan – and at times with violence – this plan led shrine-affiliated clergy to destroy Buddhist statuary and other Buddhist material objects. The nationwide anti-Buddhist campaign is known in Japanese as haibutsu kishaku, literally “eliminate the dharma and destroy Shākyamuni.” Many temples in Kyoto suffered. The Gion Shrine, for example, originally administrated by the Enryakuji Temple of Tendai Buddhism, restructured itself as an independent religious entity known as Yasaka Shrine. Another notable example among many is Fushimi Inari Shrine, which expelled all Buddhist vestiges from its precinct. Further, Kitano Shrine, also originally supervised by Tendai Buddhist monks, laicized a great number of Buddhist clergy forcing them to convert into dedicated shrine priests. Kitano’s main Buddhist hall was demolished, its numerous stupas were destroyed, and many of the compound’s religious treasures were sold off on the open market. Notably, the precinct’s eleven-faced Kannon statue, a gift from a shogun in the medieval Muromachi era, vanished without a trace.6 That said, the impact of haibutsu kishaku in Kyoto was not as severe as it was in other prefectures. Rather, the period of chaos and tribulation for Kyoto Buddhists began back in 1864, with the eruption of the so-called Kinmon Incident, which saw the city became the stage for fighting between troops of Chōshū domain and bakufu forces (Fig. 2). This clash led to a large-scale conflagration across the city, which devastated some 27,000 homes, and consumed the Higashi Honganji Temple, the Honnōji Temple, and many other temples besides. Of still greater import for Kyoto Buddhists was the promulgation of the land confiscation (agechi) laws. They were issued in two phases, in 1871 and again in 1875. More than half of tax-exempt land both inside and outside of temple compounds held by prominent Buddhist temples 6

On the impact of this separation policy at the Kitano Shrine, see also Takagi above p. 15.

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Kyoto in the aftermath of the 1864 Kinmon Incident. Visible behind the wall in the center of the illustration are gravestones; monks and their disciples stand still.

(Source: Kasshi Heisen-zu (Main Library, Kyoto University))

was confiscated and became the property of the Japanese government, and of Kyoto Prefecture. In order to reform land taxes and establish a modern taxation system, the repossession of large tracts of temple land was deemed a national imperative. The impact of land confiscation was felt in prefectures beyond Kyoto as well, as large land-holding temples had their economic basis turned on its head. The temples of Hōkōji, Kōdaiji, Kinkakuji, Kiyomizu Temple, Daitokuji, and Kurama Temple were among the countless prominent Kyoto temples that took a major hit, diminishing them greatly. In the wake of the confiscation laws, and in lieu of the land they had held till now, temples were granted government stipends that diminished on an annual basis. However, in the case of the great temples of the Tendai, Shingon, Rinzai, and Jōdo sects, and even Sennyūji, the funerary temple for the imperial family, the government’s compensation proved woefully insufficient. The Nichiren and Jōdo Shin sects, however, were comparatively less affected by these laws. This was owing to the fact that

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neither sect had received preferential treatment by the bakufu, and their landholdings were considerably smaller in scale. As a result, these latter sects by contrast established stronger ties with their parishioners in the modern period, than they had had before the Restoration. As the historian Kobayashi Takehiro has acutely observed, these differences between Buddhist sects led to a bifurcation in the economic directions taken by Kyoto temples after land confiscation. On the one hand were the Nichiren and Jōdo Shin sect temples which took positive action to strengthen their ties with parishioners; and on the other hand were the temples that lacked strong parishioner support and so energetically sought government backing and the provision of other forms of fiscal aid.7 In the latter category were temples tied closely with the imperial family, the so-called monzeki temples, those temples which in the Tokugawa period appointed members of the imperial family to serve as head priests. There were more than ten such temples nationally, but almost all were based in Kyoto. Although the imperial court resituated to Tokyo, many prominent Kyoto temples continued to receive annual stipends and other forms of special treatment.8 Even today, as I shall demonstrate below, the difference between these two temple modalities exerts a profound influence on Kyoto Buddhism. The land confiscation laws were a direct manifestation of the modern state’s determination to place temple sites under its control, to make temple land taxable and to deny temples special treatment. Simultaneously, around this time, the special social status of the Buddhist clergy was dissolved. In 1871, the government promulgated the Family Register (koseki) Law, and in 1872 it mandated that [like all “normal” Japanese citizens] Buddhist clergy should now adopt family names. By 1876, the government had established a policy of regarding the Buddhist clergy as simply another form of employment. 7 8

Kobayashi 1991, p. 375. In recent years, several studies of the modern imperial court and Buddhism have appeared. See, for example, Ogura and Yamaguchi 2011, and also Takagi 2011.

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II. THE MODERNIZATION OF KYOTO AND THE EAST AND WEST HONGANJI TEMPLES

With the implementation of the land confiscation laws, and the policy of merging and abolishing any temples that lacked resident clergy or sustainable parishes, local governments appropriated temples and their grounds for all sorts of institutions vital for the modernization of Kyoto. The trend can be seen at a national level, but one of the representative uses of newly acquired temple land was the construction of elementary schools. The Shūdō elementary school, established on the grounds of Myōhōin Temple, is a prime example. Indeed, it was the clearing out of temples and their precincts that ultimately allowed for a smooth transition to the modern Japanese educational system: temple facilities were appropriated, and clergy were employed as modern educators. Further, charitable facilities for assisting the destitute and medical facilities, too, were also established within temple grounds

Figure 3:

The Convalescent Hospital Established in the Shōren’ in

(Source: Miyako no kioku Archive, Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives)

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(Fig. 3). In some cases, temples themselves made offers of land in an effort to demonstrate their social relevance, and guarantee their futures. Teramachi Street in the center of Kyoto – a temple quarter originally established in the late sixteenth century by Toyotomi Hideyoshi – transformed itself after the land confiscation laws into a thriving business and entertainment district, known today as Shinkyōgoku. Again, it was on the grounds of Nishi Honganji that Japan’s first regional exhibition was held in 1871. The sites for the Kyoto Exhibition of the following year were the Nishi Honganji, Kenninji, and Chion’in temple compounds. From 1873, the Kyoto Exhibition was held in the grounds of the Kyoto palace, but Kyoto temples were transformed into symbolic and visual sites of, and for, “civilization and enlightenment” and “modernization.” In this fashion, it is clear that the modernization of Kyoto, including its modern education, was not a wholesale denial of Edo period society; rather it proceeded apace, mobilizing the people and spaces that were available from an earlier age.

Figure 4: Makimura Masanao (Source: Miyako no kioku Archive, Kyoto Institute, Library And Archives)

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Let me return now to the consequences of the political stances adopted by the Nishi Honganji and Higashi Honganji referred to above. Nishi Honganji donated vast sums of money to the newly formed Meiji government, and had close ties with Chōshū domain. Makimura Masanao, who exercised de facto political control over Kyoto Prefecture, was a Chōshū native (Fig. 4). Moreover, the Nishi Honganji sect enjoyed strong connections with prominent Meiji politicians such as Kido Takayoshi and Inoue Kaoru. Nishi Honganji’s relations with the central Japanese government and with Kyoto Prefecture were excellent. So much so that in the early stages of the Meiji period, Shimaji Mokurai and other Nishi Honganji leaders were influential voices in the shaping of national religious policies. In 1872, the government launched a campaign to edify the populace, which mobilized both shrine priests and temple monks in disseminating teachings that were based on Shinto. But Shimaji, who had returned from an intelligence-gathering trip to Europe in July 1873, argued for the recognition of “freedom of religious belief,” and led fierce opposition to the government campaign. In 1875, through dialogue with Kido, Inoue, and others, Shimaji succeeded in having the government abandon its Shintobased edification policy. Then, in 1879, due to an internal power struggle, Nishi Honganji temporarily relocated its headquarters to Tokyo. Although the sect’s headquarters soon moved back to Kyoto, these rifts led ultimately lead to the formulation of a Nishi Honganji constitution. Further, in 1881, Nishi Honganji created a denominational parliament based in Kyoto, to which chief priests from temples across Japan were dispatched as representatives. These developments took place some ten years prior to the promulgation of the Japanese constitution and the opening of the imperial diet. The political and social power of the Kyoto Buddhist sangha needs to be noted.9 In contradistinction to Nishi Honganji, Higashi Honganji’s troubles continued well into the Meiji period. As previously noted, much of the Higashi Honganji temple was lost in 9

Hirano 1988, p. 175.

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fire, and the temple was forced to make a special show of its alignment with the newly established government, having in the past sided with the bakufu. Higashi Honganji’s debt was dire: it had donated some 20,000 ryō to the new government; had outlaid huge expenditure in the expansion and development of Hokkaido and on the rebuilding of its main Amida Hall and the Goei Hall. By 1880, its total debt had swollen to approximately one third of the national budget. Nishi and Higashi Honganji monks also found themselves in deepening dispute over who should administer the burial site of Rennyo, the head of medieval Honganji Buddhism. These issues were not contained within Kyoto Buddhism; rather they soon became the cause for concern in central government itself. Iwakura Tomomi, a courtier by birth and one of the most powerful statesmen of the new government, emerged as mediator. Through cooperation with, and the intervention of, other central political figures as Inoue Kaoru, who was linked closely to Nishi Honganji, and Minister of Finance Matsukata Masayoshi, Iwakura made repeated moves to settle Honganji debts. He judged that if these problems were not dealt with resolutely, Kyoto society itself would be irreparably harmed. This was so much the case that in 1881, when Kitagaki Kunimichi was appointed as new prefectural governor of Kyoto, Iwakura warned him that the resolution of Honganji’s problems was an issue of vital importance to his governorship. In 1886, under government leadership and through the mediation of governor Kitagaki, Higashi Honganji established a workable system for collecting donations from its followers across Japan, and so began to put its finances on an even keel. Some 100,000 carpenters and laborers descended on Kyoto to set about rebuilding the temple’s lost halls; vast quantities of timber were transported in from across Japan. In 1895, with its debts close to being settled, the reconstruction of Higashi Honganji proceeded at a swift pace, leading to the completion of what today is one of Japan’s largest wooden structures, Higashi Honganji’s main halls (Fig. 5). At the beginning of 1895, Matsukata Masayoshi visited Higashi Honganji and instructed the temple

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Figure 5:

Goei Hall and Amida Hall in Higashi Honganji

(Source: Miyako no kioku Archive, Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives)

to repay all its debts and complete building work within the year. One can surmise that Matsukata had his eye on Kyoto’s hosting of the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition and the celebrations to mark the eleventh-centenary of the founding of Kyoto, which were scheduled for the same year.10 Tenryūji, one of Japan’s foremost Zen temples, was another temple burned to the ground in the conflagration of the 1860s, a fate it shared with Higashi Honganji. It took a full sixty years to rebuild this temple, which is now a world heritage site. This was not an isolated case. Many other prominent temples were destroyed in fires, and had to spend vast sums on reconstruction during the Meiji period. In 1881, the Tōfukuji Temple of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, renowned for its Muromachi period Zen architecture, was burned to the ground; only the main gate escaped the conflagration. It was not until 1934 that the Tōfukuji reconstruction process was completed. The Nanzenji and Ninnaji 10

See Tanigawa 2008b.

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Temples too spent a decade and more rebuilding after devastation by fire. In brief, in the Meiji period, on top of land confiscation, and the abandonment and merging of temple buildings, there were the challenges of conflagration and reconstruction to contend with. The pre-Restoration landscape of Kyoto, seen from the temple perspective, underwent a permanent transformation.11 3. THE CITY OF MONKS I. ESTABLISHING CLERICAL EDUCATION

Nonetheless, Kyoto’s status as the central hub for Japanese Buddhism went unchallenged. From 1880 onward, the Japanese government offered legal protection to older temples and works of Buddhist art as cultural assets. Kyoto temples benefitted from this beneficence. Further, it was the training institutes for monks newly established in Kyoto – the city that was home to the main temples of every sect – that accommodated those intending to enter the Buddhist clergy. In brief, the majority of would-be monks had no choice but to train in Kyoto. Accordingly, Kyoto in the modern period remained a “city of monks.” In the case of the Honganji school of the Jōdo Shin sect, based at the Nishi Honganji Temple, it established over twenty clerical education centers across Japan in the 1880s. However, both the Normal Religious School (Futsū kyōkō), which was the senior educational center, and the Great Religious School (Daikyōkō), the highest seat of learning, were located in Kyoto.12 The Normal Religious School taught not only Buddhism but, as in all secular schools, English, math, and physics as part of the general curriculum. 11

12

The Meiji government in 1878 allowed the founding and refurbishment of temples in order to protect “religious freedom.” In 1886, however, concerned with the danger of an excess of construction, the government once again prohibited the building of new temples and the refurbishment of older sites. It did, however, continue to protect certain valuable temples – established at least 400-years prior – as important cultural assets. On this, see Yamazaki 2005. Tanigawa 2008a. The second part of this work deals with this subject in depth.

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The Great Religious School offered specialized courses on the Buddhist canon, and produced many monks who later became scholars of Buddhology. Schools for the training of Buddhist monks were taking shape in all Buddhist sects by the end of the nineteenth century, their curricula based on those of the secular education system. The Jōdo Shin sect’s schools, notably, were expeditious in dispatching many of its brightest young minds to study abroad or at Tokyo University. There were men like Nanjō Bunyū, the pioneer of modern Japanese Buddhist studies and Indology; Kiyozawa Manshi, philosopher and leader of the Ōtani reform movement; and Inoue Enryō, who abandoned sectarian Buddhism and argued the need for Buddhism to stand shoulder to shoulder with Western philosophy. Although all these men were trained in the religious stronghold of Kyoto, it was in Tokyo and overseas that their trans-sectarian activities truly began. Kyoto, then, was perhaps for many young, motivated clergy both a source of newfound strength, but also a place where the fetters of tradition and orthodoxy were still firmly in place. We should recall that behind these Kyoto Buddhist movements to refine the educational system, there was the powerful prompt of Christianity, which had been regarded as the enemy by Buddhists ever since the late Edo period. In Kyoto, particularly, the Protestant Dōshisha English School, affiliated to the American Board, was an important institution for the dissemination of Western learning. Dōshisha is located on the north side of the Imperial Palace Garden, and occupies land owned by the Shōkokuji Temple, on the site where Satsuma domain had its Kyoto residence. With its modern Western-style brick construction, Dōshisha was regarded as a symbol of Kyoto’s modernity. The school accordingly received support from the prefectural government and powerful members of the Kyoto business community. By the end of the 1880s, when Dōshisha began to style itself a “university” (daigaku), Kyoto’s numerous Buddhist denominations responded by establishing their own sectarian and transsectarian Buddhist schools of higher learning; each sect had its

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own education institution.13 In 1918, the Japanese government promulgated the private university decree, and Nishi Honganji responded by founding Ryūkoku University; Higashi Honganji founded Ōtani University, and other sects too set up universities according to state regulations. Later, in the wake of the AsiaPacific War, other universities were established in Kyoto in rapid succession. Today there are ten Buddhist universities in Kyoto that offer four-year degrees, as compared to only six in Tokyo. Among the most famous of the Kyoto universities are Bukkyō University of the Jōdo sect, Hanazono University of the Rinzai sect, and Shuchiin University of the Shingon sect. II. BUDDHIST SOCIAL ACTIVISM: OPPORTUNITY AND IMPASSE

The educational undertakings of Kyoto-based Buddhist denominations extended beyond clerical education. They established kindergartens and pre-schools; and particularly notable in the Meiji period was the Buddhists’ founding of educational institutions for women, and the provision of elementary education for the poor and destitute. An interdenominational Kyoto-based group of Buddhist activists founded the charitable Kōsaikai in 1887; it established some six elementary schools. Of course, again, much of this activity began by way of rivalry with Christian activity. Buddhist monks who had lost the privileges they had enjoyed before the Meiji Restoration now had to search for ways of demonstrating their social worth, and their value to the state. Aspects of this new Buddhist awareness were apparent in the congress convened by leaders of each of the Kyoto-based Buddhist denominations in 1885 to raise funds to help the poor; and elsewhere in the foundation of clerical associations dedicated to promoting social welfare. From the late Meiji through the Taisho periods, these activities came to be known as “social projects” (shakai jigyō). 13

There were even monks like Hirai Kinza, who founded the Oriental Hall, an English school designed to compete with Dōshisha. Hirai participated in the 1893 Parliament of World Religions Conference in Chicago where he made a pitch for Japanese Buddhism. On Hirai’s life and his connections to Kyoto, see Yoshinaga 2007.

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Many different groups were formed around Buddhist monks as they engaged in a wide variety of activities to assist the destitute, children, released convicts and juvenile delinquents, and to provide education for the physically challenged. Driving these Meiji Buddhist endeavors was an appeal to the secular state and civil society, through the pursuit of national benefit. Modern Japanese Buddhism was thus ultimately unable to carve out an autonomous social position, in which it could relativize and/or direct criticism at state policy. Over time, Buddhism came to take for granted its subordination to the state. The monk, Takagi Kenmyō, who in 1904 spoke out in opposition to the Russo-Japanese War and was then involved in the Great Treason Incident in 1910, was expelled from Higashi Honganji, and along with his family evicted from his temple. The fact that Takagi’s honor was not restored until 1996 is evidence that Japanese Buddhism was for a long period deeply tainted by its subordination to the modern state and to the emperor system.14 To reiterate, Kyoto was indeed “the city of monks,” and the stronghold for the majority of Japan’s Buddhist denominations. Kyoto was for these reasons a place replete with possibilities for the conduct of social projects. At the same time, one cannot deny that it helped cultivate a supine posture towards the state that was eventually manifest in Buddhist cooperation with Japan’s war effort. 4. THE ROLE OF BUDDHISM IN THE MODERN KYOTO PUBLISHING INDUSTRY

One other factor contextualizing Meiji Buddhism’s turn to education is that Buddhist temples were from the medieval period onward recognized by society as sites for learning and pedagogy. Prominent temples were thus equipped to function as intellectual centers for the publishing and dissemination of Buddhist texts. Tenryūji and other Zen temples in the “Five Mountain” system of medieval Japan played a pivotal role here. With the early modern period, there emerged in Kyoto a 14

On Takagi Kenmyō, see Daitō 2011 and Swanson 2014.

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great number of specialized Buddhist bookstores and publishers. Many publishing houses in Kyoto with deep connections to specific Buddhist denominations continued to be active into the Meiji period, and remain so to this day. Prominent examples include the Heirakuji Shoten house of the Nichiren sect, the Nagata Bunshōdō house of Nishi Honganji, and the Hōzōkan house of Higashi Honganji. Hōzōkan has been the most active in the publishing of academic works on Japanese Buddhist historiography, and is likely to remain an important player in the future dissemination of research on modern Japanese Buddhism. One should also recall Kendō Shoin. It became insolvent after AsiaPacific War but, located as it was in close proximity to the Nishi Honganji temple, it was another well-regarded firm renowned for the publishing and purveying of Buddhist works. Furthermore, there are still today in Kyoto a number of antiquarian sellers of Buddhist books like Kichūdō. Again, members of the Kyoto Buddhist clergy also published numerous newspapers and magazines. These publications were of different types: official sectarian reports, material related to a given sect, and that which was trans-sectarian. According to the prewar index, Meiji nenkan Bukkyō kankei shinbun zasshi mokuroku, published by Meiji Bukkyōshi Hensansho in 1934, there were as many as 150 Buddhist newspapers and magazines in circulation during the Meiji period. Although it is true that some of these publications were wound up after only a single issue, others are being newly discovered, so that the total number published, in fact, exceeded those in the afore-mentioned index.15 Here let me refer to two especially notable publications. The first is the Hanseikai zasshi (Fig. 6), published in 1887 by students and faculty of Nishi Honganji’s Normal Religious School, referred to above. Founded on the idea of temperance, the Association 15

From 2011 to 2014, Ōtani Eiichi led a collaborative research project designed to catalog and archive Buddhist periodicals of the Meiji era. The project (entitled “Basic research for the creation of a modern Buddhist archive”) involved research in libraries and research institutes throughout Japan. The achievements of this project can be seen at http://www.modernreligious-archives.org/

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Figure 6: Hanseikai zasshi journal covers The title The Temperance: A Magazine is just visible.

for Reflection (Hanseikai) was part of a broad social movement seeking to adhere to the Buddhist precept of non-consumption of alcohol, and it was motivated partly by a sense of rivalry towards Christianity. The Association for Reflection soon gained many supporters both within and without the school, inside and outside of Kyoto. As of 1894, it numbered more than 18,000 members. The magazine Hanseikai zasshi was the group’s flagship publication, and as an opinion paper for the temperance cause it carried reports on campaigns in Kyoto and beyond, and essays and articles relating to Buddhism, to education and to society. The second publication is the Kyōgaku hōchi. This was a specialist Buddhist journal founded in 1897 by the priest Matani Ruikotsu; it was a non-sectarian journal that stood for religious and intellectual freedom. In 1901, this publication became a daily, and in 1902 it was restyled Chūgai nippō. It covered educational, political, financial, and literary issues principally from

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a Buddhist perspective. It was a paper that produced many journalists who were monks, or who had anyway been trained in one of the clerical schools. They include Andō Masazumi (later Minister of Education), Itō Shōshin (founder of the ethical body Mugaen), and Miura Sangendō (who contributed to the founding of the Suiheisha, the organization that campaigned to end the persecution of people of outcaste status). Chūgai nippō came to represent religious journalism in Japan. During the Asia-Pacific war, the government limited each prefecture to the publication of a single newspaper. Kyoto, though, was an exception in that the government allowed Chūgai nippō to continue publishing alongside the daily Kyōto shinbun. There exist no examples in Tokyo, the great center of modern publishing, of Buddhist newspapers thriving as they did in Kyoto. One common feature of the periodicals referred to above is that they continue to be published today, despite changes in format. Hanseikai zasshi (today known as Chūō kōron and based in Tokyo) is one of the leading contemporary publications for the dissemination of intellectual opinion in Japan. The Chūgai nippō is still based in Kyoto, where it now publishes three times a week. These publications share in common the fact that they had their base in Buddhism, but subsequently developed as spaces for discourse that transcended not only specific sects but also religion. It may well be that the development of these forms of media emerged out of Buddhism’s experience of fostering a culture of reading, through its history of publishing and disseminating Buddhist texts in the premodern period. In considering Buddhism’s social weight and its special social role in modern Japanese religion, we cannot overlook the part played by Buddhism’s culture of print media. Nor yet must we belittle the role of Buddhist related media in mobilizing the Japanese people for participation in the Asia-Pacific War. CONCLUSION: TEMPLE TAXATION IN POST-WAR KYOTO

Other historical perspectives are needed to explore the linkage between Buddhism and modern Kyoto society. An analysis of the existence of various “Buddhist elements” within the urban

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space of modern Kyoto would be a fruitful endeavor. And I refer not merely to the need to examine the geo-spatial locations and surroundings of temple sites. What modern transformations can be seen in the manufacture and distribution of, say, stonemasonry essential to the manufacturing of grave stones and the making and sale of vestments worn by monks – not to mention the altars and objects used in offerings and commemorative rites in the home? How were graves sites procured for the ever-growing numbers of dead that arose from the explosion in the population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and from the mass fatalities of war?16 These and other questions may legitimately be asked, and the basic historical research remains to be undertaken. The history of Buddhism in modern Kyoto is replete with topics demanding further exploration. But here finally it will be instructive to touch upon Buddhist fortunes in post-war Kyoto. Many of Kyoto’s major temples were resurrected with the post-war development of Kyoto as a premier tourist site. Temples opened to the public their main halls, their Buddhist statuary and art, and temple gardens too; they charged tourists a viewing fee, which became an important source of temple revenue in post-war Kyoto. Some major temples, however, such as the Higashi Honganji, Chion’in and Myōshinji had no great need to rely on tourists for support. However, in 1961 and again in 2011 these and other temples held memorial services (onki) for sect founders and eminent monks. Such events are hosted every fifty years to celebrate the virtues of these great men, and they have generated vast financial donations from pilgrims and other donors. Further, many religious entities have engaged in multifaceted business ventures in order to ensure financial security: they manage parking lots and hotels, and buy and sell real estate in an effort to establish a sound financial basis. It was in response to these changes that the city of Kyoto, in 1956, planned to levy a so-called tourism tax (kankōzei). This tax 16

The so-called monzenmachi – urban spaces developed in front of, and around, the gates of large temples – make for a worthy research endeavor. On Higashi and Nishi Honganji’s monzenmachi in the modern and contemporary period, see Kawamura 2007.

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collection plan was grounded in the argument that temples and shrines were collecting non-religious “viewing” fees from tourists. The plan met with fierce opposition on the part of Kyoto Buddhist temples, but the city did manage to collect from some thirty-two different temples what it styled “a cultural tourism facility tax” (bunka kankō shisetsu zei); this was restyled “a special culture protection tax” (bunka hogo tokubetsu zei). This situation obtained until 1969. However, this tax became a major issue for Kyoto Buddhism since it impinged on issues relating to the separation of state and religion; the taxing of tourist viewing was also regarded as problematic. But it was the new “ancient capital preservation cooperation tax” (Kyōto kyōryoku hozon zei) promulgated in the 1980s that brought matters to a head. As with the earlier tourism taxes, the new arrangement also made entrance fees charged by temples subject to taxation. In 1982, then Kyoto Mayor Imagawa Masahiko proposed this tax, and it was passed a year later by the city council. The Kyoto City Buddhist Association, an alliance of the most prominent temples, known in Japanese as Kyōto Shi Bukkyōkai, responded by suing the city to have the tax law annulled. In 1985, the same association declared that, if the new tax became law, its members would refuse to allow visitors to enter and view its temples. The law was implemented, and a number of temples duly closed their gates to the public. 17 Subsequently, there was reconciliation between Kyoto city preservation and the Buddhist association and, in 1988, the “ancient capital preservation cooperation tax” was scrapped. This process brought into relief a long-standing and deep rupture in modern Kyoto between Kyoto temples receiving financial support through the parish system, and temples that came to rely primarily on tourism.18 In other words, the bifurcation of Kyoto temple management that began directly after the Meiji Restoration has continued into the present day. Regardless of the management strategies chosen by different temples, the nature 17

18

This association was composed of some 800 Kyoto temples. In 1987, however, the Kyoto Prefecture Buddhist League was formed as a splinter group. I have relied on Kobayashi for my explanation of the issues surrounding taxes and Kyoto temples. See especially Kobayashi 1991 pp. 393–394.

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of religion in contemporary society – especially in Kyoto society, that is to all appearances still a religious city – continues to be questioned. As broached at the beginning of this chapter, the role and activities of Buddhist clergy in the Fukushima area after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake are no doubt one way in which Japanese Buddhism is attempting to respond to contemporary issues. Although space has not allowed for a discussion of the matter here, the prewar Higashi Honganji reformation movement led by Kiyozawa Manshi, the rise of the new pro-Buddhist groups like Ittōen, and the postwar Dōbōkai movement that sought to activate the role of Buddhist parishes and so effect sectarian reform, are also worthy subjects for future research. Digging deep into the trials and errors of Buddhists’ early Meiji experience and attempting to locate them in the modern history of Kyoto are pressing tasks for twenty-first century Buddhism and for all scholars of history. REFERENCES

Daitō 2011 Daitō Satoshi. Taigyaku no sō: Takagi Kenmyō no shinjitsu. Fūbaisha, 2011. Fujii 1974 Fujii Manabu. “Haibutsu kishaku.” In Kyōto no rekishi 7. Gakurin Shobō, 1974, pp. 524–545. Fujii 1975 Fujii Manabu. “Shūkyōkai no hamon.” In Kyōto no rekishi 8. Gakurin Shobō, 1975, pp. 223–242. Hirano 1988 Hirano Takeshi. Nishi honganji jihō to ‘rikkenshugi’. Hōritsu Bunka Sha, 1988. Kawamura 2007 Kawamura Yoshio, ed. Kyōto no monzenmachi to chiiki jiritsu. Kōyō Shobō, 2007. Kobayashi 1991 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Shūkyō to fukushi.” In Shiryō Kyōto no rekishi 1. Heibonsha, 1991, pp. 368–394. Ogura and Yamaguchi 2011 Ogura Shigeji and Yamaguchi Teruomi, eds. Tennō to shūkyō. Kōdansha, 2011. Sasabe 2010 Sasabe Masatoshi. Bakumatsu dōran no Kyōto to Shōkokuji. Shōkokuji Kyōka Katsudō Iinkai, 2010.

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Swanson 2014 Paul L. Swanson. “Takagi Kenmyō and Buddhist Socialism: A Meiji Misfit and Martyr” in Hayashi Makoto et al. eds. Modern Buddhism in Japan, pp.85-111. Takagi 2011 Takagi Hiroshi. “Kōshitsu no shinbutsu bunri saikō.” In Meiji Ishin Shi Gakkai, ed. Meiji Ishin shi kenkyū no ima o tou, Yūshisha, 2011, pp. 100–130. Tanigawa 2008a Tanigawa Yutaka. Meiji zenki no kyōiku, kyōka, Bukkyō. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2008. Tanigawa 2008b Tanigawa Yutaka. “Kitagaki fusei ki no Higashi Honganji.” In Maruyama Hiroshi, Iyori Tsutomu and Takagi Hiroshi, eds. Kindai Kyōto kenkyū. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2008, pp. 365–389. Tanigawa 2011 Tanigawa Yutaka. “Meiji ishin to Bukkyō.” In Sueki Fumihiko, Matsuo Kenji, Hayashi Makoto and Ōkubo Ryōshun, eds. Shin Ajia Bukkyō shi 14. Kōsei Shuppansha, 2011, pp. 14–55. Yamaori 2007 Yamaori Tetsuo, ed. Kyōto no jisha 505 o aruku (jō). PHP, 2007. Yamazaki 2005 Yamazaki Mikihiro. “Kindai ni okeru jisha no ‘sōritsu saikō fukkyū’ seigen ni tsuite.” Nihon kenchiku gakkai keikaku kei ronbunshū, 590 (2005), pp. 145– 150. Yoshinaga 2007 Yoshinaga Shin’ichi. “Hirai Kinza, sono shōgai.” In Yoshinaga Shin’ichi, ed. Hirai Kinza ni okeru Meiji Bukkyō no kokusaika ni kansuru shūkyōshi bunkashi teki kenkyū, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (KAKENHI, supported by JSPS, 2004–2006) , 2007, pp.7–30. Translated by Ryan Ward and John Breen.

PART 2

URBAN SPACES, LOCAL COMMUNITIES, AND CITYSCAPES

CHAPTER 4

THE MODERN REORGANIZATION OF URBAN SPACE AND KYOTO’S HISTORICITY Nakagawa Osamu Y

INTRODUCTION

Just how was the modern reorganization of urban space in Japan accomplished? In considering this point, the city of Kyoto proves to be a case of very considerable interest. It goes without saying that Kyoto is no simple provincial city. Although it certainly confronted the risk of being reduced to this status with the relocation of the imperial capital to Tokyo in 1869, Kyoto came to be treasured as a city that embodied the “history” of the modern state of Japan.1 Yet, at the same time, modern Kyoto could have possessed an historical politics that was quite at variance with the history that was cherished by the modern state. The burden of the modern state’s history is history imposed from the outside. History that inheres within the city, however, has exerted a powerful political force that has sought to counter this outside imposition. Ever since the period of Warring States in the middle ages, Kyoto had maintained a solid structure of local governance; it was a “townspeople” (machikata) society. And that structure of 1

See, for example, Takagi 2006, pp.128–129. 95

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local governance survived through the Meiji Restoration of the nineteenth century. We must pay due heed to the fact that local governance did not endure from pre-Meiji times as part of a dual structure that ran alongside the one-dimensional spatial dominance of the modern state; rather, local governance in Kyoto appears to have manifested itself, if anything, as a “conservative” political force seeking to resist that dual structure. Above all, Kyoto’s conservative tendencies were most conspicuous in city planning projects that sought to effect the modern reorganization of the city. From the viewpoint of the physical transformation of Kyoto’s urban spaces, it was not so much the pre-Meiji to Meiji transition as it was the mid-Meiji era that witnessed the more drastic change. The Meiji structure of local governance was a legacy from before the Meiji period, and it proved a major force in resisting modern spatial transformations. Of course, the emergence of conservative forces in Kyoto opposed to the modern reorganization of space was evident in all cities in Japan to some degree or another. Yet, in the case of Kyoto, those forces were so conspicuous as to constitute major obstacles to reorganization. What I wish to focus on in this chapter is the practicality of how those obstacles were made manifest at the very sites of spatial reorganization, and how they were subsequently surmounted. Modern spatial reorganization infiltrates the structure of local governance, segmented as it was in early modern times in terms of status and space, seeking to impose one-dimensional control. What kind of resistance occurs on such occasions, and, at the same time, how might the two structures – the modern and the pre-modern – be reconciled? The city of Kyoto provides a highly suggestive historical case study with regard to the essential quality of the modern reorganization of city space. There are two histories then: the “history” embodied by the modern state, and “history” that inheres traditionally in the local community. Modern Kyoto is a city that accommodated both. This chapter is concerned especially with history in the latter – that is, the local – sense. The most important issue here is the practical one of how local governance structure was nurtured

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through pre-modern times to transform itself upon entering the modern age. That practicality is explored here not from within local communities but in the context of their confrontation with, and their response towards, the modern reorganization of space. 1. THE FORMATION OF AN “HISTORICAL CITY”

The process of the modernization of Kyoto City is of particular interest as it began with the crisis of impending collapse that followed in the wake of the relocation of the emperor and his court to Tokyo in 1869. Kyoto had no choice but to embark haphazardly on a program of urban management projects to revitalize the vacated city. As if in sympathy with the Meiji government and its attempts to push ahead with the promotion of industry to effect state modernization, Kyoto began by seeking to transform itself into a modern industrial city. That process clearly began to appear with the so-called “Kyoto strategy” (Kyōto saku), implemented by Makimura Masanao, the second governor of Kyoto Prefecture. Makimura’s Kyoto strategy involved shedding traditional handicraft industries, and pressing ahead aggressively with modern industrialization. The strategy was in essence about eliminating all traditional elements in the name of “abandoning outmoded practices.” 2 This strategy was further manifest in the Lake Biwa Canal engineering works, an undertaking that was executed by Makimura’s successor, Kitagaki Kunimichi, as a means of constituting the infrastructure for the city’s modern industry.3 However, it is probably the case that, in actual fact, modern industry had not really established itself in Kyoto before this time. Technological innovation in some fashion or another was taking place in traditional industries, too, but there were almost no signs of these industries metamorphosing into modern factory production, employing modern production practices. It was the Lake Biwa Canal project, which was representative of civil 2 3

Kyōto Shi 1975, pp.41–50. Kyōto Shi 1975, pp.51–56.

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engineering and construction projects in Meiji period Japan, that became the symbol of Kyoto’s modern revitalization. Kyoto transformed itself by virtue of this project from a city in decline to a modern city. The water drawn from Lake Biwa was used for a multiplicity of ends, but it alone rendered possible the supply to the city of electricity by hydroelectric power. What demands our scrutiny here with regard to Kyoto’s modern spatial transformation is the location of Okazaki, which was completely reborn as a result of the Lake Biwa Canal project. Located to the east of the Kamo River, this area acquired significance in the Heian period (794–1185) because of the Shirakawadono palace and the Rokushō-ji temple complex which was built in its surrounds. However, it was laid waste to first during the fourteenth century civil war fought between supporters of the North and South courts, and then again in the fifteenth century Ōnin Wars. In early modern times, the Okazaki area accommodated rows of samurai villas, but almost all of these subsequently disappeared when the emperor relocated with his court to Tokyo. The area eventually turned into an expanse of arable land, an abandoned district, as it were. This was the area through which the Lake Biwa Canal was to run. Hydroelectric power generation was not included among the initial aims of the Lake Biwa Canal project. The original plan was to construct a cluster of factories relying on waterwheels as their source of power in Okazaki and surrounding areas, at the tunnel exit on the Kyoto side of the canal, and in particular, in the Shishigatani neighborhood alongside the water channel that traveled northwards. Located east of the Kamo River as it was, there existed no municipal institutions or manufacturing facilities in Okazaki before this time. The Okazaki area was imagined as the site of Kyoto’s Meiji rebirth as a modern industrial city. However, Okazaki came to acquire a character quite contrary to that of a factory district, and this was owing entirely to the development of hydroelectric power. In 1895, this area became the venue for hosting the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition and for the celebrations to commemorate the eleven hundredth anniversary of the founding of the capital Heian. The historian,

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Kasahara Kazuto, has analyzed this series of events, and the verdict he reaches is that they were “precisely the point at which Kyoto was first rendered visible as an ‘historical tourist city.’”4 If we assume that Kasahara is right, then we can probably allow that Kyoto’s positioning as an “historical city” embodying the history of the modern state – in the sense referred to in the introduction above – was already established by now. Indeed, in the wake of these events, Okazaki certainly became a singular locale premised upon Kyoto’s new character as historical city. Following the dismantling of the exhibition buildings, the site saw the erection of numerous public facilities in rapid succession: Kyoto City Zoo in 1903, Kyoto Prefectural Library in 1909, Kyoto Municipal Commercial Gallery in 1910, the International Exhibition Hall in 1911, Kyoto Municipal Public Hall in 1917, and the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art in 1919. The whole Okazaki district was being developed as modern park space.5 People had assumed that Shishigatani and surrounding areas north of Okazaki would be turned into a factory zone, but it was actually destined to expand into a residential area accommodating villas and mansions. This transformation began in the latter half of the Meiji period (1868–1912) and continued through to the Taisho period (1912–1923).6 The creation of this villa and mansion district was the achievement of the entrepreneur Tsukamoto Yosaji and the seventh generation landscape gardener, Ogawa Jihē. Ogawa used iron piping to draw water from the Lake Biwa Canal into the residence gardens that he himself landscaped one after the other. Tsukamoto, for his part, not only owned land in the vicinity of the Nanzenji Temple in the Okazaki area, he also acquired the right to deploy for his own purposes the water from the Lake Biwa Canal. In this way, he was able to draw freely on an abundant supply of water to irrigate the gardens of each of the villas.7 4 5 6 7

Takahashi 2003, pp.142–151. Kyōto Shi 2013, pp.103–106. Kyōto Shi 2013, pp.161–172. For Ogawa Jihē, see for example Amasaki 1990.

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The purchasers of residences which these men were targeting in Okazaki were industrialists and men of means from across Japan. In brief, the reason that private developments such as this were actively pursued was because Kyoto’s renown as an historical tourist city was already assured. In this way, the Okazaki district underwent a substantial metamorphosis from a space once intended as Kyoto’s modern industrial center into one that symbolized the city’s historicity. The transformation of Okazaki was itself symbolic of the fact that great change was implicit in Kyoto’s strategy for urban regeneration, following the period of decline that accompanied the Meiji Restoration. Kyoto was changing tack: it no longer sought rebirth as a modern industrial city; it was embarked now on a new trajectory as “historical city.” Naturally, Kyoto’s status as a city embodying modern Japanese history came into being immediately after the emperor and his court vacated Kyoto and relocated to Tokyo. And, it was the courtier Iwakura Tomomi who, more than anyone, was instrumental in guiding Kyoto to assume this status. In 1883, Iwakura, who never wavered in his insistence on the need to protect the emperor and the imperial household, submitted to the government his “Memorandum Concerning the Preservation of the Kyoto Imperial Palace.”8 In this document, he insisted amongst other things, that imperial enthronements, specifically the sokui and daijōsai rites, be conducted not in Tokyo but at the Kyoto Imperial Palace. He also demanded that a shrine be erected within the grounds of the imperial palace, in order to venerate the divine spirit of Emperor Kanmu, the eighth century founder of the capital, Heian, as Kyoto was originally known. In his memorandum, Iwakura was attempting nothing less than a repositioning of Kyoto as a second capital city to rank alongside Tokyo. It was not least in response to this memorandum of Iwakura’s that the Kyoto prefectural authorities set about creating and 8

On this memorandum, see Takagi 2006, pp.129–130 and the chapters in this volume by Takagi and Breen.

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maintaining the Imperial Palace Gardens, which came to be known as gyoen. This area, which had accommodated the residences of top-ranking court nobles until the dawn of the Meiji Restoration, was refurbished over a period of three years from 1878, and turned into the Imperial Garden (gyoen), surrounded by a stone wall very much like the imperial palace in the erstwhile capital of Heian.9 Subsequently, the Heian Shrine, first proposed by Iwakura Tomomi in his 1883 memorandum, was indeed erected in Okazaki on the occasion of the eleventhcentenary of Heian’s foundation. It was designed as a replica of buildings in the ancient Heian capital. The repositioning of Kyoto as the modern state’s “historical city” thus assumed an evermore “visual” dimension through these processes of spatial production, even as Kyoto sought to transform itself into a modern industrial city. 2. SYMBOLIZING THE CONSERVATIVE: THE “KOSŪWARI” PER CAPITA HOUSE TAX

Kyoto was valued by outsiders, too, as an “historical city,” the embodiment of the history of the modern state. The stage for the visualization of Kyoto as historical city was concentrated entirely on the locale of Okazaki, with the single exception of the refurbished the Kyoto Imperial Garden. In truth, Okazaki became the place that best represented modern Kyoto. What, then, became of the urban areas that already existed since before Meiji times? The verdict must be that pre-existing urban areas with their segmented traditional structure would never have undergone major change even if they had experienced such major events as the Lake Biwa Canal engineering works, the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition or the Eleventh-Centenary of the founding of Heian. The wooden gateways, which were set up in each chō or neighborhood block in early modern times, were removed in 1872. These and other spatial innovations can certainly be interpreted as part of a strategy intended to reorganize urban spaces along modern lines. However, there is no evidence that they led 9

Takagi 2006, pp. 122–132.

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to any great change in people’s actual lifestyles or indeed to the structure of local governance. Above all else, the unit of chō-gumi or block association that had continued since the medieval period of warring states endured into the modern age. Indeed, Kyoto Prefecture used this block association unit as a basis for establishing modern school districts (gakku) when establishing its elementary school network. There were considerable adjustments made, to be sure, but these block associations were restyled and reorganized in Meiji as ban-gumi or resident associations. And these resident associations were the foundation of the modern school districts. This then was the arrangement under which Japan’s first ever primary schools were set up in Kyoto in 1869. These same school districts served further as local organizational units within the Kyoto City administration, and Kyoto City levied a school district tax on each of them. This situation demonstrates how solid and durable the traditional structure of block associations proved at the turn of the modern age. This traditional structure of governance came to exert real power on the ground, as it were, of the modernization strategies deployed by Kyoto municipal administrators. Moreover, this traditional structure did not endure alongside more modern administrative structures; rather, it assumed a political quality that was actively resistant to modernization. The delays in introducing local taxation and the household tax in Kyoto City, and the chaos that accompanied those delays, were indicative of this situation.10 From the late Meiji period onwards, the only independent taxes recognized were the kosūwari “per capita house tax,” and its substitute the household kaoku tax. Both taxes were subject to very significant increases in large cities the length and breadth of Japan owing to severe pressure on local finances. This kosūwari tax was, as the name suggests, a tax calculated by dividing the burden of expenditure for a given area by the total number of households resident in that area. It survived the Meiji Restoration as a proven 10

Nakagawa 1990, pp. 95–138.

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method of raising taxes to cover civil expenses. This tax was collected directly from residents, but many residents at the time rented their accommodation. This meant that the administration of tax collection was fraught with difficulty, and the tax collection deficit problem was profound. This explains why a new “household tax,” one that shifted the object of taxation to the house itself, was implemented in most areas of Japan. Almost all major cities in Japan then replaced the older kosūwari per capita system with the new household tax. However, Kyoto alone persisted with the old per capita system, to which the city gave a new designation: namely the kobetsuzei or “individual house tax”.11 It was Kyoto City councilors, representing the interests of the so-called land-owning wealthy – landowners and house owners – who obstructed the introduction of the new household tax. The city councilors deemed that a household tax levied on householders, and applied even to unoccupied houses, was clearly disadvantageous to the landed wealthy. On the other hand, in Tokyo and Osaka where a newly emerging class of entrepreneurs had entered city assemblies, the household tax was quickly introduced. Landlords of rented properties also were among the specialists who engaged in the modern business of lowering the house vacancy rate while shifting the burden of taxes to rent. The delay in introducing this household tax in Kyoto City had serious repercussions. In the early twentieth century, many Kyoto citizens – in particular, the working population who had moved in to the city from other regions – fled now to neighboring towns and villages because of their dislike of the individual house tax levied on those living in Kyoto City. A working population much smaller than that of Tokyo and Osaka had flowed into Kyoto City, but many of these workers chose now to live outside the city in neighboring towns and villages, where the individual house tax was not levied. This resulted in a sudden boom in construction of rented houses speculating on the population outflow. In other words, the segmented and insular structure of traditional governance in the city duly accelerated the formation of an urban 11

Nakagawa 1990, pp.21–28 and pp. 105–114.

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sprawl. When Kyoto City merged outlying towns and villages in 1918, the Ministry of Home Affairs insisted on the implementation of the new household tax. Thus it was that the tax was finally introduced in the city of Kyoto. In actual fact, it was not just the delay in implementing the new household tax that caused problems. There were other taxes besides in Kyoto, in which traditional political governance seemed to manifest itself. In pre-war Kyoto, for example, there persisted such tax items as “shrine ritual expenditure,” “education board dues,” and “Heian Shrine dues” (hatsuho ryō), the existence of which indicates that a tax system similar to that of early modern Japan was still alive and well. The system was criticized by Osaka newspapers and other observers at the time as a “vice” from ancient times.12 So, on the one hand, Kyoto’s status as an historical city embodying the history of the modern state was visualized at the new location of Okazaki; at the same time, however, in the streets of Kyoto the traditional structure of local governance that had been an integral part of people’s lives from pre-Meiji times surfaced as a force obstructing the modernization of city institutions. Such was the situation that prevailed in Meiji period Kyoto. 3. IMPLEMENTING URBAN RENEWAL AND THE OPPOSITION MOVEMENT

The enduring traditional structures of local rule also raised their head in the issue of infrastructure improvement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Kyoto city implemented numerous full-scale urban renewal projects. Those known as “the three major construction projects” (sandai jigyō) launched in 1908 were the most famous. Specifically, they involved the construction of a second Lake Biwa Canal; the improvement of the service water system using water drawn from this canal; and a major roadwork program that involved expanding the main arteries and the laying of street car tracks along Shijō Street and Karasuma Street. The latter street was newly identified as the route for imperial progresses from Kyoto Station to the Kyoto 12

Ōsaka Asahi shinbun, 27 January 1911.

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Palace.13 The city held celebrations to mark the completion of these projects four years later in 1912. The legacy of these projects was to alter greatly the traditional living spaces of Kyoto. In particular, the road extension works were responsible for physically slicing through and so fragmenting the traditional spatial structure. Accordingly, the conservatism that manifested itself in traditional local rule reacted with fierce opposition to these projects of urban renewal. The renewal plan in Kyoto can be traced back to an original concept proposed in 1889 by Kitagaki Kunimichi, who was then serving as both Kyoto prefectural governor and city mayor. The actual plan, though, was articulated during the administration of Naiki Jinzaburō, who became the first (dedicated) mayor of Kyoto in 1898 after the repeal of municipal government special measures (shisei tokurei) in that year. Mayor Naiki’s draft plan, however, was finally rejected by the Kyoto City Assembly. Many citizens stormed into the assembly chamber that had rejected the bill, and the situation escalated to the point where police had to be mobilized. In this confusion was a complex political climate singular to the Kyoto City Assembly. Municipal administration groups from Kyoto in the early twentieth century formed around a core of persons representing the interests of individual districts such as Shimogyō and Kamigyō, and various factions repeatedly changed their political alignments and regrouped. This situation faithfully reflected the structure of political power in traditional local governance. Moreover, almost all of those municipal administration factions were negative in their attitude towards urban renewal, which meant that reform projects were scuppered time after time. It was only when Naiki Jinzaburō was succeeded as mayor by Saigō Kikujirō that urban reform in Kyoto finally hit its stride. Saigō Kikujirō, who took over from Naiki assuming the post of Kyoto mayor in 1904, was of a quite different background to Naiki. Naiki had been a powerful kimono drapery wholesaler 13

On the three major construction projects, see especially Nakagawa 2015, pp.92–150.

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born and bred in the city. Saigō by contrast had absolutely no connection to Kyoto; he was the son of the great Restoration leader, Saigō Takamori. He was specially selected as mayor of Kyoto, having earned high praise for his achievements in Taiwan where he had put in place a service water system.14 It was under Mayor Saigō’s powerful leadership that those urban reforms collectively known as the three major construction projects finally came to fruition. Even so, an anti-modernization movement endured throughout these projects. Opposition to the road extension works, in particular, was deep-rooted. In 1910, a citizens’ group styling itself the Association for the Promotion of Modifications to Shijō Street (Shijō henkō kisei dōmei kai) was formed to oppose major extension works scheduled to be carried out on Shijō Street.15 The Association’s view that road extension works should be shifted from Shijō to other streets had been circulating for some time. It was reported that, back in 1906 when the draft bill for the road engineering works was finally passed, various blocks in the vicinity of Shijō Street had submitted a written petition to City Hall, which was then delivered to the City Assembly. Yet, the activities of this Association for the Promotion of Modifications to Shijō Street, formed immediately prior to the start of land purchases, were far grander in scale than any of the other activities that preceded it. The association was formed when inhabitants of twenty-eight blocks, an area which included the stretch of Shijō Street in Kyoto City from the Gion area in the east all the way west to the Shijō Ōmiya intersection, banded together in protest. And, from each of the blocks in the association, two to four representative members were selected, who distributed a petition to the governor, mayor, aldermen, and city councilors in attempts to win them over. One can certainly read into their opposition to road extension works a desire to conserve in tact the longestablished structure of local governance. Firstly, they pointed 14 15

On the tenure of Naiki and Saigō, see Nakagawa 2015, pp.92–150. Nakagawa 2015, pp. 125–150.

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out as “disadvantageous from the point of view of the city” that, in Kyoto with its chequer-board style street planning, the streets in need of expansion were not necessarily bustling Shijō and other streets like it. Rather, it was those that ran adjacent to it that demanded attention. The widening of adjacent streets would have the additional benefit of reducing the cost of land purchases. Secondly, they asserted it was highly dangerous to lay streetcar tracks along busy streets like Shijō, and that streetcars would, moreover, impede the progress of the floats that were pulled along Shijō in the summer Gion Festival.16 Of additional interest is the association’s assertion of disadvantage for the inhabitants living along the major streets scheduled for widening. The association pointed out that for retailers and tradesmen who arrange their goods in front of their stores, it was, if anything, the very narrowness of these thoroughfares that stimulated business; and, they contended, the dust produced by streetcars passing by would damage their goods. This was the basis of their insistence on the need to protect traditional livelihoods and occupations from the modernization of space. Their position was quite different to that of the city administration, with its urban policy concerns. The Kyōto hinode newspaper published the petition submitted by the Association for the Promotion of Modifications to Shijō Street, and then over a period of three days carried pieces critical of their claims. In these articles, the newspaper dismissed one claim after another: the protestors completely failed to understand the merits of widening the streets; it was, indeed, Shijō Street running through the city from east to west that should be widened and extended; and, moreover, there were ways of dealing with all the various points that they insisted were disadvantageous.17 Ultimately, the petition presented by the association was not accepted, and the purchase of land essential for road extension works along Shijō duly went ahead in November 1910. It should be noted here that land purchases were completed without 16 17

Nakagawa 2015, pp.125–150. Kyōto hinode shinbun, 13 March 1910.

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serious complications, even though they began in the immediate aftermath of the protestors’ campaign. Consultations over land purchases along Shijō began on 23 November 1910. On 4 April of the following year, the number of those persons consenting had already reached 278, or 97% of the total number of 286 persons targeted in consultations. Eventually, only four people refused to consent to the land purchases, and on 15 July 1911 a land expropriation review board was set up.18 It approved Kyoto City’s argument for purchases of land, with the exception of a small number of buildings. So, how was it that land purchase negotiations succeeded in such a short time given the difficulty of these circumstances? The activities of special organizations called kōdō kumiai, which were a sort of block-based committee, may be relevant here. They served as a bridge between city administration and the local blocks. To promote land purchases, Kyoto City commissioned heads of these block-based committees to lead the consultations. The committees were established back in 1897 in each block in accordance with rules set forth by Kyoto City. It was only in Kyoto – of all pre-war Japanese cities – that such block committees existed.19 In Kyoto, resilient block organizations of one sort or another, had endured ever since the medieval warring states period, and were maintained even after the Meiji Restoration. As mentioned above, the administrative units of block associations were reorganized as ban gumi – which might be translated as block resident associations – and these subsequently became the foundation of the gakku or elementary school districts. Initially, these school districts served as one of the organizational units in Kyoto City’s administration. Blocks were placed under these school districts, and there were block representatives (known as chō sōdai) who functioned in an administrative capacity. When in 1889 the Meiji government implemented its municipal reforms, all Kyoto administration was transferred to the city, specifically to the two 18

19

For a detailed study of these developments, see Nakagawa 2015, pp. 125–150. See Kobayashi 1996 for the role of these kōdō kumiai.

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ward offices in Kamigyō and Shimgyō respectively. However, concern arose lest the blocks prove themselves no longer capable of responding to administrative demands. Also, at the same time, it was feared that the close bonds of block organizations that had been so resilient till then would endure in name only. These were the circumstances in which the aforementioned block organizations or kōdō kumiai came into being. They were voluntary bodies, dislocated from formal administrative structures, but they offered administrative support within each block.20 The role actually played by these blocks was major. Had they ended up integrated into the Kyoto municipal administration, those members involved in consulting on land purchases probably would not have been able to fulfill their functions. It was because the blocks occupied a third-party position between the city administration on the one hand and block residents on the other that their members were able to function successfully as intermediaries, and so proceed with the negotiations to purchase land. Kyoto City reasoned with block residents through the mediation of these committees – specifically with the committee heads – regarding the significance of the road expansion works, and arrangements for land purchase negotiations. It was this strategy, in turn, that helped win over block residents. Henceforth, these block committees would play a decisive role, for example, in collecting donations for large-scale municipal events, and for regulating those events. In other words, the committees functioned as a force complementing the administration’s modernization. They did not become an agent of resistance to the administration; nor did they serve to protect the traditional structure of local governance. 4. THE ACCOMMODATION OF MODERN SPACE AND DESIGN

As described above, the urban renewal of Kyoto was hampered by the sense of history that inhered in people’s daily lives; and yet it was dependent on these block committees to bring to frui20

Kyōto Shi 2013, pp. 28–30.

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tion the three major construction projects. Kyoto’s inhabitants did not immediately accept the modern spaces that newly took shape before them, so how were they to make sense and make use of these spaces: the widened streets along which ran streetcars on which they had never before set eyes? That required both experience and learning. In fact, it appears that locals were at first frequent critics of the streets widened and extended under the three major construction projects. At the time of their completion, people allegedly poked fun saying, “The streets have been widened so much, you’ll catch cold before you get to the other side.”21 In short, they remained unable to grasp the significance of the road widening. Figure 1 shows Karasuma Street immediately after its widening. There are rows of Kyō machiya or traditional Kyoto town houses on both sides of the street, but almost no buildings befitting a modern street are in evidence. Evidently, it was not possible for modes of living to change

Figure 1:

Karasuma Street after Road Extension Works

(Source: Kyōto Shi ed. Kyōto sandai jigyō shi. Kyōto Shi, 1912.) 21

See on this, Hata 1964.

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by simply widening the street alone. Yet, subsequently, people would acquire an appreciation of the significance of these widened streets. The ceremonies to celebrate the completion of the three major construction projects were held with due pomp and splendor over two days starting 15 June 1912 in Okazaki Park, a space that had come to symbolize modern Kyoto. An enormous grand arch was temporarily erected, and lively soirées were held at the Exhibition Hall inside the park. What was notable here is the fact that these celebrations were not limited only to Okazaki; they reverberated through various other parts of the city as well. Even Shijō Street, whose residents had initially risen up in opposition to the road extension works, was adorned on both sides with pennants and other “dazzling decorations”; and illuminations “in their thousands” were lit up at night. The city’s newly commissioned electric streetcars were also decked out in elaborate floral designs, and driven along the streets at night aglow with illuminations. Still larger scale festive events designed to convey the significance of urban reform were hosted just three years later in 1915 to celebrate the Taishō emperor’s rites of accession. Iwakura Tomomi, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, had argued that the accession rites of Emperor Meiji’s descendants be conducted in Kyoto, in order to situate it better as an “historic city,” the embodiment of the history of the modern Japanese state. There were naturally enough those who believed that the modern accession should better be conducted in the modern imperial capital of Tokyo, but the Imperial Household Law of 1889 ultimately stipulated Kyoto as the future venue for these events. The accession rites, namely the sokui and the daijōsai, for both Taisho and Showa emperors were duly held in Kyoto. They were performed as major state events on the stage of Kyoto City. These imperial festivities resembled the celebrations to mark the completion of the three major construction projects except in terms of their scale, which was infinitely vaster. The Kyoto accession rites also involved the relocation of the emperor’s

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entire government to Kyoto for the duration of the accession. The organs of government too were moved temporarily to Kyoto. Preparations on a previously unimaginable scale were implemented, and almost all of the venues for the various rites were constructed entirely anew. The actual enthronement involved the daily hosting of a flurry of functions over a period of twenty four days starting on 6 November 1915. The main ritual events were the sokui, the daijōsai, and the related banquets that followed.22 Naturally, almost all the state ceremonial accompanying the emperor’s enthronement was performed at facilities set up inside the Imperial Palace, but the Taikyō banquet, a new creation for the Taishō emperor’s accession, was held at the Nijō Imperial Villa, formerly known as Nijō Castle, the better to accommodate the large numbers of invitees. This was one of the ways in which the enthronement was able to engage the entire city of Kyoto. Karasuma Street, which runs north to the Imperial Palace from Kyoto station, was already identified for development as the imperial progress route. However, Marutamachi, which runs westwards from the Imperial Palace towards the Nijō Imperial Villa, was also now designated an imperial progress route. Consequently, Karasuma and Marutamachi, both just extended, came to constitute an important part of the stage for the emperor’s enthronement.23 Kyoto Prefecture, which took charge of managing the crowds expected to line the emperor’s routes, set up special “emperorworship spots” (hōhaiseki), where senior government officials, members of nongovernmental organizations, foreigners, and other eligible persons could bear witness to the emperor’s progress. In addition, the prefectural authorities allowed the general public freedom to watch the emperor pass by. The newly widened and extended Karasuma and Marutamachi Streets were capable of accommodating crowds in excess of 100,000 people, and in fact those that lined the streets of Kyoto in November 22 23

Taishō tairei Kyōto fu kiji, shomu bu, jōkan. Kyōto Fu, 1917, pp. 1–17. Taishō tairei Kyōto fu kiji, shomu bu, jōkan. Kyōto Fu, 1917, pp. 17–18.

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1915 numbered many, many more. A good number of people living along these streets rented out their porches or house-fronts to the public as emperor viewing spots (haikansho) or emperor worship seats (hōhaiseki). People did not simply flock to the streets to revere the emperor as he passed. The accession rites saw a great many celebratory and commemorative events, many of which were hosted by the prefecture, or by the city or by festive committees of one sort or another convened by men of influence in Kyoto, and by the block committees previously referred to. In brief, events actively organized by Kyoto citizens were held day in day out, quite in addition to imperial court events. Street decorations formed the core of these proceedings.24 Karasuma and Marutamachi Streets, extended and widened now after the three major construction projects, and designated as imperial progress routes, were suitably decorated in a variety of ways. The costs of these street decorations were largely underwritten by Kyoto City and the so-called Enthronement Celebration Association (Tairei hōshukukai). Of the very significant donations it raised for the enthronement, it allocated by far the largest portion to street decorations. To be precise, street decorations were funded to the tune of 50,000 yen out of a total of over 132,500 yen donated. Moneys thus raised were used also to cover entertainment expenses for foreign diplomats. The remaining sum of just over 60,000 yen was donated to the city for use in the construction of a public hall (kōkaidō) that Kyoto City had been planning.25 The Enthronement Celebration Association disbursed funding on street decorations because it judged the decorations as they had been planned by the city to be overly modest in scale. Negotiations were held between the Enthronement Celebration Association and Kyoto City, and they agreed that the city would bear the costs for decorating the telegraph poles along the streetcar tracks that ran through Karasuma and Marutamachi Streets, as well as the costs of erecting the Grand Ceremonial Arch 24 25

Tairei hōshuku kai kiyō, Tairei Hōshuku Kai, 1923, pp.67–69. Taishō tairei Kyōto fu kiji, shomu bu, gekan. Kyōto Fu, 1917, pp. 293–302.

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(Daihōshuku mon) in front of Kyoto Station. The Enthronement Celebration Association, for its part, would shoulder the financial burden of the remaining street decorations, such as those on either side of the streets. Almost all the streets as well as the grand ceremonial arch and the telegraph poles decorated by Kyoto City were adorned with electric lights, so that they could be illuminated at night; and it was the Enthronement Celebration Association that took charge of these installations. Enthronement-inspired street decorations were, of course, not limited to just Kyoto; they were implemented in cities nationwide, as well as in the colonies of Taiwan and Korea. Yet, the evidence suggests that they were particularly extravagant in Kyoto where the enthronement was performed.26 So, exactly how extravagant were they? Firstly, the Grand Ceremonial Arch erected outside Kyoto station stood at the great height of some twenty seven

Figure 2:

Grand Ceremonial Arch, temporarily erected in front of Kyoto Station

(Source: Kyōto Fu ed. Taishō tairei Kyōto fu kiji (ge), Kyōto Fu, 1917)

26

Gosokui shiki taitenroku kōhen. Gosokui Taiten Kinenkai, 1915, pp. 345–349.

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Figure 3:

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Decorations along Karasuma Street

(Source: Kyōto Fu ed. Taishō tairei Kyōto fu kiji (ge), Kyōto Fu, 1917)

meters, as can be seen in Figure 2. Figure 3 shows how elaborate were the telegraph pole and street-side decorations on the Karasuma and Marutamachi Streets, along which the imperial party would progress. It is said that thirty-four yen was invested in the decoration of each telegraph pole. Of special note here is the decoration design. The grand ceremonial arch was to be built in the “secession style,” and though commemorative arches like this had already been built throughout Japan, the majority of them adopted a Japanese style using the form of the torii shrine gate or kabuki mon roofed gate. Even in Tokyo, where streets were adorned with decorations as in Kyoto, a gigantic ceremonial arch was erected at Nihonbashi but this, too, was in the form of a roofed gate. However, it was only Kyoto that adopted an arch in manifestly Western style design for the enthronement rites.27 Telegraph pole and street-side decorations were of course not Japanese-style either. Had the street decorations been for a conventional festival or similar event, drapes patterned with red-and-white stripes and sacred straw-rope festoons would have 27

Nakagawa 2002, pp.4–10.

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been deployed. Decorations of precisely this sort were indeed in evidence along Tokyo street routes for the enthronement celebrations. Indeed, at the Shōwa emperor’s enthronement celebrations conducted in 1928, street-side decorations in Kyoto reverted to this more traditional kind. In other words, a new design quite obviously different from the traditional was adopted for the Taishō emperor’s enthronement. The new design can be confirmed in Figure 3. But it was not just the routes along which the imperial party progressed that were decorated. In keeping with the road extension works of the three major construction projects, the bridges over the Kamo River at Shijō, Shichijō and Marutamachi were re-built in 1913, and these were also bedecked. Notably, Kyoto City erected an elaborate ceremonial arch roughly eleven meters high at the great Shijō Bridge. This arch too, could hardly be called Japanese in style. The bridge itself was adorned with illuminations. Decorations put up by citizens in other parts of the city were clearly in the more traditional style of lanterns, red-and-white striped drapes and roofed gates. In other words, only the design of the street decorations, as implemented systematically by the Enthronement Celebration Association and by Kyoto City, was in Western-style or, at least, consciously modern in style, and so at odds with more conventional traditional designs. The person responsible for the design of the street decorations for the Taishō enthronement was the architect Takeda Goichi. Takeda served as professor at the Kyoto Handicraft High School (Kyōto Kōtō Kōgei Gakkō) from 1903 and then became professor at Kyoto Imperial University in 1920. He designed multiple architectural works, and came to exert a profound influence on the architectural culture of Kyoto. He is also renowned as an architect who, motivated by his studies in Europe, introduced art nouveau, secession and other new modes of design to Japan.28 The fact is that Kyoto City was bold enough to entrust to this architect the design of decorations to mark the emperor’s enthronement. We can safely assume that the decorations were always intended to 28

On Takeda Goichi, see Ishida 1996, pp.41–48.

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be of a fit with the new street spaces opened up by road extension works as part of Kyoto’s urban renewal program. It is hardly surprising then that the city sought out new designs – not the more traditional decorations of red-and-white striped drapes or lanterns – for the newly widened and extended roads. 5. IN SEARCH OF A NEW “HISTORY”

Western-style designs consciously reflecting modernization, visible in all the street decorations for the enthronement, were consistent throughout Kyoto. The great Shijō and Shichijō bridges that were re-built by Kyoto City were also Western in design. The city entrusted both bridges – scheduled for completion in 1913 – to Moriyama Matsunosuke, engineer to the Governor General of Taiwan.29 The bridges of steel-reinforced concrete which he designed were based on the same modern secession artistic style as the Grand Ceremonial Arch built in Kyoto for the emperor’s enthronement. (Figure 4)

Figure 4:

Shijō Bridge re-built by Kyoto City

(Source: Picture postcard; author’s possession) 29

Nishizawa 2008, p. 43; p.280.

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However, a completely different design was incorporated into the great Gojō and Sanjō bridges spanning the Kamo River, rebuilt at the instigation of Kyoto Prefecture at around the same time. The former was completed in 1911, and the latter a year later. Kyoto Prefecture had always asserted that the historical scenic beauty of Kyoto should be preserved, which is why it refused to authorize Kyoto City’s plan to build a railway along the banks of the Kamo River. For this reason, these two bridges adopted a design that might best be termed “Momoyama-retro,” for they recalled a late medieval style, in which the bridges appeared to be made of wood in spite of the partial use of steel reinforcements. (Figure 5) The realization of the prefecture’s retro-look design shows that antimodernization forces were present even at the administrative level, where one might have anticipated a direct push toward modernization. Be that as it may, the fact is that the great bridges at both Sanjō and Gojō were made wider than the wooden bridges that existed up till then, and their structure and materials were distinctly modern. In other words, we have here what might perhaps be understood not as a powerful force seeking to thwart modernization but, rather, as a “wobble” that occurred in the face of attempts to modernize in terms of both space and design.

Figure 5:

Sanjō Bridge as re-built by Kyoto Prefecture

(Source: Picture postcard; author’s possession)

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That “wobble” was manifest too in the arguments of citizens who accepted the road extension works. The fashioning of the form of the streets, and the appearance they came to adopt in the wake of the road expansion works, were left in the hands of individual landowners and householders. Precisely these matters became the objects of debate. At the opening ceremony of the great Shijō Bridge in March 1913, following the completion of the road widening, the approaches to the bridge on the east and west sides were decorated with arches and illuminated at night, which made this a grand ceremony. However, the residents of Otabi block, adjacent to the west side of the bridge on Shijō Street, and active participants in the opening ceremony, took it upon themselves to debate the style in which houses and buildings might be built before the bridge was opened to traffic. It was the wish of Otabi block residents to revamp Shijō Street, scheduled for widening and extension, with completely new brick and stonework buildings. And in cooperation with the surrounding two blocks, they actively proposed to the municipal assembly in July 1909 that both the north and south sides be widened. Their proposal was accepted, and actually resulted in a new appearance to either side of Shijō. At the end of the following year, storekeeper activists in Otabi block asked the afore-mentioned Takeda Goichi to create a “model plan” for effecting an aesthetic unity to the appearance of the buildings to be erected. Furthermore, at the beginning of the following year, these activists appointed a committee to conduct additional surveys, exploring whether it was better “to adopt a Western style or a compromise between Japanese and Western styles (wayō secchū).” They sought the views of the Chamber of Commerce and members of other committees tasked with promoting industry in Kyoto.30 Unfortunately, however, it is practically impossible to know now what kind of roadside townscape these discussions resulted in, since almost all of those stores today have been rebuilt or renovated. Of course, debates of this 30

Kyōto hinode shinbun, 30 December 1910; 15 January 1911.

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sort were the exception not the rule, even in the very areas where road extension works were carried out. Yet, the fact that debates took place at all helps make the point that, from the outset, there were no set design models for the new spaces that opened up as a result of road extension. Citizens and administrators alike wished to choose from all the possible options the form they thought most suitable. CONCLUSION

We have explored here the development of Okazaki district, the delay in introducing the household tax, the wrangling leading up to the materialization of the three major construction projects, the street decorations for the Taishō enthronement rites, and the retro look incorporated into bridge designs by Kyoto Prefecture, amongst other urban developments. I have sought to demonstrate how the traditional structure of local governance found expression in these events as a conservative force. What I wish to point up here, above all, is the fact that this conservative force did not simply continue to confront modernization. The traditional structure of local governance – segmented in terms of social standing and in spatial terms – and the modern structure of power, which aimed at centralized administration, each made accommodations and compromises with the other at precisely the point where the reorganization of urban space actually occurred. Undoubtedly, one can perceive this conservative force as an “obstacle” in the failure to introduce the new household tax, and in the movement against road extension works, for example. However, all of these obstacles were overcome in one fashion or another. This can be seen clearly at the birth of the modern urban space that resulted from the road extension works, and in the process of its acceptance. Streets that had till now been cut off by wooden gateways, for example, were widened and extended into spacious streets that afforded a view of city areas as far as the eye could see. People whose lives had been enclosed within neigh-

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borhoods could now travel to anywhere in the city using the newly available streetcars. Residents and organizations alike first resisted this kind of change, but gradually came to accept it. And, in the course of their acceptance, the arbitration mechanism of organizations like the afore-mentioned block-based committees known as kōdō kumiai was set in place. However, the search for a history of Kyoto that met the needs of the modern Japanese state proceeded apace, and acceptance of these changes resulted in efforts to design a new history and give shape to a new urban landscape. One example of these attempts was the formation in the Okazaki quarter of the city of a community of villas and residences with Japanese gardens. This, indeed, symbolized the spectacle of Kyoto as it transformed from a “modern industrial city” into an “historical city.” And, notwithstanding the emergence of modern urban spaces out of large-scale road works, local government and local citizens alike sought to preserve Kyoto’s scenic beauty. At the government level, Kyoto Prefecture built bridges with a retro look; at the more popular level amongst storekeepers, say, there was a movement to seek out stylish store design models after the road extension works had been completed. So, how did Kyoto eventually look, as a result of these multiple endeavors? The search to construct a unique look and design for Meiji period Kyoto, even as it pursued modernization, was not obviously inherited by subsequent city planning projects. This was because city planning projects in Japan became a state concern or, more precisely, a concern of the Ministry of Home Affairs, following the enactment of the City Planning Law (Toshi keikaku hō) of 1919. Consequently, the sorts of ideas and conflicts that surfaced quite naturally as Kyoto confronted modernization were eliminated, and projects were implemented from the center in accord with modern planning methods. Undoubtedly, it was this that enabled the formation of the modern, rational city. At the same time, the diverse and volatile spectacle that we have observed here of people searching for the historicity of Kyoto was lost.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amasaki 1990 Amasaki Hiromasa, ed. Ueji no niwa: Ogawa Jihē no sekai. Tankōsha, 1990. Hata 1964 Hata Tomikichi “50nen mae no omoide no kataru.” 1964. Ishida 1996 Ishida Junichirō. Kansai no kindai kenchiku, Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1996. Kobayashi 1996 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Kōdō kumiai no setsuritsu o megutte: 1890 nendai no chiiki shakai to gyōsei.” Atarashii rekishigaku no tame ni 234 (1996), pp.1–14. Kyōto Shi 1975 Kyōto Shi, ed. Kyōto no rekishi 8: Koto no kindai. Gakugei Shorin, 1975. Kyōto Shi 2013 Kyōto Shi, Nara Bunkazai Kenkyūjo Bunka Isan Bu Keikan Kenkyūshitsu, ed. Kyōto Okazaki no bunkateki keikan: chōsa hōkokusho. Kyōto Shi, 2013. Nakagawa 1990 Nakagawa Osamu. Jūzei toshi: mō hitotsu no kōgai jūtaki shi. Sumai no Toshokan Shuppankyoku, 1990. Nakagawa 2002 Nakagawa Osamu. Kyōto modān kenchiku no hakken. Tankōsha, 2002. Nakagawa 2015 Nakagawa Osamu. Kyōto to kindai, Kajima Institute Publishing, 2015. Nishizawa 2008 Nishizawa Yasuhiko. Nihon shokuminchi kenchikuron. Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2008. Takagi 2006 Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei to koto. Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Translated by Julian Holmes and John Breen

CHAPTER 5

THE ELEVENTH-CENTENARY OF THE FOUNDING OF HEIAN AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF HEIAN SHRINE Kobayashi Takehiro Y

INTRODUCTION

The eleventh-centenary of the founding of Heian was a city festival held in Kyoto in 1895. Its spatial setting was the Okazaki district on the eastern bank of the Kamo River, where the Heian Shrine stands today. Into the southern part of this district extended the site of the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition, and together the two events – exhibition and eleventh-centenary – brought great crowds to the city that year. Between Okazaki and Kyoto station ran the nation’s first streetcars, which attracted much attention in publications like the illustrated magazine Fūzoku gahō. The success of the eleventh-centenary celebrations proved infectious, and became the model for many other city festivals. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in the historical significance of such events, and this has also led people to a reconsideration of Kyoto’s Eleventh-Centenary. Elsewhere, I have focused on city festivals as the embodiment of diverse historical awareness in a given local society, and argued the importance of considering the contested nature of such events.1 1

See Kobayashi 2006. Kobayashi 2007 also comprises a synopsis in English. 123

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In brief, Kyoto city’s merchants and traders proposed the Eleventh-Centenary as a way of promoting the city. It was initially conceived as a public celebration of the city of Kyoto, in contrast to more conservative, reactionary campaigning for a public celebration of Emperor Kanmu, the city’s eighth century founder. It was due to competition with other cities to attract the National Industrial Exhibition, and to links with members of the nobility and bureaucrats who favored staging the exhibition and EleventhCentenary simultaneously, that the Eleventh-Centenary subsequently escalated in scale, transforming from a city festival to a national festival. Kyoto faced powerful competition from the likes of Tokyo and Osaka to attract the government-sponsored exhibition. And to secure the Eleventh-Centenary, Kyoto had no choice but to heed the views of the government leaders in Tokyo. In this chapter, I explore the context for the preparations for the Eleventh-Centenary and the National Industrial Exhibition. I consider, in particular, how the site for the Eleventh-Centenary came to be constituted as the Heian Shrine. Heian Shrine is, perhaps, the best known of the many shrines constructed in the modern era, and books and tourist literature for a general audience have tended to stress that it was constructed with the support of the people in the ferment of the celebrations. A detailed review of contemporary minutes and records from the time reveals a rather different picture, however. Here I share with the reader the twists and turns of events, relying on archival information to explore the situation in Kyoto. Political and social activity as well as cultural and religious contexts demand our attention. In researching this chapter, I have consulted the Kyoto City Council Resolutions (Kyōto shi sanjikai giketsusho) kept by the city of Kyoto, the Supporters’ Association Logbook (Kyōsankai nisshi) and the Diary of the Tokyo branch of the Supporters’ Association for the Eleventh-Centenary of the Transfer of the Capital to Heian kyō (Heian sento kinensai kyōsankai Tōkyō jimusho nikki). The latter two sources are held in the archives of the Heian Shrine. I avoid overly detailed references to these several sources in the interests of clarity and concision.

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1. THE SUPPORTERS’ ASSOCIATION FOR THE ELEVENTHCENTENARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE CAPITAL HEIAN I. THE FESTIVAL COMMITTEE (KINENSAI IINKAI) AND SUPPORTERS’ ASSOCIATION (KYŌSANKAI)

On 26 May 1892, the Kyoto City Assembly (Shikai) passed a resolution proposing it host celebrations to mark the foundation of Kyoto – or Heian as it was formerly known – eleven hundred years before. At this point, the Eleventh-Centenary was solely the preserve of Kyoto City. On the same day Kyoto City Council appointed the following dignitaries to a new Festival Committee, and pressed ahead with preparations: Amenomori Kikutarō, prefectural and city councilor, president of the Hinode newspaper company and sponsor of Kyoto arts and crafts; Nakano Chūhachi, entrepreneur engaged in pharmaceuticals, and vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce; Tōshi Kichibei, founder of Tōshi Books, President of the Kyoto Booksellers Union, and vice chairman of Kyoto City Council; and Usui Kosaburō, editor of Kyoto’s first history, the Heian tsūshi, and author of Kyōto bōmokushi, a pioneering gazetteer. The Festival Committee brief was to explore how best to implement the Eleventh-Centenary.2 The city assembly also took a decision on this day to bid to host the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition in Kyoto that coincided with the Eleventh-Centenary. At the June session of the Festival Committee, members decided that if Kyoto failed in its bid, they would instead organize a Kyoto city “memorial exhibition” as a boost for the Eleventh-Centenary. In July, some of Kyoto’s most eminent individuals travelled to Tokyo to work on members of the nobility and political heavyweights. These men included Hamaoka Kōtetsu, founder of the Hinode newspaper company, publisher, chairman of the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and member of the Kyoto Prefectural and City Assemblies and Nakamura Eisuke, a leading Kyoto politician and businessman. Konoe Atsumaro and other Tokyo-resident nobles pledged their cooperation, and at the 2

For sources in this section, see Kobayashi 2006. For details of the preparations for the Eleventh-Centenary, I have referred to Wakamatsu 1896, and Kyōto Shi Sanjikai 1896.

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Festival Committee meeting held on 11 July, it was argued that the Eleventh-Centenary should be on a grand scale, not one simply for the city of Kyoto.3 Once the bidding to host the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition was in full swing, Kyoto City drove forward as a single package the hosting of the Eleventh-Centenary and National Industrial Exhibition. On 26 July, the city assembly nominated committee members to assume charge of the National Industrial Exhibition, as well as of the laying of a railway track between Kyoto and Maizuru in the north of Kyoto Prefecture. The aforementioned Amenomori, Nakano, Tōshi, Usui, Nakamura, Hamaoka, and the nobleman Kuze Michifumi joined the committee for the National Industrial Exhibition, while Nakamura, Hamaoka, and Kuze were also appointed to the Festival Committee. This crossover of personnel is a clear indication of the city coordinating the two agendas. The Kyoto-resident members of the Festival Committee originally intended to hold the Eleventh Centenary in 1894, exactly eleven centuries after the foundation of the capital Heian, and to host the National Industrial Exhibition in the same year. However, in August 1892, the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, Sano Tsunetami and his vice-minister Nishimura Sutezō, declared that the National Industrial Exhibition should be held in Kyoto in 1896, given the length of time needed for preparations. Kyoto responded that this would diminish the significance of the Eleventh-Centenary, and the government duly conceded in September that the exhibition might be brought forward a year, and held in 1895 concurrently with the celebrations. At this point, though, Tokyo and Osaka were still in the running for the exhibition, so Kyoto was anxious to transform the government position into reality. To this end, members of the Festival Committee and the National Industrial Exhibition Committee went to work on influential figures in Tokyo. The pretext was raising contributions for the centenary, but the real aim was to establish in the nation’s capital an influential supporters’ association. 3

Hinode shinbun, 22 July 1892.

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In November, Kyoto Prefectural Governor Senda Sadaaki met in Kyoto with Hamaoka, Amenomori and Usui and several eminent businessmen. They were joined by members of the Festival Committee. Styling themselves the Founding Committee of the Supporters’ Association, they decided they needed a Tokyo-based chairman and a Kyoto-based vice-chairman. Prefectural Governor Senda received endorsement from the Kyoto side. In December, members of Osaka City Council, who had been competing with Kyoto for the National Industrial Exhibition, decided to throw their weight behind Kyoto. II. THE SUPPORTERS’ ASSOCIATION AND KYOTO CITY

Preparations for the Eleventh-Centenary got into full swing in 1893, after it was decided by way of debate in the House of Representatives that the Eleventh-Centenary and National Industrial Exhibition would indeed be held simultaneously in 1895. Kyoto City and Kyoto Prefecture both set about creating structures essential to the hosting these national events. In early March 1893, Kyoto City Assembly sanctioned the creation of yet another committee, the Special Committee for the Eleventh-Centenary. Seven members of the city assembly were appointed including Amenomori, Nakamura, Tōshi, Hamaoka, Kuze, and Usui. They were joined by Naiki Jinzaburō of the City Council and five members of the general public. Then, on 12 March, this Special Committee determined the various administrative divisions that would structure the preparations for the eleventh centenary: Ceremony and Editing, Exhibiting, Public Works, Hospitality, General Affairs, and Research. The idea was to forge ever closer links between the Eleventh-Centenary and the National Industrial Exhibition. This, for example, was precisely the point of creating the Exhibition Division, and at the same giving to the quite separate Public Works Division responsibility for the exhibition site.4 4

See Heian sento kinensai jimusho jimu hōkoku 12 March 1893 (cited in Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, pp.323–5).

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Meanwhile, on 16 March, Kyoto Prefecture established the new post of City Commissioner (Shi jimukakari), whose incumbents were posted to each of the afore-mentioned divisions. On 17 March, Founding Committee members then agreed an agenda of twelve projects for the Supporters’ Association. One of the many projects they proposed was, indeed, the building of a replica of the Daigokuden Council Hall that had stood at the heart of the imperial palace back in the Heian period. The Founding Committee met in Kyoto on 18 April 1893, and again in Tokyo on the following day. The Kyoto meeting was attended by twenty eminent businessmen, including Mitsui Takaaki (ninth head of the Mitsui family, and president of Mitsui Bank) and Naiki Jinzaburō; Konoe Atsumaro was nominated now as Supporters’ Association chair. Konoe also attended the Tokyo meeting as did Hamaoka, Tōshi, and Kawada. Konoe was elected chair and Sano as vice-chair. Hamaoka and others then met with Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi and Minister for Home Affairs Inoue Kaoru, before returning to Kyoto. Thus, the Supporters’ Association went ahead with preparations on the two fronts of Kyoto and Tokyo, and there was the closest contact and cooperation between Kyoto and Tokyo resident members. However, the influence of the Tokyo branch inevitably became greater, owing to the presence there of political heavyweights and members of the nobility. Indeed, the Kyoto branch had originally hoped to nominate Prefectural Governor Senda as vice-chairman, yet incumbents of both positions were ultimately selected from the Tokyo side. It is particularly noteworthy that former Minister of Agriculture and Commerce Sano Tsunetami was appointed vice-chairman, since he contributed to Kyoto’s bid to host the National Industrial Exhibition. Naiki and Hamaoka of the Festival Committee discussed this situation with the Tokyo branch, but there is no evidence that they ever consulted the City Assembly or City Council. It is clear that members of the Founding Committee were instrumental in setting the agenda for the Eleventh-Centenary preparations, while Kyoto Prefecture and City created the structures to put the agenda into practice. Some members of the

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Kyoto City Assembly did express doubts about using taxpayer’s money to implement a project of such magnitude, but this does not seem to have led to a questioning of their relationship with the Supporters’ Association.5 2. THE FOURTH NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION AND ELEVENTHCENTENARY: VENUES I. CONTESTING THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITION SITE

From as early as May 1892, there was current a view that the most suitable site for the National Industrial Exhibition was the Okazaki-Shōgoin area north-east of the Kamo River, adjacent to the Lake Biwa Canal. But Kyoto City Assembly did not actually debate the issue until March 1893. It was, of course, impossible to whittle down a final location for the exhibition so long as Kyoto faced competition from Tokyo and Osaka. Nevertheless, rumors about the location started to circulate, and different parties made increasingly fervent efforts to promote one potential site over another. In February 1893, residents of both Okazaki and Yoshida districts submitted their own bids to host the exhibition. By March, members of the Festival Committee had already conduct surveys of multiple sites, including Okazaki and Shōgoin, Daibutsu Hōkōji Temple, Yoshida, Kinkakuji Temple, and Mt. Funaoka.6 At this March session, the Shōgoin area of Okazaki district was proposed – as rumor had suggested would be the case – but members met the proposal with an array of objections. The main opposition came from Kuze Michifumi, who favored either Mt. Funaoka or Shinmachikashira, and Shishido Kamesaburō, who advocated Imakumano. Kuze Michifumi, a member of the Festival Committee who had also attended the Supporters’ Association meeting the previous day, was outspoken in his criticism of Festival Committee proceedings, even as he sought to thwart the proposal to hold the exhibition in the Okazaki-Shōgoin 5 6

Hinode shinbun, 7 May 1893. Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, p.323.

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area. Kuze argued that there had already been a disproportionate amount of development in the eastern part of Kyoto along the canal banks, and that the National Industrial Exhibition should be held elsewhere. Councilor Shishido Kamesaburō, for his part, explicitly denounced landlords in the Okazaki district, who were benefitting from the soaring land prices brought about by the construction of the Lake Biwa Canal, and were attempting to profit once more from the National Industrial Exhibition. On the other hand, Councilor Hotta Yasuhito dismissed those supporting the north-western area of the city, in the vicinity of Tōji Temple and Imakumano, since they were all motivated by a desire for profit; but he was short on arguments in support of Okazaki. Indeed, among those in favor of the original Okazaki proposal, many argued simply that there was now no time to consider anywhere else. As a result of this debate, the Okazaki proposal won a slim majority, with twenty members voting in favor and fourteen against. Support was slow to gather, and the proposal attracted further criticism especially from Shishido who objected to its linking the siting of the exhibition with a land procurement budget of over 90,000 yen. At a third meeting, members passed a resolution to host the exhibition in the Shōgoin-Okazaki area, with the proviso that the land procurement budget would not exceed 80,000 yen. Eleven members still voted against this revised plan, but twenty-five now voted in favor. It was natural that members opposed to the plan included Kuze and Suzuka Benzaburō, who hailed from Nishijin and other areas in the north-west of the city.7 The advocates of the Eleventh-Centenary spoke of “three major problems,” by which they meant hosting the Eleventh-Centenary, convening the National Industrial Exhibition and constructing railway lines between Kyoto and Maizuru in the north of the prefecture. They linked all three to the urban development of Kyoto. However, discord between the various districts vying to host the National Industrial Exhibition brought to the surface tensions 7

For details of the Hokuseikai, a citizens’ association active in the northwest of the city, see Kobayashi 2010, and Kobayashi 2011.

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that had been simmering since the construction of the Lake Biwa Canal. Despite this, the City Assembly passed a resolution on the site for the exhibition that led to an imperial ordinance in April declaring that the National Industrial Exhibition would after all be held in “Okazaki chō, Kamigyō ku, Kyoto City.” II. THE VENUE FOR THE ELEVENTH-CENTENARY AND THE DAIGOKUDEN REPLICA

Once Okazaki had been settled on as the venue for the National Industrial Exhibition, preparations for the Eleventh-Centenary got underway. As noted above, one of the tasks assigned to the Supporters’ Association in March 1893 was the construction and preservation of a structure modelled after the Daigokuden, the Council Chamber of the Heian period imperial palace. The scale of the replica structure had yet to be determined, but on 13 April Yumoto Fumihiko of Kyoto Prefecture submitted a proposal that a model Daigokuden be erected on the site of the EleventhCentenary festival. Yumoto had become involved with the preparations for the Eleventh-Centenary the previous day, when he was appointed to one of the afore-mentioned city commissioner posts, and assigned to the Ceremony and Editorial Division. This was the division responsible for the centenary celebrations as well as the compilation of a history of Kyoto, and the exhibition of historical materials. The fact of Yumoto’s proposal submission was of course linked to his post as commissioner, but the suggestions are that he had been mulling things over for some time.8 Yumoto emphasized the distinction between the prefecture of Kyoto and the city of Kyoto, proposing the former assumes charge of the National Industrial Exhibition and the latter the Eleventh-Centenary festival. In his view, the city should host the centenary on a site closely associated with Emperor Kanmu, the city’s founding emperor, although he acknowledged that the 8

See Heian tentosai nifu iken in Hensan jimu shorui (Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan Kazō Shashinban: Ueno (Tsutomu) Ka Bunsho, No. 43). For further details on Yumoto Fumihiko, see Kobayashi 2014.

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Kyoto Imperial Garden and the site of the National Industrial Exhibition in Okazaki were options. The site closely associated with Emperor Kanmu to which Yumoto referred was the intersection of two roads in Kamigyō ward in the north of the city, namely Senbon Street and Marutamachi Street, where the original Daigokuden was thought to have been located. This site was some three km west of Okazaki, and located squarely in the north-west area of the city. It was favored by individuals from that area who had formed themselves into a group called the Hokuseikai (literally, the North-West Association). What distinguished Yumoto Fumihiko’s proposal, then, was his idea of holding the centenary away from the National Industrial Exhibition, on the site of the ruins of the Heian period Daigokuden. Further, he argued that the venue for the centenary should be similar in scale to the original Daigokuden, and should be conceived as a “shrine” (jingū) building, and the ceremony performed there should be a grand event. Till now, Kyoto City and Kyoto Prefecture had expressed various opinions about the running of the eleventh centenary, but it was this proposal from Yumoto Fumihiko that prompted discussions about the Daigokuden and the centenary festival sharing one and the same site. The proposal proved successful, and the Ceremony and Public Works Divisions of the Festival Committee began soliciting concrete Daigokuden proposals. A joint meeting of the Ceremony and Public Works Divisions was held in May, where the construction of the Daigokuden was discussed.9 At a meeting of the Research Division held in the same month, however, members learned of a proposal to slash the total budget for the Eleventh-Centenary festival and National Industrial Exhibition from 340,000 yen to 220,000 yen. The proposal for making necessary savings involved abandoning the construction of the Daigokuden replica, costing 80,000 yen. Instead, a budget of 20,000 yen would be set aside to preserve the extant ruins of the original Daigokuden. It is clear, then, that at this point, the Daigokuden replica project did not yet take precedence over all else.10 9 10

Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, p.341. Hinode shinbun, 14 May 1893.

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The replica of the Daigokuden was also discussed in Tokyo in the middle of May. On 11 May, Nishimura Sutezō reported to the Tokyo branch of the Supporters’ Association that the minister of agriculture and commerce had approved the idea of staging the opening and closing ceremonies of the National Industrial Exhibition in the Daigokuden. This was, of course, premised on an understanding that the National Industrial Exhibition would be held adjacent to the Daigokuden site. Around this time, the Tokyo office of the Festival Committee branch learnt of enquiries to purchase a site for the Daigokuden in Okazaki (Figure 1). Thus it is clear that influential Tokyo-based individuals were already looking to build a replica Daigokuden near the site of the National Industrial Exhibition. A particularly significant event in this regard was the gathering of a number of prominent individuals at the prime minister’s official residence on 15 May. The assembly included Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi himself, Minister for Home Affairs Inoue Kaoru, Konoe Atsumaro, former Kyoto Prefectural Governor Kitagaki Kunimichi, incumbent Governor Senda Sadaaki, Nishimura Sutezō and Nakamura Eisuke. The men discussed how to increase the budget for the Supporters’ Association to over 100,000 yen, and how to share the burden of collecting the moneys needed, including the raising of donations and contributions from Kyoto City coffers. Nakamura Eisuke had brought with him from Kyoto designs for the replica Daigokuden, and it seems that the assembled now included in their budgetary calculations a sum for the construction of the Daigokuden. By the end of May, then, the press was treating the Daigokuden as a major undertaking, even though just a few weeks earlier the project had been in doubt.11 III. ELEVENTH-CENTENARY FESTIVAL VENUE AND THE IMPERIAL GIFT

Preparations for the Eleventh-Centenary celebrations and the building of a replica Daigokuden proceeded side by side in Kyoto and Tokyo. But just when was the site for the Eleventh-Centenary celebrations finally confirmed? The siting question was first raised at 11

Hinode shinbun, 19 May 1893.

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Figure 1: Genkon Kyōto shigaizu, 1895 (Source: Kyoto Institute Library and Archives) When the plan for the Heian Shrine was first mooted, it was to be built on the east of the exhibition site. Eventually, however, its location was switched to the north.

a meeting of the city assembly in June 1893, when a supplementary budget was proposed for the purchase of a site. On this occasion, Councilor Suzuka Benzaburō asked where the site was to be, and Naiki Jinzaburō, Festival Committee chairman replied it was to be in Okazaki, Plot 5. The fact that no particular objections were raised at this point suggests that agreement had already been reached. That Suzuka, himself a keen advocate of the Eleventh-Centenary, even needed to ask the question also indicates that only certain members of the committee were privy to the

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details of preparations. Again, the purchase costs for the site were approved at the June session of the city assembly with a minimum of debate. At around the same time, though, it became clear that certain members of the city assembly were unaware that the June session of the city assembly was taking place. It was evident that there had been ad hoc meetings and secret discussions, and concerns were voiced in the press, for example, about the validity of the resolution passed.12 There must have been underlying discontent amongst members of the city assembly at the arbitrary actions of Festival Committee members. The question arises, though, as to why the purchase costs for the site were ever proposed at the city assembly. The reason is that there had been an unofficial announcement from the imperial household ministry of an “imperial gift” of 20,000 yen for the provision of a festival site, and it was incumbent upon Kyoto City to decide how exactly to spend this money. The imperial gift was itself prompted by the afore-mentioned gathering at the prime minister’s official residence back in May. Assembly members were counting on the imperial gift in addition to the funding offered by Kyoto City and any other moneys they might raise if they were to meet the required budget of 100,000 yen for the Eleventh-Centenary. Negotiations with the Imperial Household Ministry had probably already taken place, but the imperial gift proved a vital source of funds for the construction of the replica Daigokuden. In fact, it seems the June session of the city assembly was held simply in order that Tokyo members could report on it to members. The condition for the imperial gift was probably anyway that the city assembly had to pass a resolution stating that this was the sum required for purchase of the site. In the end, the Imperial Household Ministry donated the 20,000 yen to the Supporters’ Association and not to the city of Kyoto as originally planned. It is not entirely clear how this came about, and it certainly came as a surprise to members of the Festival Committee when they received the notification in Kyoto. Chairman Naiki Jinzaburō had already explained to 12

Hinode shinbun, 11 June 1893.

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assembly members that the imperial gift would be bestowed directly on the city, so he was forced to respond immediately requesting that the nominated recipient of the gift be changed. It proved impossible to reverse the decision by the imperial household ministry, so on 13 June, the Supporters’ Association rectified the problem by donating an equal sum of 20,000 yen to the city of Kyoto. The issue was ultimately resolved, then, by way of a stopgap measure between the Supporters’ Association and members of the Festival Committee, but it exposed the fact that certain members of both the Supporters’ Association and the Festival Committee were deciding matters related to the city’s budget behind closed doors. 3. CONSTRUCTING THE HEIAN SHRINE I. ORIENTING THE DAIGOKUDEN

It had been widely reported that a replica of the Daigokuden was to be constructed as the venue for the Eleventh-Centenary, but there had been next to no discussion of the fact that this would assume the form of a shrine. As noted above, Yumoto Fumihiko’s proposal referred to the construction of a shrine (jingū), but his assumption was that it would be located on the existing ruins of the Heian period Daigokuden in the west of the city; his proposal exerted no obvious influence on subsequent plans. Nishimura Sutezō spoke of a Heian shrine (Heian-sha) at the June 1893 session of the Tokyo branch of the Supporters’ Association. A report was received there on the progress of donations collected from Tokyo businessmen. When Nishimura made the point that they would need 200,000 yen in donations to construct a replica Daigokuden, he already had in mind the construction of a Shinto shrine behind the Daigokuden. Nishimura’s thinking deviated significantly from the plans discussed thus far by Supporters’ Association members. When on 19 June 1893, committee member Kumagai Naoyuki visited Inoue Kaoru to explain the situation, Inoue urged caution, wary that if the scope of the project expanded too broadly, funding would be

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insufficient, and the citizens of Kyoto would be asked to shoulder too onerous a burden.13 The site proposed thus far for the Eleventh-Centenary festival was Okazaki, Plot 5 to the south east of the site for the National Industrial Exhibition, where Kyoto City Zoo is presently located. This location meant that the site would back on to the surrounding landscape of Higashiyama, and so face west. Once it was announced that the venue would take the form of a replica Daigokuden, however, people were insistent that the building should be south-facing as the Heian original had been. The Supporters’ Association and Festival Committee eventually came round to this idea, which meant in practice that the building had to be erected north of the National Industrial Exhibition venue. In August, the decision was made to switch Okazaki, Plot 5 for “a site to the north of the proposed National Industrial Exhibition site,” and the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce subsequently granted its permission. The issue of Daigokuden orientation was resolved by the neat idea of switching venues. Meanwhile, preparations for the replica Daigokuden were making steady progress, and the groundbreaking ceremony was held on 3 September. The ceremony was a success, not least because citizens of Kyoto put on all sorts of entertainments. In actual fact, the precise location was finalized only five days before the ceremony was conducted. II. SANO TSUNETAMI’S HARD LINE STANCE

The issue of Daigokuden orientation triggered discussion of the space behind it. The Hinode shinbun learned of the site switch, and reported on 12 September 1893 that the new site for building the replica Daigokuden rendered it no longer possible to build a Shinto shrine to the rear. The new plan was to create a shōanden, a small-scale annex, that is, of the sort that had been 13

See Heian sento kinensai kyōsankai Tōkyō jimusho kiji 19 June 1893. Inoue also pointed out that it was more difficult to raise funds for a festival than for a hospital or for natural disaster relief.

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attached to the original Daigokuden. The Festival Committee duly debated the construction of such an annex on 3 October.14 Discussions continued for some time afterwards, but a final decision regarding the use of the space behind the replica Daigokuden was still pending, notwithstanding the fact the ground-breaking ceremony had already taken place. While annex plans were under review in Kyoto, the Supporters’ Association in Tokyo came up with a very different concept, which had been first broached in Kyoto in October.15 This was the proposal put forward by Sano Tsunetami to Konoe Atsumaro for the building of a structure, which he referred to originally as “Heiankyū” – a label that implies a large-scale shrine of national significance – alongside another to be styled “Kinenden” or memorial pavilion. A perusal of reports that mention Heiankyū reveals that its construction would require a further 20,000 or 30,000 yen; that such funding would draw both on the gift bestowed by the imperial household ministry, and also on other donations raised in Tokyo and Kyoto; and that people strongly favored the construction of a shrine in unvarnished wood rather than an annex in Heian period style. Moreover, it is clear that this debate was taking place mostly in Tokyo, and that the proposal was submitted to the Supporters’ Association from the Kyoto side, simply for appearances’ sake.16 The Festival Committee, whose members till now had spent time exploring the annex proposal, launched an investigation on 21 October into the costs for the construction of a Heian shrine. They estimated the construction costs at 30,000 yen, but no doubt because of the magnitude of the estimate, the committee never expressed a clear wish to pursue this option.17 Committee members debated the matter further on 25 October, and their position may be summarized as follows:18 14 15 16 17 18

Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, p. 369. Hinode shinbun, 10 October 1893. Hinode shinbun, 17 October 1893. Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, p375. Hinode shinbun, 26 October 1893.

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1. If the state were to accord the proposed Heian shrine the elevated status of a national shrine (kanpei taisha), it would have to stage the proposed festival as a national event, and this would contravene the spirit of the Eleventh Centenary; 2. If the Heiankyū were to be built as part of the EleventhCentenary project, the centenary would become a religious festival; Kyoto City’s own regulations [on the separation of state and religion] would then prevent it from taking part; 3. For the above reasons, it would be better to construct a non-religious shōanden type annex, or a “ceremonial pavilion” (saitenjō), rather than a religious “shrine”; It is interesting to note that, once again, the problem arose of whether the centenary should be performed as a national event, or simply a public event local to Kyoto. It is also clear that for Kyoto City to be a major player in the project, it could not disburse funds for a festival that was overtly religious; nor could it divert funds into shrine building. And the city would be even more restricted in its role if the state were to designate the shrine a “national shrine.” Kuze Michifumi attended a management conference in Tokyo in early November where he explained this situation, but Sano Tsunetami was absolutely insistent that a shrine – he referred to it as Heiankyū – was precisely what was needed.19 Kuze Michifumi reported back to the Festival Committee in Kyoto on 6 November, noting Sano’s position, and his refusal to compromise: namely that for Sano the building of a shrine was the only appropriate way of honoring Emperor Kanmu as part of the EleventhCentenary.20 For this reason, the discussions focused now on how to raise the funds to cover costs. The committee also set about negotiating with the Supporters’ Association. The major issue at stake now was what to do if the government insisted on honoring the new shrine with the designation jingū, that is, a state shrine with imperial connections. The fear was that 19 20

Hinode shinbun, 1 November 1893. Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, p.380.

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there would be a rehashing of the same arguments set forth on 25 October. The city and the Supporters’ Association began now to discuss the details of the division of labor between their members. III. DEBATING SHRINE CONSTRUCTION: THE SUPPORTERS’ ASSOCIATION AND KYOTO CITY REGULATIONS

Thus far the Festival Committee led negotiations with the Supporters’ Association on behalf of the city of Kyoto. However, once the Supporters’ Association had made up its mind to construct a shrine, they needed to obtain approval from the Kyoto City Assembly regarding the share that Kyoto would bear. Thus, a session of the Kyoto City Council was convened to review the proposal to be submitted to the city assembly. The City Assembly met in November 1893 in the presence of Prefectural Governor Nakai Hiroshi as well as council members Shishido Kamesaburō, Naiki Jinzaburō and Shimotsuma Shōemon (who had been deeply involved in the Lake Biwa Canal project). The proposal tabled for consideration was that the Supporters’ Association construct a shrine to commemorate the Eleventh-Centenary, and the city would then transfer the site for the centenary to the Supporters’ Association free of charge. In addition, the city would disburse the sum of 20,000 yen for shrine upkeep. The city attached the proviso that both the land and the grant were to be returned to the city, if the government did not accord the shrine the national designation of jingū. Rather than examining whether or not to go ahead with building a Heian shrine, the proposal sought agreement regarding the share of the costs to be borne by the city. Shimotsuma argued that this was not something that could be voted on lightly; the proposal up for discussion differed substantially from the city’s existing plan of action, and to him at least the entire Heian shrine concept was entirely new. Proponents offered little by way of counter to Shimotsuma’s remarks. Interestingly, the new prefectural governor, Nakai Hiroshi, who had only taken over from Senda Sadaaki in November, concurred with Shimotsuma.

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He postponed any resolution and convened another special meeting to discuss what was at stake.21 The issue remained largely unresolved at the session of Kyoto City Council held on 6 December. Naiki Jinzaburō argued that there was no straightforward solution, noting that the project would have to remain within the remit of the city, if the city was to assume a significant share of the burden. For example, if the state gave the shrine “national” status, the city would have to transfer it to the state; the city would then have only limited responsibility for it. On the Kyoto side, the majority opinion was indeed that the city would have to be the major player if it was expected to assume responsibility for shrine construction, but Prefectural Councilor Morimoto Kōchō explained that any city involvement would violate Article 129 of city regulations. The city could only offer assistance to the Supporters’ Association, and not directly to the shrine. There was, in brief, no discussion of whether or not to construct the shrine. Rather, the debate focused on establishing how the city would be able to take on the level of responsibility expected by the Supporters’ Association. At the session of the City Assembly held on 9 December, Naiki Jinzaburō presented three options: 1. Kyoto City constructs a shrine; 2. The Supporters’ Association constructs a shrine and transfers it to the city of Kyoto; 3. The Supporters’ Association constructs a shrine and the city of Kyoto awards to the association both the site for the shrine and a grant for its upkeep. The third option was presented as that favored by the City Council. Again, there was no discussion of the pros and cons of shrine building per se. Rather, the argument was that the third option was the only one feasible in the circumstances; the others were in violation of city regulations. The debate continued within the city assembly for a few days. Tomita Hanbei, a city entrepreneur 21

Hinode shinbun, 25 November 1893.

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behind the creation of the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and the Kyoto Electric Light Company (Kyōto Dentō Kaisha), was among those who insisted that if the city assumed responsibility for the construction, it should be a city project. This argument garnered much support. Then, on 21 December, the ministry of home affairs confirmed that it would, indeed, violate city regulations for Kyoto city to assume responsibility for the construction of a shrine. And so the resolution in favor of the third option was finally adopted. From the series of events described above, it is clear that ViceChairman Sano Tsunetami and other Tokyo-based members of the Supporters’ Association were most enthusiastic about the construction of a Heian shrine; they made the running while the Kyoto side remained passive about the project to the very end.22 However, the City Assembly and City Council did not directly oppose the construction of a Heian shrine, and over time the Kyoto-based members ended up assuming responsibility. CONCLUSION

The essential framework for the construction of Heian Shrine – it was finally given the jingū designation, and became known as Heian Jingū – was in place by the end of 1893, although discussions regarding the imperial donation from the imperial household ministry and the ranking of the shrine continued for some time afterwards. As described above, the Eleventh-Centenary was first proposed in May 1892. In April of 1893, it was decided to hold the National Industrial Exhibition in Okazaki, and in the month of August that year Okazaki was fixed as the location for the Eleventh-Centenary as well. At around the end of May, it was decided that the site for the centenary would take the form of a replica Heian period Daigokuden, but it was not until December that plans to build a shrine behind the Daigokuden were firmed up. The Daigokuden ground-breaking ceremony was performed in September, when 22

Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008, p. 380 and pp. 384–5.

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there was still no intimation that the venue would accommodate a shrine. In short, not only was the construction of Heian Shrine not part of the original plans for the Eleventh-Centenary, but members of the City Council had not even reached a consensus on the matter as late as November 1893. Of particular interest here is the role played by individuals from Tokyo who held great sway over the Supporters’ Association. Sano Tsunetami and Nishimura Sutezō were key figures in the bid to host the National Industrial Exhibition in Kyoto, and they were also closely involved in the subsequent decision to construct the Heian Shrine. Neither was involved when the city of Kyoto first proposed the Eleventh-Centenary, but they engaged with the Supporters’ Association, having collaborated on the bid to host the National Industrial Exhibition in the city. The two also played a major role in transforming the Eleventh-Centenary from a festival for Kyoto citizens into a national event. Their actions led to friction with the Kyoto City Assembly over such issues as site selection for the Eleventh-Centenary and National Industrial Exhibition, and the construction of the replica Daigokuden and its subsequent development into a shrine. Inoue Kaoru and other influential politicians like Nakai Hiroshi, who was Senda Sadaaki’s successor to the post of Kyoto prefectural governor, were wary of the actions of Sano Tsunetami. One needs to recall that Sano was also involved in the movement to establish a dedicated government office to oversee all Japan’s shrines in the 1890s. The main proponents of the movement were Motoda Nagasane, tutor to Emperor Meiji, and Sasaki Takayuki, an intimate of the emperor, who was a proponent of direct imperial rule. Their intention was to elevate the standing of Shinto as a unifying force for the nation as the government proceeded with preparations to promulgate the Constitution and establish a Diet. Sano Tsunetami contributed to the movement, but eventually it failed owing to active opposition from Foreign Minister Aoki Shūzō, and the lukewarm stance of individuals such as Itō Hirobumi and Inoue Kaoru. In short, then, Sano Tsunetami, having failed to locate Shinto as a spiritual cornerstone of the nation, was attempting to position

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the Heian Shrine – Heian Jingū – as spiritual cornerstone for Kyoto. Sano Tsunetami foregrounded celebration of the emperor, which made it impossible for Inoue Kaoru and others to object categorically, since the funding was to come from local government and donations from supporters. Inoue Kaoru could only advise against local government taking on too great a share of the costs and risk offending foreign sentiment. In October 1893, the chief priests of the most influential temples in the Kyoto area, including the Higashi Honganji, Tōji, and Myōshinji Temples, came together to propose the performance of a Buddhist memorial service at the replica Daigokuden.23 Space does not permit a detailed discussion here, but as of October the decision was already made to erect some sort of structure behind the Daigokuden. This Buddhist proposal was presumably an attempt on the part of the Buddhist community to discourage the construction of a Shinto shrine. It is clear, then, that there was a wide divergence of opinion regarding the construction of what came to be known as Heian Jingū. If the Eleventh-Centenary had been held as a public celebration in the city of Kyoto, as originally planned, then individuals such as Sano Tsunetami and Nishimura Sutezō would never have had the opportunity to interject their views. It should be noted again that the construction of the shrine was not permissible under Kyoto City regulations. However, the Supporters’ Association worked to bypass the regulations. This in turn surely explains why complaints about constantly changing priorities arose in the Kyoto City Assembly and City Council. REFERENCES

Kobayashi 2006 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Toshi saiten to seiji: toshikan kyōsō jidai no rekishi ishiki.” Nihonshi kenkyū 523 (2006), pp. 109–138. 23

See, for example, the collection, Hamaoka (Yasushi) ke monjo (Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan shozō shashinban, No. 720).

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Kobayashi 2007 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Heian sento senhyakunen kinensai to Heian Jingū no sōken.” Nihonshi kenkyū 538 (2007), pp. 1–28. Kobayashi 2010 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Kyōto kōminkai to toshi shōkō gyōsha.” Kurisutokyō shakai mondai kenkyū 59 (2010), pp. 73–120. Kobayashi 2011 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Dainikai shūgiin gi’in senkyo zengo no Kyōto.” Dōshisha dansō 31 (2011), pp. 16–35. Kobayashi 2010 Kobayashi Takehiro. “Heian Tsūshi hensan to rekishigaku.” In Kobayashi Takehiro. Kyōto ni okeru rekishigaku no tanjō. Minerva Shobō, 2014, pp. 17–44. Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan 2008 Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan, ed. Kindai jichi no genryū. Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan, 2008. Kyōtoshi Sanjikai 1896 Kyōtoshi Sanjikai, ed. Heian sento kinensai kiji 2. Kyōtoshi Sanjikai, 1896. Wakamatsu 1896 Wakamatsu Masatarō, ed. Heian sento senhyakunen kinensai kyōsan shi 2. Wakamatsu Masatarō, 1896. Translated by Jennifer Shanmugaratnam

CHAPTER 6

KYOTO’S FOREST POLICY: SCENIC BEAUTY AND URBAN FRINGE FORESTS Maruyama Hiroshi Y

INTRODUCTION

Prior to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, much of the mountain forest that surrounds Kyoto belonged to Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples, which used the forests as “buffer zones,” to coin a modern term, augmenting the scenic beauty of their sacred precincts. The famous sites (meishōchi) of Kyoto’s shrines and temples were unimaginable without their forested mountain backdrop. In premodern times, in return for granting farmers free admission and rights of use in these forests, shrines and temples relied on farmers to maintain them on their behalf. Through such a system of mutual benefit, Kyoto’s shrines and temples were able to make a contribution to the preservation of scenic beauty. In modern times, however, land tax reform brought about a new system, in which private deeds to land were issued, and the forests previously managed by temples and shrines were taken over by the state or local authority. As a result, the traditional forest maintenance system collapsed, and the forests fell into ruin. Compared to other regions of Japan, Kyoto constitutes a special case, given the intimate connection between its fringe forests and famous sites of great historical value like shrines and 146

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temples. In the modern period, these forests became linked to Kyoto’s administration of so-called fūchi conservation areas of natural beauty. With a view to their touristic potential, Kyoto bureaucrats set about trying to revive the health of the city’s fringe forests under the banner of “preserving scenic beauty.” In the following paragraphs, I focus particularly on shrine and temple forests, but in doing so I analyze the urban fringe forest policy Kyoto developed during modern times. Let us look first, then, at the policy in the early Meiji period. 1. THE MEIJI GOVERNMENT’S CONSERVATION OF PRECINCT FORESTS IN THE 1870S

On 23 February 1871, the Meiji Government promulgated the Shrine and Temple Land Confiscation Law (Shaji jōchi (agechi) rei). It is easy to imagine that this law facilitated the demise of the fringe forests, which at the time were considered to be part of the shrine or temple precincts. With the haibutsu kishaku antiBuddhist persecution that preceded the confiscation of land, the temple-owned fringe forests in fact had already begun to fall into ruin. The new confiscation law exacerbated the process, as many temples and shrines cut down their precinct forests as part of their strategy of self-preservation, or simply to sell off the wood as timber. In an attempt to halt the demise of fringe forests, the government had to issue a series of edicts and ordinances directed at the temples and shrines. All of them were meant to outlaw any actions that would harm the forests. On 18 May1872, the ministry of finance issued its Notice no. 53 relating to wasteland or commercially unused land. Such land in the Edo period had included shrine and temple precinct forests, which had enjoyed an exemption from land tax. The ministry now insisted that when these lands were sold off, there was to be no destruction of any “historical remains of renown,” and it banned the felling of trees. On 15 January 1873, the government issued its Grand Council of State Edict no. 16 concerning the establishment of public parks. Amongst the spots in the new capital of Tokyo that were identified therein as “scenic and

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historic sites” were the Sensōji Temple precinct in Asakusa and the Kan’eiji Temple precinct in Ueno. Among the sites specifically designated for Kyoto were the Gion Shrine (renamed in Meiji now as Yasaka Shrine) precinct, Kiyomizudera Temple precinct and Arashiyama.1 We can see that this edict not only heralded the dawn of a new system of public parks in Japan, but it was advocating the preservation of scenic sites. Furthermore, preceding the proclamation of land tax reform on 28 July 1873, the Grand Council of State had already on 2 July issued Edict no. 235, which forbad the reckless felling of trees in shrine or temple precincts. Even the felling of trees for timber to be used in temple or shrine repairs had to be vetted by officials. Then, Edict no. 291 on 8 August 1873 instructed local governments to carry out surveys in order to clarify where exactly the boundaries of shrine and temple precinct lands were. In this edict, too, we find a clear warning from the government against the felling of trees on such lands. On 9 May 1874, the ministry of home affairs also issued Special Order 34, intended to reinforce this. In an attempt to add still more weight to the earlier Grand Council of State Edicts nos. 235 and 291 in 1873, in the next year, on 10 December to be precise, the home ministry followed up with issued Special Order no. 75, which made prefectural governments responsible for policing the ban on the felling of trees both in the shrine and temple fringe mountain forests, and within their more confined sacred compounds on lower lying land. Thus it was that the Meiji government issued a flurry of edicts and orders intended to avert the harmful effects of the destruction of fringe forests through reckless felling, which had accompanied the land tax reform, the centerpiece of the early Meiji political revolution. 2. THE STATE OF KYOTO’S FORESTS IN THE 1890S

As mentioned above, Kyoto is surrounded by mountain forests to the east, west and north, and most of this forest land was once 1

For details, see Maruyama 1994, pp. 22–23.

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the property of shrines and temples. Indeed, fringe forests were owned by many of the most famous temples founded back in the Heian period or subsequently. We saw in the previous section how the Shrine and Temple Land Confiscation Law of 1871 led to the destruction of scenic and historic sites. This law pertained not so much to the immediate precincts in which the particular temple or shrine was contained, but rather to commercially unused lands or to land whose deeds had been approved during the Edo period either by the Tokugawa government or by its vassal daimyos. These were the so-called “vermillion seal lands” or shuinchi. Included in “shrine or temple precincts” at the time were residential land, rice paddies and other fields, as well as fringe forests. On 29 June 1875, the Meiji government issued to all prefectural authorities a series of regulations, styled Regulations for Investigating Shrine and Temple Lands for the Purpose of Determining Boundaries (Shaji keidaigaichi kukaku torishirabe kisoku). The issue here was land which had escaped confiscation by the state in the edicts of 1871, and had survived as part of the shrine or temple precincts. The government now demanded that land deemed essential for the performance of shrine rites and temple ceremonies should be marked off. Such land would be regarded now as “new precinct,” (shin-keidai) and be exempted from further investigation, whereas all other shrine and temple land would be judged the object of confiscation. Article 1 of these regulations instructed prefectures now to set in motion appropriate surveys.2 In this way, government launched a second rigorous demarcation of land ownership. The government now applied itself to the task of appropriating any residential land, rice paddies or other fields, as well as fringe forests that the shrine or temple might have laid claim to. This second phase of confiscation was referred to as “land dismemberment” or hikisaki jōchi in Japanese. The confiscation laws of 1871 and the aforementioned regulations of 1875 proved to be two mighty blows to the old order. 2

Eizen Kanzai Kyoku Kokuyū Zaisanka 1926, p.19.

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By way of response to the government’s regulations, Kyoto Prefecture instigated in 1875 its own inventory of shrine and temple land boundaries.3 At the time, there were some 2,326 shrines and temples throughout Kyoto Prefecture, and the aggregate area occupied by the old precincts amounted to some 4,856ha. Under the terms of the government investigation, however, the total area of approved “new precincts,” which included Buddhist graveyards, was a mere 1,124ha. Accordingly, 3,732ha, or roughly 77% of the traditional total of shrine and temple precinct land was scheduled now for confiscation by the state. 81% of these confiscated precinct lands, that is approximately 3,020ha, comprised fringe mountain forests. If we also include mountain-foot brush and bamboo forest, too, the figure rises to 3,206ha, that is some 86% of the lands now to be appropriated. In its inventory of shrine and temple land boundaries, Kyoto Prefecture provided a record of a given shrine or temple’s traditional lands along with a breakdown of its land area into such categories as fringe forest and brush. It is interesting to note in passing that there are often provisional memos attached to items relating to the land of specific shrines and temples: “Likely retention in accordance with the Grand Council of State Edict no. 291 issued on 8 August 1873”; or “Because of its scenic beauty, likely retention as state land.”4 With the issue of Grand Council of State Edict no. 257 on 20 July 1873, the government abandoned the policy of selling off national forest land to private individuals, which had been the idea of Finance Minister Inoue Kaoru in 1871. Edict no. 291 was the means by which this policy change was brought to bear on the lands traditionally held by shrines and temples. The edict expressly banned all unlicensed felling of trees on shrine and temple lands. Although we cannot find in the edict itself 3

4

Documents relating to the investigation are held in the new Kyoto prefectural archives known as the Rekisaikan, the official English title of which is the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives. On this archive, see the Introduction to this volume. See above note 3.

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any specific mention of the fact that shrine and temple fringe forest should be preserved on account of its scenic value, Kyoto Prefecture certainly made this the basis of its policy of protecting such lands from devastation. The outcome of the prefecture’s position was that the background scenery at so many of Kyoto’s shrines and temples was preserved from reckless felling. The total area of shrine and temple fringe forest spared confiscation by Kyoto Prefecture through its enforcement of Edict no. 291 was 2,600ha. This comprised land held by 231 of Kyoto Prefecture’s 2,326 listed shrines and temples. As mentioned above, the aggregate area of shrine and temple fringe forests, brush or field scheduled for confiscation by the state was 3,206ha. Of this, in due course, we find that 81% was in fact preserved for posterity. If we look through the breakdown into the various rural counties or city wards, the great proportion of such lands was to be found in the region occupied formerly by Yamashiro Province, at the center of which sits the city of Kyoto. Of Kyoto’s rural counties, Atago with 952ha, Uji with 582ha, Kadono with 352ha and Sōraku with 124ha head the list of those counties where temple and shrine land was spared, with the ward of Shimogyo in the south of the city coming in fifth at 115ha. The land preserved in Shimogyo Ward certainly seems small in comparison with that of Atago or Uji County, for example, but it included much of the city’s Higashiyama mountain range, and as such might be regarded as the “scenic face of Kyoto.” The state had appropriated 135ha of Shimogyo Ward’s shrine and temple fringe lands, but of this, as mentioned above, 85% or 115ha was successfully preserved. Table 1 lists the shrines and temples in the Higashiyama mountain district of Kyoto along with the respective total areas of their forests that were preserved in accordance with Kyoto Prefecture’s Edict no. 291. Several districts had lands in the Higashiyama mountain range, and altogether they amounted to a total of 464ha of preserved fringe forest and brush.5 5

See Maruyama 2006, pp.88–90.

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Table 1 Shrines and Temples in Higashiyama: Land Retained as of 1873 (numerals in brackets are hectares) Shimogyō Ward

Chōrakuji (1.18), Anyōji (0.19), Chion’in (5.17), Isshin’in (0.29), Kōdaiji (22.81), Kiyomizudera (40.64), Myōhōin (38.53), Yōgen’in (0.47), Chishakuin (1.59), Tōfukuji (4.12)

Otagi County

Imakumano (0.39), Sennyūji (58.73), Seikanji (3.36), Hokkedera (1.43), Shōhōji (2.73), Shōren’in (11.95), Nanzenji (12.20), Zenrin’in (1.78) Kōunji (1.08), Nyakuōjisha Shrine (36.29), Hōnen’in (7.67) Yoshida Shrine (10.41), Jishōji (24.69), Sekizanzen’in (7.47), Unmoji (0.08), Enryakuji (71.14)

Kii County Total

Figure 1:

Inari Shrine (96.89) c.464ha

The Thirty-six Peaks of Higashiyama6

(Source: Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku. Higashiyama kokuyūrin fūchi keikaku, 1936)

3. SHRINE AND TEMPLE FORESTS AND THE SCENIC BEAUTY CONSERVATION POLICY

With the establishment on 7 April 1881 of the ministry of agriculture and commerce, the control of national forests passed from the prefectural governments to the new ministry’s Mountain 6

Higashiyama is the name given to the range of hills to the east of Kyoto City.

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Forest Office (Sanrin jimusho). On 8 March 1886, Kyoto Prefecture received from the ministry a notification of transfer of control on all of the national forests it had been supervising. The same day saw the Mountain Forest Office open a Kyoto branch office in Shitei block, Kamigyō Ward. On 2 July in the same year, this was renamed the Kyoto Great Forest Section Office (Kyōto Dairin Kusho). Then, on 19 July, it moved to new premises at Senkyūin, a sub-temple of Chion’in in Hayashishita block in Shimogyō Ward. Management of all the Kyoto shrine and temple fringe forests appropriated by the state now passed to this office.7 Believing that day-to-day maintenance of the forests should be entrusted, to the shrines and temples themselves the ministry of agriculture and commerce acted to contract the former owners to continue in their forest maintenance role. On 12 November 1884, the ministry duly issued the Shrine and Temple Managed Forest Entrustment Regulations (Shaji hokanrin itaku kisoku) and a memorandum concerning the handling of national forest (Shaji hokanrin itaku kanrin toriatsukai kokoroe). With the enactment in November 1890 of Edict no. 275, regulations for the management of government-owned property were published, and this led in April of the following year to the ministry of agriculture and commerce revising the Shrine and Temple Managed Forest Entrustment Regulations.8 It is at present difficult to appraise in great detail the extent to which the Entrustment Regulations were effective in sustaining maintenance of appropriated shrine and temple fringe forest in Kyoto, but the very formulation of these regulations and their revision is evidence that the state was finding it difficult to effect satisfactory conservation. In 1899, the Meiji government then enacted the State-Owned Forests and Fields Law (Kokuyū rinya hō), and also issued the Regulations for Shrine and Temple Managed Forest (Shaji hokanrin kisoku). This will be described in detail in the next section, but let us first take a look at Kyoto 7

8

See the document styled Sanrin yōroku in the Kyōto Fuchō Monjo (Nōrinka 1883–1885). For details, see Ringyō Hattatsushi Chōsakai 1960, pp.238–244.

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Prefecture’s attitude to the new national forests after their management had been taken over by the ministry of agriculture and commerce. On 8 February 1890, four years after jurisdiction of the fringe forests had passed from Kyoto Prefecture to the ministry, Kyoto Governor Kitagaki Kunimichi (who also served concurrently as mayor of Kyoto City), made a speech at the Nakamurarō restaurant, located by the east side of Yasaka Shrine’s south gate. He spoke to an audience of city councilors, ordinary councilors, standing committee members, the chief administrators of both Kamigyō and Shimogyō Wards, as well as leading officials in the prefectural government. Kitagaki began by addressing the present characteristics of city government, before exploring the path to autonomous city government. In succession, he focused on the areas of trade promotion, education, fine art, health, distribution of wealth, conservation, hydroelectricity, the redrawing of administrative boundaries, modern city planning, and basic asset management. In the section of his speech that addressed “conservation,” Kitagaki spoke of the need to protect famous scenic places, and of course he made due reference to the scenic preservation of shrine and temple fringe forests. An outline of his talk, prepared in advance of the presentation, was later published in Kitagaki’s diary, entitled Jinkai (translatable as “Sea of Dust”).9 Kitagaki insisted that the conservation of Kyoto’s famous scenery was important for the city’s economy and that many of the visitors to Kyoto, both from elsewhere in Japan and from abroad, were attracted by nothing so much as the scenic temples and shrines: they constituted Kyoto’s unique treasure. Kyoto simply could not afford to turn a blind eye to matters of conservation: conservation of scenic places was essential for the revitalization of Kyoto’s economy. Kitagaki’s speech was subsequently carried by the Hinode newspaper in two parts on 11 and 14 February 1890. 9

The original diary is held by the Kyoto Institute. The diary was published by Shibunkaku in 2010. See Jinkai Kenkyūkai 2010.

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Kitagaki’s emphasis on “conservation” should be seen in the light of the earlier launch of the Preservation Society (Hoshōkai) in autumn of 1881, the very year he was appointed as Kyoto’s third prefectural governor. This new society had been the idea of Iwakura Tomomi, erstwhile courtier and subsequently one of the most important figures in early Meiji history, and had met with the approval of many people throughout Japan. The society had been successful in raising money, and in receiving offers of land and even of landscaping items, such as trees and rocks, from all quarters. The Preservation Society’s founding objective was the preservation of both the architectural fabric of Kyoto’s old temples and shrines but also, more generally, the environment of sites of scenic or historical significance.10 This policy was inherited by others after Governor Kitagaki had moved on. On 15 December 1894, chair of the Kyoto Prefectural Assembly, Nakamura Eisuke, proposed to Watanabe Chiaki, Kitagaki’s successor as prefectural governor, that the prefecture should preserve scenic fringe forest at Kyoto’s famous beauty spots. On 10 May, the following year, acting on Nakamura’s idea, Governor Watanabe drafted a formal proposal of how to go about the preservation of Kyoto’s famous scenic spots, and presented this simultaneously to the minister of home affairs and to the minister of agriculture and commerce. At the head of the document, he made the following declaration: Kyoto is naturally endowed with much scenic beauty, so that all year round there is a constant stream of both Japanese and foreign visitors. One could say that Kyoto is something of a world park, especially Arashiyama, Higashiyama, Takao and Togano-o. These sites are unparalleled in the splendor of their mountains and streams.11

Arashiyama, Higashiyama, Takao and Togano-o all used to be shrine and temple precinct forests, but had suffered due to the 10 11

Hoshōkai 1929. See the collection Tsūjō kaigi an shorui, Kyōto Fuchō Monjo, Naimubu Daiichika, November 1894.

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lack of a prefectural conservation policy after they had become national forests. Arashiyama had been part of the temple of Tenryūji; Higashiyama had been shared by the precincts of such temples in Sakyō Ward as Kiyomizudera, Myōhōin, Kōdaiji and Chion’in. Takao for its part was associated with the temple of Jingoji, while Togano-o was related to Kōzanji Temple. Governor Watanabe’s formal proposal to the government ministers went on to argue that the scenic spots, which had been neglected since the Meiji Restoration, should hereafter be supervised by onsite wardens, whose salary should be paid out of the municipal government budget or from local tax revenue. Wardens’ duties would include the prevention of forest fires and illegal logging, as well as supplemental replanting. In addition, Watanabe proposed that national forests should continue to be treated as scenic forest, directly managed by Kyoto Prefecture under a policy of sustainable conservation, so that they might constitute a sort of “natural parkland” in perpetuity. The prefecture should not treat such scenic forests in the same way as ordinary forestland, which they might have in their care; that level of conservation was simply inadequate. Instead, in the interests of a more thorough scenic conservation, scenic forests should be designated “public parks” (kōen). Adequate management of such places was, in his view, impossible so long as the prefecture relied only on the Temple Managed Forest Entrustment Regulations of 1884 and the Regulations for the Management of Government-owned Property of 1890. Subsequent events make it clear that the central government turned a deaf ear to Governor Watanabe’s proposal. It might be noted that even before the governor submitted his proposal on conserving Kyoto’s scenery, there had been on 18 November 1887 a question put at the Prefectural Assembly about defrayment of costs for repairing roads leading to some of these fringe forests. The idea behind the question was that such costs should be met by using local tax revenue. Amongst the roads identified as in need of repair were Saga Road, Umenomiya Shrine Road, the road that led from Saga to Shimokatsura, Kamigamo Shrine Road, Takano Road, Kurodani-Yoshida Road, Fushimi Road, and Takao Road. However, the Prefectural

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Assembly decided not to authorize defrayment of such expenses on the grounds that the need for repairs to these roads was not especially urgent.12 The following year, this issue was brought up once again at the Prefectural Assembly, and this time the motion to fund such road repairs was approved by the slender margin of thirty-eight in favor to thirty-six against. There were subsequent revisions to the budget, but road improvements and repairs did eventually go ahead. In December 1890, a motion was actually put before the Kyoto Prefectural Assembly to claim a national government subsidy to pay for roads and bridges leading to these famous sites. It is clear that Kyoto Prefecture had assumed charge of scenic places, and was counting on them playing a vital role in the city’s revival. 4. THE CONSERVATION FOREST SYSTEM AND SCENIC FORESTS

It was not until much later in fact that the national forest and fields administration promulgated laws to address the problem of forest maintenance. The laws in question were the Forest Law (Shinrin hō) of April 1897 and the National Forest and Fields Law (Kokuyū rinya hō) of March 1899. In accordance with the former act, which had its sights set on privately-owned fringe forests, provision was made to create what it called “conservation forests” (hoanrin).13 In its Article 8, the Forest Law stated that such forests would be classified in such categories as “erosion control forests,” and “headwater forests,” and in Article 9, the act mentions that shrines and temples, other famous places, and historical sites of great scenic value would be subject to the provisions of the law. The placing of shrine and temple forests in the category of “conservation forests” meant that maintenance of their scenic quality could now be undertaken. Furthermore, Article 3, Clause 3 of the National Forest and Fields Law of two years later, stipulated 12

13

Kyōto Fukai, ed., Meiji nijūichinendo Kyōtofu fukai gijiroku, 1. The document is held by the Kyoto Institute, Library and Archives. Takahashi 1898, pp. 111–112.

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that if a specific area of forest land, earlier confiscated by the government, was now deemed essential to enhancing the beauty of a particular shrine or temple, that area could be demarcated, and brought back into the fold as it were. Imperial Edict no. 361 of 2 August 1899 comprised regulations for forests managed by shrines and temples, although it did not stipulate that such religious institutions were obliged to be proactive in the upkeep of the previously confiscated land. What follows is an inventory of the conservation forests of some of the main Kyoto shrine and temples. The areas of conservation forest are given in hectares: Kiyomizu Temple (35.0 ha), Chōrakuji (2.5 ha), Nanzenji (4.2 ha), Jishōji (24.3 ha), Kōdaiji (17.7 ha), Seikanji (11.5 ha), Tenryūji (55.1 ha), Kurama Temple (114.4 ha), Kibune Shrine (126.7 ha), Lower Kamo Shrine (359.6 ha), Daigoji (276.1 ha), Kumano Nyakuōji Shrine (35.8 ha), Matsuo Shrine (2.3 ha), Chion’in (3.1 ha).14 Earlier on 9 December 1893, the chief of the Shrine and Temple Bureau (Shaji kyoku) within the ministry of home affairs had issued a memorandum to all prefectural governments stating that forest outside the immediate precinct that had been confiscated by the state and later sold back to the shrine or temple for scenic preservation purposes would now be treated in the same way as forest within the immediate precincts. If we look at the October 1909 issue of the Kyoto prefectural bulletin on forests, the Kyōto fu sanrin shi, we find that, at the time, Kyoto Prefecture presided over a total of eighty-five conservation forests associated with places of scenic or historical importance. The breakdown is as follows: fifty-four national forests (kokuyūrin), two imperial forests (goryōrin), one public forest (kōyūrin), twenty-one shrine/temple forests (shajiyūrin), and seven privately-owned forests (shiyūrin). In area, this totaled 926 ha, of which 792 ha was national forest, 9.5 ha was imperial forest, 1.4 ha was public forest, 115 ha was shrine/temple forest, and 8.3 ha was privately-owned. 15 This 926 ha of conservation 14 15

Ōsaka eirinkyoku 1929, pp. 63–66. Kyōto fu 1909, p.225

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forest constituted 36% when measured against the total area of 2,600 ha of shrine/temple fringe forests confiscated by the state back in 1873. In legal terms, then, the Forest Law had created “conservation forests,” and to a certain extent shrine and temple precinct forest had, as a result, become the object of scenic conservation. But the new legislation effected a redefinition of boundaries, which meant that the areas of scenic beauty meriting protection were subject to some reduction. Lastly in this section, we should take careful note of the quite distinct category of “protection forest” or hogorin. On 9 June 1915, the Forestry Bureau chief at the ministry of agriculture and commerce issued a memorandum to all the heads of the regional forest bureaus detailing the establishment of “protection forests” in the national forest areas. The memorandum comprised eight clauses, in which the Forestry Bureau chief impelled his audience to scrutinize the existence or otherwise of any national forest land deserving of special protection. In a postscript, he stated that forests that might be suitable for inclusion in the category of “conservation forest” should not be put forward as “protection forest” candidates. Candidates for the new category were virgin forest, forest deserving of scientific research, forest comprising breeding areas for particular species of wild animals or birds, and botanical reserve forest where alpine flowers, medicinal plants, plants with special connections to industry are cultivated.16 The Osaka Regional Forest Bureau (which had assumed responsibility for Kyoto’s national forests) put forward Higashiyama and Arashiyama as candidates for the new “protection forest” status, and the application was formally approved by the ministry of agriculture and commerce in December 1915. These two fringe forest areas were the very first in Japan to be awarded the new status. In 1922, another seven forests were selected for similar treatment. There were two each in Gifu and Hiroshima Prefectures, and one each in Nara, Wakayama and Yamaguchi Prefectures.17 16 17

Seiji kyōiku kyōkai 1938, pp. 26–27. See Ōsaka dairin kusho 1922, pp. 34–35.

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Justification for the granting of this status to the two Kyoto sites was to be found in Clause 4 of the bureau memorandum, which referred to the “entertainment of the public and the promotion of scenic beauty.” To understand the speed with which the two Kyoto fringe forests were recognized, we might turn to the Outline of the Osaka Regional Forest Bureau (Ōsaka eirin kyoku kannai gaiyō) published in October 1929. It cites as catalyst the enthronement of Emperor Taishō in November 1915.18 The Outline also declares its hope of cultivating a public attachment to the Higashiyama forests by improving and extending access roads so that people might walk in the area more easily, by planting cherry, maple and cypress woods to enhance the scenic value, and by erecting information boards on which the bureau’s aims might be explained. Similarly, elsewhere in the Outline, we find a record of the planting in March 1920 of 400 mountain cherry trees and 100 maple trees in an area of the Arashiyama protection forest that had been damaged by storm.19 There is abundant evidence here of the desire of the authorities to foster scenic beauty in Kyoto. 5. ADOPTING A SYSTEM OF SCENIC ZONES IN KYOTO CITY PLANNING

On 5 April 1919, the Japanese government promulgated the City Planning Law (Toshi keikaku hō). In the second clause of Article 10, it refers to the designation of “scenic zones” (fūchi chiku) within certain city planning areas, for the purpose of maintaining scenic quality and improving “public morals” (fūki).20 Article 13 of the Enforcement Ordinance of 27 November 1919 (Imperial Edict no. 482) makes mention of the official restrictions placed on such zones. The first such scenic zone was actually established in the imperial capital of Tokyo in the vicinity of the new Meiji Shrine, dedicated to the spirit of the Meiji emperor who had died in 18 19 20

Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku 1929. Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku 1929, p.72 Naimu daijin kanbō toshi keikaku ka 1930, p.2.

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1912. A notice from the ministry of home affairs (Bulletin no. 134) dated 14 September 1926 referred to the Meiji Shrine Scenic Zone. In order to preserve better the inner “sacred precincts” of Meiji Shrine, the approach path and borders of 18m on either side, together with other outer areas, were designated “scenic zones” with a total area of 95.4 ha.21 This was in line with Clause 2 of Article 10 governing the maintenance of public morals. The second such scenic zone was established by means of a notice from the ministry of home affairs dated 1 February 1930. It was the scenic zone of Kyoto City. One might reasonably conclude that the concept of city planning had at last expanded to include fringe urban areas, but was this in fact the case? The ministry of home affairs hosted the inaugural Congress of City Planning Administrators from 15 to 19 April 1924. It invited the participation of planning officials from the four cities of Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and Nagoya, along with others involved in implementing urban planning in another twentyfive cities across the nation. Five years had passed since the City Planning Law had been enacted, and finally the ministry was poised to embark on the path of actually getting things done. At the April congress, Kyoto Prefecture representatives tabled two questions concerning the establishment of scenic zones. The first was a complex question about whether one could construe a place to be within the new “scenic zone” if it was already within the area covered by the City Planning Law, but lay outside the designated sections described in the Metropolitan Building Law (Shigaichi kenchikubutsu hō). The second question concerned whether or not it would be possible to regard a “scenic zone” as corresponding to a specific area or section of a city as outlined in Article 10 Clauses 1 and 2 of the same Metropolitan Building Law.22 The home ministry response was to this effect: namely that, although the issues had not yet been discussed within the 21 22

See Tōkyō fu 1934, p.56. “Chihō no iken,” Toshi kōron 7, 7 (1924), p.68.

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home affairs ministry, and there existed thus no precedents, a scenic area could be declared and administered with no reference to the areas or sections outlined in the Metropolitan Building Law, if it were within the confines of the area outlined in the City Planning Law.23 The Ministry of Home Affairs convened a second Congress of City Planning Administrators three years later, between 11 April and 13 April 1927. There, Undersecretary Iinuma Kazumi spoke for the ministry on four issues, the third of which made explicit reference to urban scenic value and beautification (bikan). At this congress, Iinuma proposed a series of proposals one of which made mention of Materials Pertaining to the Surveying of City Planning Districts (Toshi keikaku kuiki chōsa shiryō). These “materials” consisted of administrative district maps, demographic statistics tables, transport facilities plans, water and sewage plans amongst much else. He also addressed the subject of “maps of areas of scenic beauty,” and in so doing offered the following classifications: 1. Areas of scenic beauty unlikely ever to become urbanized; 2. Traditional countryside affording seasonal pleasures; 3. Areas which, owing to their scenic beauty, are likely to be built upon (residential areas, coastline, parks and adjacent areas); and 4. Sites of outstanding historical interest.24 The first time that the ministry of home affairs issued clear regulations governing such scenic zones was in the form of the circular “Standards for the Establishment of Scenic Zones” (Fūchi chiku kettei hyōjun) issued by the undersecretary of the ministry in July 1933. The Standards were divided up into four parts: designation, mapping, representation, and materials for determining the conservation area. Ahead of these national “standards,” Kyoto City had in fact already issued a series of its own notices regarding scenic zones: 23

24

“Chihō no iken ni taisuru Naimushō no ben,” Toshi kōron 7, 7 (1924), p.72. “Zenkoku toshi keikaku shuninkan kaigi,” Toshi kōron 10, 5 (1927), p.49.

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first on 1 February 1930, again on 14 July 1931 and once more on 2 December 1932. Between them, these notices reveal that the total area of Kyoto’s scenic zones now stood at 7,998 ha, which corresponded to 24.6% of Kyoto’s designated city planning area. Of this total, 6,600.65 ha (or 82.5%) was mountain fringe forest, which included Higashiyama. 1,789.12 ha was national forest (22.3%). Especially worthy of note is the 192.33 ha (2.40%) of imperial estate.25 This included the Kyoto Imperial Palace (gosho), Nijō Imperial Villa, Katsura Imperial Villa (Katsura rikyū) and adjacent imperial lands, Shūgakuin Imperial Villa (Shūgakuin rikyū), Yamashina (headwater), Izumiyama (that is, the imperial mausoleum at the Sennyūji temple), Shichijō (Sanjūsangendō Temple and vicinity), an enclave at Momoyama, and the sites of imperial mausoleums at Kinugasayama, Asaharayama and other fringe areas.26 It should be noted that, although comparatively insignificant in total area, the list of Kyoto’s scenic zones includes the “sacred” precincts of imperial estates and mausoleums. We can perceive here in this designation something of the special nature of the city of Kyoto. If we refer back through the trends of the “scenic zones” of Kyoto City in the 1930s, they all appear to have begun with the Grand Council of State Edict no. 291 of 1873, which effected the protection of shrine and temple fringe forests. This in turn led to the Forest Law of April 1897 and the National Forest and Fields Law of March 1899, which established a system of “conservation forests.” And then, with the promulgation in 1919 of the City Planning Law, the idea of “scenic zones” was launched. We might appreciate anew that Kyoto City is surrounded on three sides by mountains – with Higashiyama especially close to the city center – and that this geographical characteristic contributed greatly to Kyoto’s ability to play a leading role in the new conservation movement.

25 26

Tanaka 1944, pp.57–58. Teishitsu rinya kyoku 1939, p.878.

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Figure 2:

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Kyoto City Planning Scenic Zones: Map (1932) The purple areas represent the scenic zones as they were in 1932.

(Source: Kyoto Institute Library and Archives)

CONCLUSION

In December 1994, at the eighteenth meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, seventeen sites in and around ancient Kyoto, including some in the adjacent cities of Ōtsu and Uji, were registered as World Heritage sites. They were as follows: the Upper and Lower Kamo Shrines, Kyōō Gokokuji or the Tōji Temple, Kiyomizu Temple, Enryakuji Temple (in Ōtsu City), Daigoji and Ninnaji Temples, the Byōdōin and Ujigami

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Shrine (both in Uji City), Kōzanji Temple, Saihōji (known also as Kokedera or the Moss Temple), Tenryūji Temple, Rokuonji or Kinkakuji Temple, Jishōji that is Ginkakuji Temple, the Ryōanji and Nishi Honganji Temples, and Nijō Castle. The World Heritage Convention (in its full name, the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage) was adopted in 1972 at a general meeting of UNESCO. Japan did not add its name to the signatory nations until 1992, however, which was very late for a developed nation. This was because Japan’s focus had been uniquely on economic development not on heritage protection. Twenty years had already passed since the adoption of the treaty, and Japan’s “bubble” economy had already burst. Indeed, it was the slump in the economy that precipitated Japan to sign up to the treaty. The seventeen World Heritage sites listed above were already protected at the national level, and were registered as National Treasures (kokuhō) or Important Cultural Properties (jūyō bunkazai) in accord with the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties (Bunkazai hogo hō) of 1950, or by designation as either a “Place of Scenic Beauty” (meishō) or a “Special Place of Scenic Beauty” (tokubetsu meishō). But the granting of World Heritage site status provided an international measure of value. By virtue of this seal of approval, Kyoto had in effect been revalued according to universal standards. The true value of the historical remains of Kyoto’s pre-modern heritage was now there to be appreciated by all. Kyoto’s fringe forests exist as buffer zones that enhances the scenic quality of the historical sites. In pre-modern times, the majority of these mountain forests were owned by shrines or temples. Now they are considered to be “urban fringe forests” contributing to the scenic beauty of the city of Kyoto. Nevertheless, their maintenance and management as healthy forests are at present far from satisfactory. As this problem has a direct bearing on the appearance of the “ancient capital,” a national debate on the subject of ongoing conservation of Kyoto’s fringe forests seems inevitable.

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REFERENCES

Eizen kanzai kyoku kokuyū zaisanka 1926 Eizen kanzai kyoku kokuyū zaisanka. Shaji keidaichi ni kansuru enkakuteki hōreishū, 1926. Hoshōkai 1929 Hoshōkai, ed. Meiji jūyonen sōritsu hoshōkai ichiran. Hoshōkai, 1929. Jinkai Kenkyūkai 2010 Jinkai kenkyūkai, ed. Kitagaki Kunimichi nikki Jinkai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2010. Kyōto fu 1909 Kyōto fu ed. Kyōto fu sanrin shi. Kyōto fu, 1909. Kyōto shi 1980 Kyōto shi, ed. Kyōto no rekishi 8: koto no kindai. Gakugei Shorin, 1980. Maruyama Hiroshi 1994 Maruyama Hiroshi. Kindai Nihon kōen shi no kenkyū. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 1994. Maruyama Hiroshi 2006 Maruyama Hiroshi. “Mamorareta Higashiyama.” In Higashiyama Kyōto fūkei ron, ed. Katō Testuhiro et al. Shōwadō, 2006, pp. 82–101. Naimu Daijin Kanbō Toshi Keikakuka 1930 Naimu Daijin Kanbō Toshi Keikakuka, ed. (Kaitei zōho) Toshi keikaku hikkei. 1930. Ōkurashō Kanzaikyoku 1954 Ōkurashō Kanzaikyoku, ed. Shaji keidaichi shobun shi. Ōkurashō Zaimu Kyōkai, 1954. Ōsaka Dairin Kusho 1922 Ōsaka Dairin Kusho, ed. Ōsaka dairin kusho tōkei. Ōsaka Dairin Kusho, 1922. Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku 1929 Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku ed., Kannai gaiyō, 1929. Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku 1936 Ōsaka Eirin Kyoku, ed. Higashiyama kokuyūrin fūchi keikaku. Ōsaka Eirinkyoku, 1936. Ringyō Hattatsushi Chōsakai 1960 Ringyō Hattatsushi Chōsakai, ed. Nihon ringyō hattatsu shi: Meiji ikō no tenkai katei, 1. Rinyachō, 1960. Seiji Kyōiku Kyōkai 1938 Seiji Kyōiku Kyōkai, ed. Kokuyū zaisan hōki shūran, 1938. Takahashi Takuya 1898 Takahashi Takuya. Shinrin hōron. Myōhōdō, 1898. Tanaka Kiyoshi 1944 Tanaka Kiyoshi, ed. Kyōto toshi keikaku gaiyō. Kyōto Shiyakusho, 1944. Teishitsu Rinyakyoku 1939 Teishitsu Rinyakyoku, ed. Teishitsu rinyakyoku gojūnenshi, 1939. Tōkyō Fu 1934 Tōkyō Fu, ed. Teito ni okeru fūchi chiku ni tsuite, 1934. Translated by Stephen Gill

PART 3

INDUSTRY, ARTS, AND CRAFTSMANSHIP

CHAPTER 7

TRANSFORMING EARLY MEIJI KYOTO: TOWARDS AN “INDUSTRIAL CITY” Takaku Reinosuke Y

INTRODUCTION

Kyoto in the early Meiji period was a city with a population of just under 280,000 people. Owing to its large size, this city could hardly be described as having a single character; it was inevitably enough a city with many faces. In the latter part of the Edo period, Kyoto was historically famous as the city where the emperor resided. It was also the city which produced Nishijin-ori weaving, yūzen dyes, Kiyomizu-yaki pottery and other arts and crafts. At the same time, Kyoto was a religious center boasting the largest number of temples and shrines in the land, and a tourist center, too, where people came to visit not only temples and shrines, but such scenic spots such as Arashiyama; they even had access to the vicinity of the imperial palace. These diverse traits of the city came to be interrelated with yet another. Indeed, Kyoto gained recognition as a multi-faceted hub of arts and crafts in the estimation of foreign visitors. For example, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the Austrian throne, stopped over in Japan during his world tour of 1893, and visited Kyoto in August of that year. He wrote in his travel journal that, “This city has enjoyed an unrivalled reputation as a major center of splendid 169

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arts and crafts, namely, silk fabrics, metal artefacts and ceramics.”1 This perception was the same within Japan, too. Kyoto’s character as a religious center, home to the head temples and of Buddhist sects made the city a major producer of household Buddhist altars and Buddhist religious objects. In other words, Kyoto was not simply a sightseeing area for visiting temples and shrines; it was also a city integrally linked to industry. In 1869, the emperor and his court left Kyoto to take up residence in the new imperial capital of Tokyo – as it became known – and, when they did, Kyoto’s population plummeted. At the time, it was thought that the best way to revitalize Kyoto was to re-imagine it as an industrial center. It was on this account, for example, that plans were eventually put in place to generate hydroelectric power by diverting water into the city via a canal from Lake Biwa in neighboring Shiga Prefecture. I shall refer to this engineering project again later. The first task of this chapter is to render clear the geographical expanse of Kyoto in the Meiji period, that is, where Kyoto began and how far out it extended, and the lie of the Kyoto landscape. Secondly, it will draw on previous scholarship to shed light on the reasons behind, and processes integral to, the relocation of the imperial capital to Tokyo, which was the trigger for Kyoto’s decline in the early Meiji period. And, thirdly, it will clarify how the city of Kyoto was transformed from the late Edo period through the Meiji era by means of an exploration of the dynamics of the relocation of the imperial capital and the building of the Lake Biwa Canal. 1. THE GEOGRAPHICAL SCOPE AND LANDSCAPE OF KYOTO

As of 2011, Kyoto is a city with a population of just over 1,473,300 occupying an area of 827.9 square kilometers; this data is courtesy of Kyoto City’s official website. 2 Yet, in the early Meiji era, generally 1

2

Andō 2005, p. 88. This is a Japanese translation of Franz Ferdinand, Erzherzog von Österreich-Este. Tagebuch meiner Reise um die Erde1892– 1893. Alfred Hölder, 1895/96. http://www2.city.kyoto.lg.jp/sogo/toukei/

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speaking the city was understood to occupy a geographical area of just 18.39 square kilometers stretching roughly from Kuramaguchi Street in the north of the city down to Shichijō Street in the south and from the Kamo River in the east to Senbon Street in the west.3 In fact, the area from Nijō Street east of the Kamo river down to around Gojō Street was understood to constitute the outer reaches (rakugai chō-tsuzuki chō in Japanese) of Kyoto’s geographical scope. At the time, Kyoto was sub-divided into two wards or spheres, Kamigyō or “upper Kyoto” and Shimogyō or “lower Kyoto.” Until 1869, Nijō Street – on which Nijō Castle is situated to the west – formed the boundary between these two wards, and from then the boundary shifted further south to Sanjō Street. The modern city of Kyoto, which emerged fully formed in April 1889, comprised Kamigyō Ward and Shimogyō Ward, and was home to a population of approximately 280,000 people in an area of 29.77 square kilo meters. The growth in size was owing to the merging of nine villages in surrounding areas in the previous year.4 If we compare Kyoto area and population in the present day with this earlier period, we find that they have since exploded by roughly 27.8 and 5.3 times, respectively. Thereafter, the Kyoto City area grew as a result of numerous mergers with surrounding areas. The merger of 1888 was the last of the Meiji period; the next occurred in 1918 in the Taishō period (1912–1926). For the full reach of the Meiji period city of Kyoto as it was prior to 1888, the reader is referred to Figure 1, p.6. It is often said that Kyoto retains features of the ancient capital which it once was; it is certainly a city where the old endures. However, extensive damage was wreaked on the central part of Kyoto in the conflagration resulting from the so-called Kinmon Incident of August 1864, when troops from Chōshū domain sought to expel Aizu domain troops from the city limits. The area that was razed to the ground extended from north of Marutamachi Street down to the boundary of Kyoto City in the south, and from the Kamo River in the east to Horikawa River in 3 4

Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1968, pp. 523–525. Kyōto Fu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1968, pp. 523–525.

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the west. This was known as the don don yake or “boom-boom” conflagration, since it was caused by cannon fire. These old temples and shrines that survived were the ones in the outlying areas beyond the range of the cannon. The Kyoto landscape at the beginning of the Meiji period greatly differed from that which confronts us nowadays. Wide expanses of low red pine woods and fields of shibakusa weed could be seen near Mt. Hiei and other mountains around Kyoto, for example, and bare mountains without vegetation of any sort were not an uncommon sight.5 Roads, too, were very narrow by today’s standards. Kyoto Prefectural records, known as Kyōto fu chishi, carry images of the city in 1877. They reveal that the widest of roads in Kyoto city was four ken (where 1 ken equals approximately 1.8 m) in width, but this was exceptional. This was the width only at the junction of Teramachi Street and Sanjō Street on the west side of Sanjō Bridge. In Kyoto City, roads of 3 ken (approximately 5.4 meters) were relatively wide roads, but the width of the majority of roads was between 1.5 ken (approximately 2.7 m) and 2 ken (approximately 3.6 meters). In short, this meant that the many roads of ten meters or more in Kyoto today were nowhere in evidence in the Meiji period. Roads in excess of ten meters in width first made their appearance in Kyoto City during the period 1907 through 1913. This was after Kyoto City had invested some 10.2 million yen in road extensions and in the construction of electric tramways. This work was integral to what became known as Kyoto City’s “three major construction projects,” which resulted in the creation and/or expansion of six new trunk roads in addition to the main Karasuma Street artery. 2. RELOCATING THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL TO TOKYO

Kyoto started to attract nationwide attention and become the central stage of modern politics from around 1858. This was the time of the so-called Ansei Purge, when the Tokugawa military government, based in the city of Edo, set out to eliminate opponents 5

Ogura 2008, pp. 46, 47.

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to its signing of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States, and any others who opposed its choice of heir to the incumbent Tokugawa shōgun. It was in 1862 and 1863, that the population of Kyoto expanded, with daimyō and daimyō retainers from domains all over the country coming to Kyoto, and setting up base to further their political ambitions. From here on, a succession of major incidents was staged in and around Kyoto. Then on 4 November 1868, the year which saw the creation of the new imperial government, the emperor set off for Tokyo. He was back in Kyoto in January 1869, it is true, but he left for Tokyo once more on 18 April 1869. He never again took up residence in Kyoto; nor was the central government ever again based there. This marked, in effect, the establishment of a new imperial capital in Tokyo. However, after the departure of the emperor and his court, the new central government set up a “caretaker office” (rusukan) in Kyoto, which led the population of Kyoto to assume that the emperor would shortly be returning. However, their hopes were dashed when in November the empress departed Kyoto. A month earlier when her departure was announced, thousands of Kyoto citizens took to the streets in opposition to her leaving. They were suspicious to the point of conviction that the emperor and his court were now permanently locating to Tokyo, never to return. The areas of Kyoto whose citizens fueled these demonstrations were, as Kobayashi Takehiro has pointed out, especially the Nishijin and Honganji Monzen blocks: “These areas were home to merchants and traders at the lower echelons of society, who sustained the old social order of court nobles, and the great shrines and temples. Many of these people were from merchant houses that had served as purveyors to the Imperial Palace.”6 Why was it that the emperor had to be dislocated from Kyoto? The reasons were clearly articulated by the Satsuma domain leader, Ōkubo Toshimichi, in the position paper he submitted to the imperial court on 16 February 1868.7 Ōkubo’s point was that 6 7

Kobayashi 1998, p. 90. Ōkubo’s much-discussed paper was styled “Ōsaka sento kenpakusho” (or Petition for the Relocation of the Capital to Ōsaka).

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Japan needed a new style emperor, one who, like European monarchs, would appear before the people. To this end, the emperor had to be dislocated from the world which till now he had inhabited, namely the inner recesses of the imperial palace, where he was removed from all human contact except the enclosed community of the pre-modern nobility. The historian Takahashi Hidenao has demonstrated that those samurai from the feudal domains who were admitted to the Imperial Palace entered through the socalled Court Nobles’ Gate (known in Japanese as the Gishūmon), which was located at the south west of the palace; but they were only allowed to proceed from there as far as the karidate room. As Takahashi made clear, there could be no constructing of a modern state about the emperor, unless there was a radical reimagining of the spaces, which he inhabited.8 This relocation of the emperor to Tokyo – not in the end to Osaka, as Ōkubo Toshimichi had proposed – led presently to a mass exit from Kyoto as court nobles, who had till now resided in the court residential quarters around the Imperial Palace, and merchants and others who served them all, set off to Tokyo. In time, the Kyoto residences of domain lords also disappeared, and domain samurai too took their leave. All of this meant that the population of Kyoto City plummeted. Hamano Kiyoshi estimates the population of townspeople in and around the city of Kyoto in 1864 to have been about 280,000; he uses a sample analysis of temple registers (shūmon aratame chō) to reach this figure.9 Meanwhile, the official history of town and village mergers in Kyoto, the Kyōto fu shichōson gappeishi, put the population of Kyoto City at 224,361 inhabitants in 1875 in the aftermath of the Meiji Restoration.10 If we assume these two sets of data to be more or less accurate, this would mean that the population declined by between 50,000 and 60,000 people from the end of the Tokugawa period through to the early Meiji period. It has frequently been pointed out, too, that the vacating of the Impe8 9 10

Takahashi 2007, pp. 518–520. Hamano 2007, p. 224. Kyōto Fu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1968, p.523.

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rial Palace and the districts where the nobility had historically resided dealt a major blow to the city’s economic fortunes, since the local community and townspeople were dependent on the custom of both. 3. LAKE BIWA CANAL ENGINEERING WORKS: INDUSTRIAL CITY IN THE MAKING I. THE MAKIMURA PREFECTURAL ADMINISTRATION

At the very outset of the new Meiji era, it was the governor of Kyoto Prefecture who was in charge of administering Kyoto City. Geographically, the Kyoto prefectural area encompassed both Kyoto City, as described earlier, as well as outlying rural counties known as gun. These latter referred, until 1876, to those in the Yamashiro region and the Tanba region (excluding Amata County). From 1876 onwards, the Yamashiro, Tanba and Tango regions were all included within Kyoto Prefecture. In other words, the role of the governor of Kyoto was to preside over not just the city of Kyoto but also an extensive rural area comprising a multiplicity of counties. Accordingly, it was incumbent on the Kyoto governor to implement a regional development policy beneficial to both Kyoto City itself and its surrounding counties at one and the same time. I shall return to this point later. Examples of such developments included the construction of roads from Kyoto to Miyazu on the coast in the northern western part of Kyoto Prefecture, and the Lake Biwa Canal engineering project. The first governor of Kyoto Prefecture was Nagatani Nobuatsu, who was of court noble extraction; he was succeeded as governor by Makimura Masanao, who directed Kyoto prefectural administration from July 1875 through to January 1881. In 1868, Makimura entered the service of Kyoto Prefecture, and in 1871 became second in command to the Kyoto prefectural governor, with the title of daisanji. To all intents and purposes, Makimura was the one who wielded real power. To redeem Kyoto from its premature demise, owing to the relocation of the imperial court to Tokyo, Makimura pushed ahead with the promotion of industry,

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and sought to introduce foreign enterprises even as he developed traditional industries. The Makimura administration was responsible for the creation of such bodies as the Seimikyoku – or Bureau for Scientific and Industrial Development – a brewery, a leather-works, stock farms, and a Western paper mill; he had jacquard looms installed, and hosted industrial and other exhibitions.11 Makimura further devoted much energy to preserving the area formerly dominated by the residences of court nobles, now abandoned, and sought to turn the area into a public garden, the gyoen, as it is became known, adjacent to the Imperial Palace. He had a new stonewall erected around the palace perimeter.12 Besides this, the Makimura administration was the first in Japan to build a network of elementary schools, and it contributed to the prefecture’s development with the construction of other educational and medical facilities. Makimura, however, encountered fierce opposition from Kyoto Prefectural Assembly members in 1880 for pushing through an additional local (prefectural) tax, without securing the consent of the Prefectural Assembly which had been formed in 1879. As a result, Makimura was forced to leave Kyoto in January 1881. He subsequently took up a post in Tokyo as a counsellor at the Senate (Genrōin).13 II. THE KITAGAKI PREFECTURAL ADMINISTRATION AND ITS LEGACY

Kitagaki Kunimichi replaced Makimura Masanao in 1881, and in so doing became the third governor of Kyoto Prefecture. Kitagaki served in the role for eleven years until 1892. Unlike Makimura, who did battle with the Kyoto Prefectural Assembly, Kitagaki developed multiple projects in accord with the views of the majority in the assembly. One of these projects was the construction of a major trunk road, the Kyoto-Miyazu Road of approximately 139 kilometers in length linking Kyoto City to Miyazu in the Tango region in the north of the prefecture. Construction work took a full eight years, from its launch in 1882 to 11 12 13

Kyōto shi 1980, pp. 113–118. Takagi 2006, pp. 93, 94, 126. Harada 1958.

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its completion in 1889.14 The purposes of this road project were to transport industrial products from within Kyoto City north to the Tanba and Tango regions of the prefecture, but also to distribute commodities from Miyazu Harbor on the Japan Sea coast throughout Tanba and Tango. The construction work entailed, for example, levelling off the highest points on mountain roads to reduce their elevation, building mountain bypasses, not to mention the additional construction of two tunnels, the Oi no saka and Kunda tunnels. And, of course, bridges had to be built across all rivers along the route. All this was to ensure that wagons and rickshaws, that were an increasingly common method of transport at the time, could freely come and go. Moreover, this road was extremely wide by Kyoto standards at roughly 3 ken (approximately 5.4 meters) in width; it was unprecedented for a rural road at the time. Kitagaki also devoted much energy to raising local capital. In the latter half of the 1880s, various banks and companies set up store in Kyoto City. These included the Kyoto Commercial Bank (Kyōto Shōkō Ginkō) founded in 1886, the Kyoto Textiles Company (Kyōto Orimono Kabushiki Kaisha), the Hokkaidō Hemp Spinning Company (Hokkaidō Seima Kabushiki Kaisha), the Kyōto Ceramics Company (Kyōto Tōjiki Kaisha), the Kansai Trading Limited Partnership Company (Kansai Bōeki Gōshi Kaisha), and the Kyoto Warehouse Company (Kyōto Sōko Kaisha), all of which were founded in 1887, and the Kyoto Electric Light Company (Kyōto Dentō Kabushikigaisha), founded the following year. For example, from 1887 onwards Kitagaki ceded to the Kyoto Commercial Bank control over the Local Tax Exchange Agency Handling Banks (Chihōzei Kawasekata Toriatsukai Ginkō) in the “kubu” ward areas (later to become “shibu” or municipal areas); he also ceded control of the Wards and Counties Collective Local Tax Exchange Agency Handling Banks (Kugun Rentai Chihōzei Kawasekata Toriatsukai Ginkō). In short, he made the Kyoto Commercial Bank “purveyor” to Kyoto Prefecture. It was Kitagaki who personally urged Kyoto’s 14

For the building of the Kyōto-Miyazu Road, see Takaku 2011, Chapter 1.

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new emerging capitalists to establish the Kyoto Textiles Company and who sold off to them at a bargain price the land, buildings and machinery of the Oridono Textile Factory, formerly owned by Kyoto Prefecture. The Kyoto Electric Light Company owed its foundation to the sponsorship of Kitagaki, who had learnt of the founding of an electric light company in Tokyo earlier in the year. However, ultimately, local capital tended to concentrate in the hands of specific groups, and merchants and traders who did not benefit from Kitagaki’s beneficence criticized his policies as giving preferential treatment to capitalists.15 Kitagaki also attached importance to the conservation of famous sights that were popular with tourists. The preservation and renovation of the Imperial Palace and the Imperial Garden was begun under the Makimura administration before it was inherited by Kitagaki. Kitagaki worked on the preservation of Nijō Castle and the maintenance of Maruyama Park. Also, after the completion of the Kyoto-Miyazu roadworks in 1889, Kyoto Prefecture turned its attention to the construction of roads form the city out to famous sights such as Arashiyama, Rokuonji (otherwise known as Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion Temple), Takao and Togano, and to the building of bridges. In an informal discussion with Kyoto City Assembly members in February, 1890, Kitagaki referred to the necessity of preserving Kyoto’s scenic spots: Kyoto’s famous sights (meishōchi) are related to the economy of Kyoto City in the most profound manner. The reason why Japanese and foreigners assemble in this district from far and wide has much to do with the fact that Kyoto boasts many shrines, temples and places of natural beauty. These are treasures unique to Kyoto. Those who would let them go to ruin with no further thought are ignorant of the economy of Kyoto City.16

Kitagaki may well have placed importance on the conservation of scenic spots and on sightseeing, but the core projects of the 15 16

Takaku 1976, pp. 169, 175–180. Jinkai Kenkyūkai 2010, p. 314.

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Kitagaki era were primarily major civil engineering and construction works, such as the Kyoto-Miyazu roadworks and the Lake Biwa Canal works, which I discuss below. Projects for preserving scenic spots were developed with very low budgets. III. THE LAKE BIWA CANAL ENGINEERING PROJECT

Kitagaki’s greatest undertaking was the Lake Biwa Canal engineering project. The planning for this began back in 1881, the year in which Kitagaki took up office in Kyoto as prefectural governor. Work was started in 1885, and completed in 1890.17 This engineering project involved the excavation of a canal, or drainage channel, for drawing the water from Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture into Kyoto City. A Lake Biwa Canal plan had in fact been in existence since the Edo period, but Kitagaki Kunimichi’s presence was decisive in bringing it to fruition. The canal’s watercourse cut through Nagarayama Mountain via the No.1 Tunnel, which passed under Miidera Temple from Mihogasaki, the water intake gate in Ōtsu City. It fed into the Fujio area of Shiga Prefecture and Yamashina in Kyoto Prefecture, before cutting through the Moroha tunnel to make its way once more through the Yamashina basin. It then flowed through the No.2 and No.3 tunnels to arrive at the Keage berth. Here, boats were lifted out of the water, placed on railroad tracks, and transported down to the berth at Nanzenji Temple. From there, the canal proceeded westward, making a right-angled turn to reach the Kamo River. The watercourse from the Nanzenji Temple to the Kamo River is also called the Ōtō Canal, where Ōtō means “east of Kamo.” Such was the route of the main canal. Meanwhile, there was a tributary, whose water flowed from Keage along the foot of the surrounding mountains. The water passed along the Suirokaku aqueduct in the Nanzenji Temple complex, before coursing through tunnels northward as irrigation water (Figure 1). 17

The following discussion of the Lake Biwa Canal engineering works draws on Takaku 2011, Chapter 2 and Kyōto Shinbun 1990.

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Figure 1: The Biwako Canal (Map drawn by Oka Keiko on the advice of Takaku Reinosuke)

The Lake Biwa Canal engineering project is generally understood as a multipurpose, comprehensive undertaking. Its aims were indeed manifold, but its prime purpose lay in attempts to resurrect the city of Kyoto as an industrial center. After all, the city had been in seemingly terminal decline since the relocation of the emperor and his court to Tokyo in 1869. In March 1884, the chō or block representatives of Kyoto along with merchant representatives, who were all members of an organization called the Industrial Promotion Consulting Association (Kangyō Shimon Kai) submitted an entreaty to Minister of Home Affairs Yamagata Aritomo, seeking permission to launch the canal

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project. Here they articulated their future vision of Kyoto as the “largest industrial center in Japan.”18 They were, of course, exaggerating for effect, but the vision was nonetheless significant. Since the Edo period, Kyoto already had prosperous manufacturing industries. The Nishijin-ori weaving, the yūzen dyes and Kiyomizu pottery were representative of the city’s thriving textile, dyeing and ceramics industries respectively. For this reason, in the initial stage, the plan behind the canal was to drive these and other industries, deploying machinery operated by waterwheels turned by canal water as their power source. The idea was to fill out the Higashiyama-Nyakuōji area with row upon row of waterwheels. Another aim of the canal works was to facilitate the transportation of materials from Ōtsu City, which was adjacent to Lake Biwa, by boat into the city of Kyoto. This plan for the transport of goods involved directing the water from the Kamo River in Kyoto City south to Fushimi in Kii County, via a separately constructed canal. The aim here was to ensure the passage of goods from Fushimi along the Yodo River as far as Osaka. The waterway from Kyoto to Fushimi eventually took shape, after the completion of the Lake Biwa Canal, as the Kamo River Canal, which flowed just east of the Kamo River. Other purposes of the works were to ensure a regular supply of irrigation water for farms in Yamashina and the northern reaches of Kyoto City; to make good the shortage of utility water in the city; to guarantee water for rice milling and fire prevention; and, further, to improve hygiene by managing the environment of the Kamo River which flowed through Kyoto City center. The dominant aim of the canal project, however, was to drive waterwheels to power machinery. But in 1888 the plan for waterwheel-driven power was suddenly abandoned, and replaced with hydro-electrical power. The reason was that Tanabe Sakurō, the manager of the Lake Biwa Canal engineering project, and Takagi Bunpei, president of the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce, had in the meantime taken themselves off 18

Kyoto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1972, pp. 146–147.

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to the United States for the specific purpose of observing water power utilization methods. In Aspen, Colorado they visited the hydroelectric power station. This experience inspired their revised plan to use hydro-electricity as the power source, and this in turn was the factor leading to the success of the Lake Biwa Canal engineering project. Worthy of special mention here is the fact that all processes from design and surveying through to execution of works in this, the largest civil engineering and construction project of its kind in Japan at the time, were conducted entirely by Japanese engineers, without the help of foreigners. In particular, Minami Ichirobē, manager of the Asaka Canal project, who penned a vital position paper on the Lake Biwa Canal project after conducting a field survey, Tanabe Sakurō the works supervisor and Shimada Dōsei the surveying manager, all played key roles.19 The Lake Biwa Canal engineering project was officially launched in June 1885, and was completed in March 1890. A ceremony to celebrate its completion was held on 9 April 1890 with the emperor and empress in attendance. In 1891, Japan’s first commercial electric power station was completed at Keage, and it started to supply electrical power in November of the same year. The main construction work was sub-contracted out to the Ōkura and Fujita construction companies from Tokyo and Osaka respectively, but also to local Kyoto construction companies; the project engaged a vast workforce. IV. THE LAKE BIWA CANAL ENGINEERING WORKS: RISKS AND SUCCESSFUL OUTCOMES

Till the present day, the conventional wisdom about the Lake Biwa Canal engineering works has been that it was an unmitigated success. To be sure, there was opposition and there was discontent before the waterway reached Kyoto, but Kyoto Prefectural Governor Kitagaki took center stage, and ran a positive, persuasive campaign to deal personally with the discontent. As 19

Ikeda, Harada 1993, p. 82.

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a result of his maneuvering, in April 1890 when the canal water flowed into the Kamo River, a ceremony to celebrate its completion was held in the presence of the emperor and empress, and Kyoto’s citizens gave the imperial visitors a passionate welcome. Such is the conventional wisdom. However, in reality, not all of Kyoto’s citizens were necessarily in the welcoming mood. Firstly, 1890, the year in which the Lake Biwa Canal was completed, was a time of unprecedented recession caused by both the rising price of rice and a credit crunch. A tax for the canal engineering works was also levied upon residents of the Kamigyō and Shimogyō Wards, which resulted in the amassing of over 233,000 yen or the equivalent of 18.6% of the overall project costs of approximately 1.25 million yen. The Tōkyō nichinichi newspaper reported on 18 April 1890 that, “The Lake Biwa Canal has been completed, but it has left the impoverished inhabitants of Kyoto high and dry.” Under these circumstances, opinion spread among the citizens of Kyoto that “further construction” – such as that on the Kamo River Canal, an extension of the Lake Biwa Canal project – “should be postponed for a while.” Secondly, the ferrying of goods by boat from Ōtsu to Kyoto was one of the main aims of the canal engineering works, but the previous year, 1889, saw the opening of the Tōkaidō railroad line from Tokyo to Kobe. This heralded the arrival of the age of steam railway transportation, something that had not been adequately acknowledged in the planning stages of the Lake Biwa Canal. As a result, for several years after the completion of the Lake Biwa Canal, doubts were raised over the effectiveness of the canal and whether its value was, after all, commensurate with the exorbitant amount of money allocated for its completion. The approximate expenses of 1.25 million yen for the project accounted for fully 1.78% of the gross national budget of 70 million yen at the time. An episode symbolic of the tensions here was that the construction of the Kamogawa Canal, a secondary phase of the total Lake Biwa Canal project, was passed by a margin of just one vote at a Kyoto City Assembly meeting held in January 1890.

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Thirdly, even after the Lake Biwa Canal was completed, its effectiveness did not manifest itself in any readily apparent form. The source of power had been switched from water wheel to electricity, to be sure, but the transmission of power generated by the electric power station built at Keage was by a direct current system, which did not allow the transport of power over great distances; it could be sent only within a radius of roughly one kilometer from the power station. It was not until 1894, after an alternating current-type generator had been installed, that electrical power could be sent to more remote locations. That the Lake Biwa Canal began to demonstrate its effectiveness in the latter half of the 1890s was owing entirely to the generation of electricity. Viewed in terms of charged usage revenue from the utilization of water from the Lake Biwa Canal in the period from the 1890s through to the end of the Meiji period in 1912, electricity generated 80% of revenue after 1897. By contrast, revenue from canal usage, such as transportation by boat, was at the 5% level in the period 1898 to 1901; it dropped to 4% from 1902 onwards and fell further to 2% in 1912. From then on, too, water-borne transportation evidently declined, as the means of transportation switched over to railroads. If power for industrial use from the canals had not been diverted from the waterwheel to hydro-electricity in 1889, and, indeed, if an alternating current type generator had not been installed in 1894, then later generations might well have concluded that the economic benefits of this major civil engineering and construction project – the Lake Biwa Canal – did nothing to offset the massive capital investment. However, when the effectiveness of the Lake Biwa Canal is viewed in its entirety, we should understand it as having been of benefit, despite the fact that the benefits defy numerical expression. Firstly, we might mention the irrigation water supplied to the Yamashina district and the northern part of Kyoto City, which was among the initial objectives of the canal project. A second point concerns the increased volume of well water for fire prevention, resulting from the larger supply of water into Kyoto

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City. Also, we cannot overlook one further aspect, namely that Kyoto’s main water supply came to draw not on the Lake Biwa Canal project that has been the focus of discussion here, but on a second water channel that mostly flowed into the city through a succession tunnels. The second water channel was built without hitch, only because the first water channel already existed. CONCLUSION

As of today, the Lake Biwa Canal engineering project can be understood as effective not merely in straightforward, utilitarian terms; its significance lies also in that it created what we might refer to as Kyoto’s “water-scape.” One dimension of this can be seen in the water it drew to the gardens of Kyoto’s Higashiyama quarter, such as the Heian Shrine gardens, and also to the Imperial Palace, and the Kikoku tei garden or Shōsei’en garden in the Higashi Honganji Temple, among other gardens of renown. The Okazaki quarter, known today as the “Okazaki cultural zone,” was incorporated into Kyoto City in 1888 since it was an area through which the canal passed bearing water from Lake Biwa. The canal as it ran through this area was, incidentally, known locally as the Ōtō Canal, meaning “canal east of the Kamo River.” At the time, though, this was an unspoiled farming community consisting entirely of paddy fields and arable land. Okazaki’s transfiguration began in 1895, five years after the completion of the Lake Biwa Canal, with the hosting in that year of the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition and the Eleventh Centenary of the founding of the capital Heian, and the construction at the same time of the Heian Shrine. From then on, there began the development of land for housing in Okazaki and the districts in and around the Nanzenji Temple complex. This later expanded into an extensive and exclusive villa area. Many of the gardens in the villas in the neighborhood were created by landscape gardener Ogawa Jihē, and his gardens relied for their water supply on that drawn from the Lake Biwa Canal. In addition to these gardens, the canal itself gave color to Kyoto’s cultural landscape as typified, for example, in the Suirokaku aqueduct in the Nanzenji Temple complex, and

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the Tetsugaku no michi or Philosopher’s Walk along one of the canal tributaries.20 Finally, let me touch upon the subject of Kyoto’s transformation as a city in the late Meiji period. The first volume of the Kyōto shiseishi, the official history of Kyoto’s municipal administration, cites an article in the Kyōto hinode newspaper dated 14 September 1903 to the effect that, “Kyoto is, naturally enough, ranked below not only Tokyo and Osaka but also Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya, and is sneered at for being the sixth largest city in Japan.”21 In the late Meiji period, there was conspicuous delay in laying Kyoto’s foundations for urban development, at least when compared to other cities. I mentioned above that it was hydro-electric power that guaranteed the success of the Lake Biwa Canal. Yet, the situation was that the amount of power generated by the Keage power station using canal water could not keep pace with further increases in demand, in spite of the efforts implemented in 1897 to boost power output. Demand continued to increase to a point where the city could not meet it.22 Early in the twentieth century, Kyoto City came to recognize the necessity of what is called the “three major construction projects” (sandai jigyō ), namely, the construction of a service water system, the building of the second phase of the Lake Biwa Canal to satisfy ever increasing demand for electrical power, and the extension of the city’s road network, all intended to lay a new foundation for urban development. Saigō Kikujirō (the son of the great Saigō Takamori), who was appointed to mayor of Kyoto City in October 1904, and Kawakami Chikaharu his successor from July 1911, took on these tasks, and, between them, they had them accomplished by 1912. However, in spite of these and other reforms, the modern period saw Kyoto reduced from one of the three erstwhile capitals of Japan to just one among six major commercial and industrial cities alongside Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, and Yokohama. 20 21 22

Takaku 2012, pp. 86–92. Kyōto Shisei Shi Hensan Iinkai 2009, pp. 189. Shiraki 2006, pp. 88, 89.

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The Kyōto keizai no hyakunen, an official economic history spanning Kyoto’s modern century published by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce, reviewed Kyoto’s position among the six major cities from the end of the Meiji period onwards. It pointed out that all the cities except Kyoto had seaports, and that “An economic system founded on mass production and mass transit was disadvantageous for the inland commercial and industrial city that is Kyoto. Kyoto was accordingly placed in a situation where it had no other choice but to rely on knowledge-intensive industries of high added-value.”23 REFERENCES

Andō 2005 Andō Tsutomu. Ōsutoria kōtaishi no Nihon nikki: Meiji 26 nen natsu no kiroku. Kōdansha Gakujutsu Bunko, 2005. Erzherzog von Österreich-Este 1895/96 Erzherzog von Österreich-Este, Franz Ferdinand. Tagebuch meiner Reise um die Erde 1892–1893. Alfred Hölder, 1895/96. Hamano 2007 Hamano Kiyoshi. Kindai Kyōto no rekishi jinkōgakuteki kenkyū. Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2007. Harada 1958 Harada Kumiko. “Minken undōki no chihō kaigi: Meiji jūsannen Kyōto fu ni okeru chihōzei tsuichō futatsu jiken.” Nihonshi kenkyū 38 (1958): pp.33-67. Ikeda, Harada 1993 Ikeda Ryōji and Harada Kumiko, eds. Kyōto fu no hyakunen. Yamakawa Shuppan, 1993. Jinkai Kenkyūkai 2010 Jinkai Kenkyūkai ed., Kitagaki Kunimichi nikki Jinkai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2010. Kobayashi 1998 Kobayashi Takehiro. Meiji ishin to Kyōto. Rinsen Shoten, 1998. Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1968 Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan ed,. Kyōto fu shichōson gappei shi. Kyōto Fu, 1968. Kyoto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1972 Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan ed., Kyōto fu hyakunen no shiryō: 1 Seiji gyōsei hen. Kyōto Fu, 1972. Kyōto shi 1980 Kyōto shi, ed. Kyōto no rekishi 8: Koto no kindai. Gakugei Shorin, 1980. 23

Kyōto Shōkō Kaigisho Hyakunen Shi Hensan Iinkai 1982, p. 187.

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Kyōto Shinbun 1990 Kyōto Shinbun, ed. Biwako sosui no 100 nen: “Jojutsu hen.” Kyōto Shi Suidōkyoku, 1990. Kyōto Shisei Shi Hensan Iinkai 2009 Kyōto Shisei Shi Hensan Iinkai ed., Kyōto Shiseishi 1: Shisei no keisei. Kyōto Shi, 2009. Kyōto Shōkō Kaigisho Hyakunen Shi Hensan Iinkai 1982 Kyōto Shōkō Kaigisho Hyakunen Shi Hensan Iinkai ed., Kyōto keizai no hyakunen. Kyōto Shōkō Kaigisho, 1982. Ogura 2008 Ogura Jun’ichi. “Chisan to shokusei.” In Maruyama Hiroshi, Iyori Tsutomu, Takagi Hiroshi, ed. Miyako no kindai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2008, pp. 46–47. Shiraki 2006 Shiraki Masatoshi. “Meiji kōki no Biwako sosui to denki jigyō.” In Itō Yukio, ed. Kindai Kyōto no kaizō. Minerva Shobō, 2006, pp. 88–89. Takagi 2006 Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei to koto. Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Takahashi 2007 Takahashi Hidenao. Bakumatsu ishin no seiji to tennō. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2007. Takaku 1976 Takaku Reinosuke. “Meiji kenpō taisei seiritsuki no ritō.” Shakai Kagaku 6:3 (1976), pp. 161–206. Takaku 2012 Takaku Reinosuke. “Ōtō no mizu no keikan: Biwako sosui to Okazaki shūhen.” In Dōshisha Daigaku Kyōto Kangaku Kenkyūkai, ed. Daigakuteki Kyōto gaido: Kodawari no arukikata. Shōwadō, 2012, pp. 86-92. Takaku 2011 Takaku Reinosuke. Kindai Nihon to chiiki shinkō: Kyōto fu no kindai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2011. Translated by Julian Holmes and John Breen

CHAPTER 8

NIHONGA IN KYOTO AT THE DAWN OF THE MODERN ERA Kuniga Yumiko Y

INTRODUCTION

NIHONGA refers to works of art painted with traditional Japanese materials. Silk, washi paper, and sometimes wooden panels were used for supports, while pigments comprised sumi ink and natural minerals. However, the word Nihonga did not exist before the modern Meiji period. At the end of the Edo period, yōga (literally “Western paintings”) began to arrive in Japan from Western Europe in the form of oil paintings. Since they differed from traditional Japanese paintings in both the materials and the techniques used, the term Nihonga emerged in contradistinction. In other words, before yōga was widely disseminated in Japan, all painting was Nihonga; there was no need to designate it especially as Japanese art.1 Note that for the purposes of this chapter, Nihonga refers not to religious works of art such as butsuga (Buddhist paintings) or Shintō kaiga (Shinto paintings), but to secular paintings alone. Similarly, in this chapter I limit the years implicit in the term “dawn of the modern era” to 1897 at the latest, around the time when Mori Kansai (1814–1894), Kishi Chikudō (1826–1897), and Kōno Bairei (1844–1895) – the three giants who flourished 1

On Nihonga, see Kitazawa 1991. 189

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in the Edo period and, in the Meiji period, led the Kyoto art world – died, and passed on their mantles to the next generation. In the context of the development of Nihonga, then, this period covers a time when the unique characteristics of the Kyoto art world exerted great influence. Japanese painting originated as “art for the living space,” and was intimately linked to the history of Japanese architecture. It was early on seen as a component of tategu, those standing wooden fittings, such as sliding doors, used to create and define interior spaces, and, indeed, the fact that it evolved as interior decoration is one of its defining features. In the Heian period (794–1185), tategu was a key aspect of the shinden zukuri architecture style in which a large interior space was partitioned into smaller, separated spaces by means of portable screens. On these various types of partitions – folding screens (byōbu), sliding panels (fusuma shōji), portable partitions (tsuitate shōji), and tapestry-like hangings (zejō ) – pictures were painted. Subsequently, between the latter half of the Kamakura period (1185–1333) and the Muromachi period (1336–1573), as the culture of Zen Buddhism flourished, buildings were divided into permanently separated rooms in what became known as the shoin zukuri style. This led to the production of decorative paintings on hanging scrolls (kakefukusō). The rooms in these buildings were floored with tatami mats, and painted hanging scrolls were an increasingly regular decorative feature. In the pre-modern period, then, Japanese painting, which was seen together with its mounting as one organic entity, permeated daily life as “art for tatami rooms” and “art for alcoves” as a means of decorating the living space. In the modern period, however, the concept of bijutsu or “fine arts” was constructed anew. It implied a system of public exhibitions, and paintings became more self-consciously “artistic” as “exhibition hall art.” As more consideration was given to modeling and the aesthetic appreciation of art, so art became further removed from the living space. However, this is not to deny that those Japanese paintings which were to become known as Nihonga in the modern period

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were based on a tradition rooted in art for the living space. Indeed, the connection between Nihonga and the living space was especially deep-rooted in Kyoto. In the latter half of the Edo period, painters such as Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795) and Goshun (1752–1811) emerged, and their paintings, with their emphasis on an appreciation of life and the beauty of nature, proved immensely popular with an affluent merchant class, who brought them into their living spaces as decorations for tatami rooms. This mode of patronage was the rock upon which the Nihonga of modern Kyoto was founded. Again, in their role as decorations for the living space, paintings acquired an intimate connection with crafts, resulting in a symbiosis that may well be seen as the defining feature of the development of modern Kyoto’s Nihonga. This symbiosis is something I discuss in detail below. Finally, “Kyoto,” to be precise, ought only to refer to the city after the departure of the emperor for Tokyo in 1869. However, for clarity’s sake – for example in terms such as “the Kyoto art world” – I also use “Kyoto” to refer to the city before the imperial capital was established in Tokyo. 1. THE KYOTO ART WORLD IN LATE EDO PERIOD: TOWARDS MODERNIZATION I. TRADITIONS OF THE SHASEI SCHOOL: THE MARUYAMA, SHIJŌ AND KISHI SCHOOLS

The painter who dominated the Kyoto art world in the latter half of the Edo period was Maruyama Ōkyo. He was born to a farming household not far from Kyoto City in Anō Village, Tanba Province (present day Kameoka City, Kyoto Prefecture). After serving an apprenticeship to a toy dealer in Kyoto, Ōkyo set about independently studying classical Chinese art and Western painting techniques. He began to produce realistic pictures based on painting from life. (Figure 1) Thereafter, he taught many pupils and founded a school of painting known as the Maruyama School. Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), a contemporary of Ōkyo, famously wrote in 1808 in his Tandai

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shōshin roku that “Ōkyo appeared in the art world, and painting from life became all the fashion. Throughout the city, all paintings became alike.”2 Subsequent writers, too, such as Nakabayashi Chikutō (1776–1835) in Chikutō garon (1802), Tanomura Chikuden (1777–1835) in Sanchūjin jōzetsu (1835), and Shirai Kayō (1787–1836) in Gajō yōryaku (1832) noted – both in support of and in opposition to this phenomenon – that Ōkyo had made painting from life popular, that he had completely transformed the Kyoto art world, and that all painters in the city without exception had begun to paint in the style of Ōkyo.3 These writers also documented the attitudes of the next generation. While Goshun followed in Ōkyo’s footsteps, Ganku (1749–

Figure 1:

Maruyama Ōkyo. Hozugawa zu byōbu (Important cultural asset). 1795.

(Source: Chisō Co., Ltd.)

2 3

Sakazaki 1917, p. 1167. On Nakabayashi, Tanomura, and Shirai, see for example Sakazaki 1917.

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1838), with his looser penmanship, stood in opposition. Goshun studied with both Ōkyo and Buson (1716–1784), who was also a haiku poet, and combined Ōkyo’s realist style with the haiku poet’s ability to grasp and express the essence of things immediately through a witty, clever and unconventional sensibility. He established the Shijō School, so named due to its location in the Shijō quarter of the city, which then became the leading school in the Kyoto art world. (Figure 2) Ganku, who was born either in the Etchū or Kaga regions of central Japan, came to Kyoto and, while founding his style on realism, established a distinctive form of line drawing that employed short, trembling brush strokes of varying widths and a free conception of form. He was particularly renowned as a painter of tigers. Ganku founded the Kishi School, and in time his son, Gantai, succeeded him as head of the school. Even as Gantai inherited his father’s style of penmanship, he inclined towards the art of the Shijō School, for which there was great demand, and shifted to a tranquil, decorative style.4 Of note in the writings of these painters are scattered phrases such as “Kyō ha” (Kyoto School), “Keishi no ga” (Kyoto art), “Heian no gatai” (Heian artistic style), and “Heian no gakaku” (Heian refinement). These concepts sought to relativize the “Edo ha,” namely the painters who were active in the capital of Edo. The terminology indicates the artists had an awareness both of the distinctive qualities of Kyoto paintings, and of the unique identity of the Kyoto art world vis à vis artists in Edo, in Settsu and in Nagasaki.5 In Edo, for example, Tani Bunchō (1763–1840) and his contemporaries also considered realism to be of importance, 4

5

See, for example, the essay by Iwasa Shin’ichi in Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan 1998. The Gajō yōryaku speaks of Ōkyo and Ganku as constituting two distinct schools, and has Ōkyo transforming “Heian art.” Sanchūjin jōzetsu refers to a multiplicity of schools: “Kyō ha,” “Settsu ha (Seppa),” “Edo ha,” “Nagasaki ha,” each with its own merits and demerits. The latter speaks of the “Kyō ha” as putting emphasis on sketching, the better to depict insects and flowering plants. Regarding the above, see Sakazaki 1917, pp.1353– 1354 and pp. 179, 180 and 181.

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Figure 2:

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Goshun. Hakubai zu byōbu (Important cultural asset).

(Source: Itsuō Bijutsukan.)

and they developed their own style of realism.6 Then, in the latter half of the Edo period, people came into contact with megane e (“literally lens painting”), which was a form of painting based on the rules of Western perspective and which, through the use of a lens, appeared three-dimensional; they encountered Chinese paintings, too, imported through Nagasaki by Chinese residents. They also developed an interest in the world of rational sight, particularly perspective, and came to value realism in their paintings. And yet, it may be said that in Kyoto there was a desire for 6

See, for example, Kōno 1999.

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Figure 3:

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Shiokawa Bunrin. Yuranosuke yūen zu byōbu. 1863. (Author’s private collection)

(This image is reproduced with permission from Kyōto gadan kyoshō no keifu. Kōno Bairei to sono ryūha ten. Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1990.)

something over and above mere realism and rationality. What was that something? After Ōkyo, Goshun, and Ganku, there appeared in the late Edo period in Kyoto a central group of artists known as the Four Heian Artists (Heian shimeika). This group comprised Yokoyama Seiki (1792–1864) and Shiokawa Bunrin (1808– 1877) from the Shijō School, Nakajima Raishō (1796–1871) from the Maruyama School, and Kishi Renzan (1804–1871) from the Kishi School. The Heian gaka hyōbanki, a work that evaluated Kyoto artists, described the works of these artists as

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“tender” (Seiki and Raishō), “beautiful and fine” (Seiki, Raishō, and Renzan), “gorgeous” (Renzan and Bunrin), and “tasteful” and “refined” (both Bunrin)7 (Figure 3). That is to say, even as they embraced reality, they possessed a tranquility and decorativeness, and a witty and urban sensibility, or, to put this another way, the refined sensitivity and techniques of Kyoto style (“Kyōfū”). This, precisely, was the view of the Kyoto merchant classes who were the primary consumers of the arts in the city. They bought these paintings to add color to their homes, and insisted on the Kyoto style when commissioning new works. And it was these preferences of the Kyoto merchant classes that would encourage an “art of modern Kyoto” that was distinct from the tastes of Edo. II. ORGANIZING KYOTO PAINTERS: FROM THE HIGASHIYAMA SPRING AND AUTUMN EXHIBITIONS TO JOUNSHA

By the late Edo period, these Kyoto artists had already established, for the purpose of their own artistic improvement, an independent group that transcended the boundaries of the various schools. Group meetings were an occasion for mutual critiquing, and may rightly be regarded as a forerunner to the formal exhibitions of paintings of the modern period. From 1792 to 1798, while Ōkyo was still alive, Minagawa Kien (1734–1807) presided over the Higashiyama Spring and Autumn Painting and Calligraphy Exhibitions to promote and encourage painting and calligraphy in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo, and sought the participation of his painter and calligrapher acquaintances.8 This was almost certainly the earliest example in Japan of social activity by an organization of artists. In these seven years, they held approximately fourteen exhibitions. Extant records show that in the autumn exhibition of 1796, 212 scrolls were hung, while in the spring exhibition of 1797, a total of 263 scrolls were hung.9 Evidently, among the exhibits were a great many newly7

8 9

This work dates perhaps to the 1850s. It is reproduced in Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 40 (September 1895), pp.11–25. On these artists, see also for example Harada 1977 and 1985, and Kanzaki 1929. See, for example, Akai 1989, pp. 299–302. Akai 1989, pp.300–301.

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created hanging scrolls. There were participants from outside of Kyoto, too: Nakamura Hōchū and Sumie Buzen from Osaka, Kakizaki Hakyō from Matsumae, Azuma Tōyō from Sendai, and Kuwayama Gyokushū from Kishū took part in 1796; and, from 1797, artists from Edo such as Tani Bunchō and his wife Kankan, Kitayama Kangan, Suzuki Fuyō, and Suzuki Shōren established their own schools and submitted works. Artists in Kyoto would no doubt have looked at these works with great interest. Although at first the dates and locations of the exhibitions were not fixed, between 1854 and 1861 the spring exhibitions took place from the twenty third day, third lunar month and the autumn exhibitions from the twenty third day, ninth lunar month in Higashiyama; the spring exhibition was held in the Maruyama Shōamirō pavilion and the autumn exhibition in Sōrinji Chōkian. The scrolls of the senior members of the group, Yokoyama Seiki and Nakajima Raishō, were positioned at the center of the exhibitions, with the works of the various schools hung together.10 Following the death of Seiki in 1864, the early years of the Meiji period (1868–1912) saw the creation of a new body of artists. At the center was Shiokawa Bunrin, who united the various schools to establish the Jounsha Society. Jounsha artists met once a month to display and to evaluate new works of art. Paintings from previous eras were also brought in to be critiqued.11 Thus, it is evident that by the 1860s, a pioneering new group of artists, inclusive of different schools, had established itself in Kyoto. 2. THE JAPANESE ART WORLD IN MEIJI KYOTO I. KYOTO AND THE TRANSFER OF THE IMPERIAL CAPITAL TO TOKYO

Following the Restoration of imperial rule in 1868 and the transfer of the imperial capital to Tokyo in 1869, the people of Kyoto faced emotional instability and economic uncertainty. The 10 11

Akai 1989, p.301. Akai 1989, pp. 325–328. Recently, Igarashi (2016) has written on the creation of this society but much work remains to be done.

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emperor’s relocation to Tokyo was a huge shock that impacted upon the lives of the majority of Kyoto’s citizens. The Imperial Palace, the imperial family, and other members of the nobility had after all been the chief patrons in the Kyoto arts and crafts world of the Edo period, and it was their understanding of culture and refined sensibility that sustained the creation of new art works. However, they all moved en masse to Tokyo. Craftsmen were stunned, and it is reported that the third generation of the Kyoto-style ceramics (Kyō-yaki) master craftsmen, Kiyomizu Rokubē, seriously considered following them to Tokyo.12 Painters, too, suffered great hardship. It fell to Nishimura Sōzaemon of Chisō and Iida Shinshichi of Takashimaya Gofukuten, two giants of the dyeing and weaving trade, to extend a helping hand.13 In order to recover from the impact of the Restoration, the Kyoto dyeing and weaving industries introduced the latest techniques from Europe and endeavoured to modernize. At the same time, the patterns and designs used in the industry were undergoing a period of reassessment, and artisans began to manufacture more artistic dyed and woven products in large quantities. These they exhibited at the international expositions that became increasingly common around the world from the late nineteenth century onwards. On the one hand the fixed designs of traditional under-drawings were no longer deemed appropriate, but on the other a majority of Japanese painters found themselves in straitened circumstances, aside that is from a small number of literati painters; the tradesmen of the dyeing and weaving industry eyed a chance. And so Meiji period painters turned to producing under-drawings for the dyeing and weaving industry, and they formed a deep connection with this line of work.14 12 13

14

Shimomise 1963, p.8. For Nishimura and Iida, see for example Kuroda 1899 (vol.1), pp. 303– 307, and p. 319 respectively. For literati painters, as well as those from realist schools, earning a living by carrying out under-drawings for tradesmen in the dyeing and weaving industry, see Murakami 1927, pp. 62–63.

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Moreover, while perhaps not as remarkably so as with dyed and woven fabrics, ceramics and other Meiji period crafts also began to attract attention for the realism of their under-drawings and designs, for which these artists were also responsible. II. SYMPATHY WITH THE CRAFTS WORLD: CERAMICS EXPORTS, YŪZEN SILK UNDER-DRAWINGS, AND DESIGN PUBLICATION

The discipline of creating under-drawings for crafts is sometimes referred to in Japanese as ōyō bijutsu or the applied arts. This appellation distinguishes itself from the “pure” arts of painting and sculpture, and is typically regarded as a somewhat pejorative term. Indeed, among those Japanese artists active around the time of the Meiji Restoration, there were some who, no matter how destitute, refused to turn their hand to the “applied arts” in order to make ends meet. Within ten years of the Restoration, Raishō, Renzan, and Bunrin had all passed away, and the Japanese painting scene in Kyoto came to be dominated by another group of three figures: Mori Kansai (1814–1894) of the Mori school, who followed in the traditions of Maruyama Ōkyo; Kishi Chikudō (1826–1897), a disciple of the Kishi school (Figure 4); and Kōno Bairei (1844– 1895), who had studied at the feet of both Raishō and Bunrin. Of these three, it was Chikudō who was particularly known for his close connection to the Chisō dyers and weavers. He executed a number of under-drawings for Yūzen silks, and used this experience to further his own artistic development (Figure 5). However, according to Nishimura Sōzaemon, “[Chikudō] was concerned that his reputation would suffer if he ended up doing the under-drawings previously undertaken by workmen, and hesitated. But, little by little, he was persuaded, and finally converted.”15 Bairei, too, despite his poverty, appears to have refused to produce under-drawings for Yūzen silks shortly 15

Kuroda 1899, vol. 1, p.304. On Chikudō, see also Harada 1984 and Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan 1987.

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before and after the Restoration.16 Yet, from about 1877, after his finances had acquired some sort of stability, he softened his stance and designed Yūzen under-drawings for both Chisō and Takashimaya.17 Indeed, around 1889, three of Bairei’s pupils – Kikuchi Hōbun, Takeuchi Seihō, and Taniguchi Kōkyō – were all engaged in creating designs for Takashimaya. From 1889 to 1892, Kōkyō in fact took up residence at the house of Kiyomizu where, aside from developing his own creations, he worked part-time painting ceramics.18 There is no evidence that Bairei opposed any of these pursuits.

Figure 4:

Kishi Chikudō. Ōtsu, Karasaki zu byōbu. 1876.

(Source: Chisō Co., Ltd.) 16 17 18

Unknown 1893, p.19. Shimura 1977. See for example Takashimaya 1982 and Shimomise 1963, p.11.

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On the contrary, the lives of leading figures of both the painting and crafts worlds were now intertwined. Nishimura Sōzaemon studied painting under Chikudō, and Bairei, too, studied at the Bunrin School alongside the fourth generation Kiyomizu Rokubē (Rokkyo). They were close enough, it seems, to have pledged lifelong friendship to each other, and Rokkyo’s son, the fifth generation Rokubē (Rokuwa), later became a pupil of Bairei’s. The sons of several craftsmen also enrolled at Bairei’s school, one of whom was Kusube Sennosuke. Sennosuke was the father of the potter, Kusube Yaichi; Sennosuke himself also worked in the ceramics industry, chiefly as a glazer, but he also engaged in the export of ceramics. When Edward Morse visited Bairei’s school on 8 August, 1882, he noted: Pupils come from families of potters, or families of craftsmen for whom design and decoration are essential elements of their trade, or still again from the ranks of samurai. Bairei has twenty pupils who come to study daily, and there are a few others who study at home and bring in their pictures once a week to have them critiqued.19

These latter students who attended the school weekly were known as irregular students (hensokusei), and participated in a system particularly favored at Bairei’s school, that was set up for the convenience of children of families whose occupations included ceramics, dyeing, and weaving. The remarkable intimacy and deep connections evident between Kyoto painters and craftsmen such as potters, dyers, and weavers merit special mention. These painters published numerous picture books as study material for their students. Such picture books had their origin in Chinese prints made on paper used for writing poetry, and could not have been produced if techniques for multi-colored woodblock prints had not already reached maturity in the mid to late-eighteenth century, and if the culture of books, especially of ukiyo-e, printed from woodblocks had not begun to flourish. To take just one example, Kōno Bairei as far as we can know, published eight types of picture book in the twelve years from 19

Morse 1971, p. 87.

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Figure 5: Nishimura Sōzaemon (under-drawing by Kishi Chikudō). Chirimenji kujaku ni hana mon’yō Katayūzenzome kire. 1874. (Source: Chisō Co., Ltd.)

1881 to 1893 alone. He intended that these books would be exemplars for painters to study, and that they would respond to the demand for designs from a variety of industries: ceramics,

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lacquer working, gold, silver and copper working, wood, bamboo and ivory sculpture, and dyeing and weaving.20 As consciousness of these modern industries became widespread even among the common classes, several works were published that were notable for design features that show they were intended for export. For example, the names of fish and beasts in the contents were romanized or glossed with English translations, or the backgrounds of pictures of birds and flowers featured Mount Fuji or wave-beaten shores.21 In 1882, Bairei’s Bairei hyakuchō gafu (Barei’s picture book of one hundred birds) in 1881 earned him an honorable mention at the First Japanese Painting Prize Exhibition (Daiikkai naikoku kaiga kyōshinkai), hosted by the ministry of agriculture and commerce.22 Indeed, the prefaces and epigraphs to many of these picture books were penned by such influential figures of the fine arts administration as Machida Hisanari (1838–1897) and Kuki Ryūichi (1852–1931). Their involvement articulates well the character of these books: they were products intended for export, thus fulfilling the national policy of encouraging new industries. Bairei subsequently established the Kyoto Fine Arts Association (Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai) with Kubota Beisen in 1890. The worlds of painting, crafts, and business came together to establish an organization that would contribute to the development of Kyoto’s art world. III. ESTABLISHING THE KYOTO PREFECTURAL SCHOOL OF ART AND PRIVATE COLLEGES

In 1880, Japan’s first art school, the Kyoto Prefectural School of Art (Kyōto fu gagakkō), was established. This was possible only due to the unique circumstances that prevailed in Kyoto at the time, wherein, as noted above, realism dominated the art world, 20 21 22

Iwata 1995. Iwata 1995, pp. 280–282. Kōno Bairei jihitsu rirekisho, 1889 (Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Geijutsu Shiryōkan).

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Figure 6:

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Kōno Bairei et al. Gagakkō setsuritsu kengisho. 1878.

(Source: Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Geijutsu Shiryōkan.)

even as it enjoyed deep ties with the industrial arts. Tanomura Chokunyū, Bairei and Mochizuki Gyokusen were the leading figures of this enterprise, and in 1878 they submitted to Prefectural Governor Makimura Masanao, a formal proposal for the establishment of a school of art (Gagakkō setsuritsu kengisho). (Figure 6) Beginning this proposal with the words “Art is the most important of all skills,” Bairei argued that an art school was necessary since painting was a skill that would become a cornerstone for the creation of new industries; he underlined the fact that its establishment would benefit the state.23 This proposal was accepted by Governor Makimura and, in November 1879, he submitted a Notice of the Establishment of a School of Art (Gagakkō sōritsu ontodoke) to the minister of education. In Bairei’s design for the school premises, which can be found affixed to the proposal, there are an orchard, a vegetable garden, a flower garden, a lotus pond, cages for animals, a fish pond, a pond for geese, a workshop, and a sports ground.24 The design is one that envisages a curriculum founded on realism. (Figure 7) However, frictions between the different schools dating back to before the Restoration lingered obstinately in the Kyoto art world of Meiji and, partly as a result of this, Bairei left the School of Art in April 1881, the year after it opened.25 The School of 23

24

25

Kōno Bairei. Gagakkō setsuritsu kengisho, 1878 (Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Geijutsu Shiryōkan). Kōno Bairei. Gagakkō kenchiku zu. 1878 (Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Geijutsu Shiryōkan). Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakuneshi 1981.

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Figure 7:

205

Kōno Bairei. Gagakkō kenchiku zu. 1878.

(Source: Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Geijutsu Shiryōkan.)

Art initially comprised instruction in four styles: Eastern (Japanese realist painting and Yamato-e, that is paintings of Japanese themes using traditional techniques), Western painting, Southern (which meant the Southern School of Chinese painting), and Northern (that is, the paintings of Kanō and Sesshū). At the time of the School of Art’s opening, one teacher was appointed to instruct each of the styles, with the Northern style alone being taught by two teachers, Bairei and Suzuki Hyakunen. Hyakunen left the school in July 1880, almost immediately after it opened, leaving Bairei as the sole instructor of the Northern style. But, in April 1881 he, too, resigned and was succeeded by Shōnen, Hyakunen’s son, in a veritable soap opera of personnel change.26 (Figure 8) It appears that competition between the Shiokawa School of Bairei’s teacher, Shiokawa Bunrin, and the Suzuki School of Suzuki Hyakunen had persisted from the end of the Edo period through to the next generation. In July of the same year, following his resignation, Bairei opened a private school and once again began to focus on instructing his own pupils. Takeuchi Seihō (1864–1942), who was to become the driving force behind the Kyoto art world from 1887 through 26

Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakunenshi, 1981.

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to the 1920s and 1930s, entered Bairei’s school in May 1881, shortly after his resignation from the Kyoto Prefectural School of Art. (Figure 9) Seihō, Kikuchi Hōbun (1862–1918), Tsuji Kakō (1870–1931), and Taniguchi Kōkyō (1864–1915), who came to be known as the “four giants” of the Bairei School and who would go on to achieve great success in the Kyoto art world, all entered Bairei’s school very early on. Hōbun joined in January 1881, Kakō had entered the previous year, while Kōkyō became

Figure 8:

Suzuki Shōnen. Jūroku rakan zu.

(Source: Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan.)

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a pupil in August 1883.27 In this way, the instruction of the next generation at the School of Art and the training of pupils in private schools proceeded side by side, in programs that contained instruction that was both theoretical and practical. Such a pedagogical method was unique to the Kyoto art world.

Figure 9: Takeuchi Seihō. Kanka. 1897. (Source: Umi no Mieru Mori Bijutsukan.) 27

Iwata 1990b.

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It is instructive to look at the artistic philosophy and teaching methods of the Kōno private school. Bairei had enjoyed success in establishing the Kyoto Prefectural School of Art and, as the teacher of Takeuchi Seihō’s circle, was highly regarded both as a leader and instructor of the Meiji period Kyoto art world. The curriculum at the Kōno private school was founded on traditional Chinese painting philosophy as laid out in Kaishien gaden (Mustard seed villa: a painting manual). It consisted of aspects of study typical of the early modern period such as brush stroke techniques and the copying of master paintings. Yet, Bairei also approved the study of other schools of painting for those pupils who excelled. He encouraged the ambitious activities of his young artists, and urged them to work towards the creation of a new Japanese artistic expression.28 Bairei installed a plaque on the wall of his private school on which he had written “The Essentials of Painting.” Here, alongside the traditional Chinese painting philosophy taken from the Kaishien gaden, Bairei also advocated “Ten Principles.” These ten principles showed the influence of Ernest Fenollosa’s essay, “The True Theory of Art” (Bijutsu shinsetsu), which urged the modernization of the Kyoto art world.29 Along with Okakura Kakuzō (commonly known as Okakura Tenshin) and Hamao Arata, Fenollosa sought to reform the world of Japanese art. In both June 1884 and June 1886, he invited twenty or thirty artists to the Nakamurarō restaurant in Kyoto, where he addressed them through the interpretation of Okakura. Fenollosa made clear that, compared to the Tokyo art world, which was exhibiting signs of progress, Kyoto was obsessed with rivalries between different schools and hence was placing itself at a psychological disadvantage. Kyoto painters also lacked passion, he thought, for the subject matter of their paintings. Fenollosa argued that painters should discover and love the beauty inher28 29

Kōno 1940, pp. 3–17. Okazaki 2004, pp.17–19.

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ent in the color and shape of all things, and stressed that it was not shameful to create designs and apply them to all manner of projects.30 After his address, Fenollosa visited Bairei’s studio and cemented a deep friendship. He would later say of Bairei that, he had been “his good friend in Kyoto for many years.”31 It seems that Bairei himself was also profoundly affected by Fenollosa’s address. In September 1886, he oversaw the creation of the Kyoto Youth Art Study Society (Kyōto seinen kaiga kenkyūkai), a group composed of the leading members of the next generation of artists from every private art school, including those run by Bairei and Suzuki.32 In 1888, the group evolved into the Kanbi kyōkai (which might be translated as the Resplendent Beauty Society), and its artists published the periodical Bijutsu sōshi. Three years later, they held the inaugural Kyoto Youth Painting Competition (Kyōto shiritsu Nihon seinen kaiga kyōshinkai), a collaborative exhibition between all art schools.33 These developments would not have been possible without the initial impetus of Bairei or, to go further back, the exhortations of Fenollosa. Fenollosa’s addresses clearly energized the Kyoto art world of the late nineteenth century. Takeuchi Seihō later commented that, “It might well be said that it was Fenollosa who compelled Japanese painting to found itself on true art.” 34 The Kōno private school attached great importance to the copying of classical painting. At Bairei’s urging, Seihō engaged enthusiastically in copying and, even after he had established himself as an independent artist, he participated in research in 1888 with the Imperial Household Ministry’s Bureau for the Provisional Inspection of National Treasures (Zenkoku 30

31 32 33 34

From articles carried in Hinode shinbun, 13–19 June 1886, quoted in Kanzaki 1929, pp. 30–31. Fenollosa 1912, p. 269. Mori 1974, pp. 68–71; Hinode shinbun, 5 September 1886 See, for example, Akai 1989, pp. 339–341. Kanzaki 1942, p. 91.

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hōmotsu torishirabekyoku).35 From 1890 onwards, Seihō began to accumulate a distinguished record in the various exhibitions he entered. He merged the styles of various schools of painting in a single work, and this composite style came to be known as “Nue ha” or the chimeric style. Bairei commented to Seihō, “You have been making curious paintings, recently,” but for Seihō the copying of old Japanese paintings was, like the copying of Western paintings, a form of research aimed at the creation a new manner of painting.36 In his attempts to define his own style, Bairei had himself studied the styles of nanga or literati painting and the Maruyama and Shijō Schools, and also spent time painting tempera portraits of Western women; he must therefore surely have understood what Seihō was trying to do. Indeed, Bairei comes across as a deeply empathetic teacher. Bairei’s generation lived through the period of transition from early modern to modern, from painters supported by patrons to independent artists, and they possessed qualities characteristic of both periods. While they depended on the traditional painting styles and expressions of the Maruyama and Shijō Schools, they turned their focus to modeling through color and line. Through combinations of line and color on the picture surface, they endeavored to create powerful visual effects, but there was nothing innovative about their works. The afore-mentioned Kishi Chikudō did actively experiment with innovative techniques that influenced later generations, but innovation was largely left to the young painters from Bairei’s school such as Seihō. And, by 1887, the efforts of these younger painters were slowly beginning to bear fruit. It must not be forgotten that it was Bairei’s generation that facilitated the creation of both a new form of Japanese painting and a new Kyoto art world with their establishment of the Kanbi kyōkai and the Kyoto Youth Painting Competition. 35 36

See, for example, Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan 1970. Uemura 1985, p.234.

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IV. ESTABLISHING THE CONCEPT OF BIJUTSU: BIJUTSU AS “EXHIBITION ART”

Following the establishment of the imperial capital in Tokyo, Kyoto organized exhibitions, known in Japanese as Kyōto hakurankai, in an effort to revitalize the stagnating city. From the end of 1871 through early 1872, a precursor to this exhibition was held at the Shoin Pavilion of Nishi Honganji Temple under the auspices of three powerful merchants, Mitsui Hachirōemon, Ono Zensuke, and Kumagai Kyūemon; they were supported by Kyoto Prefecture’s first governor, Nagatani Nobuatsu.37 The following year, cooperation between citizens and the prefectural administration saw the first Kyoto Exhibition open concurrently at three locations: the Nishi Honganji, Kenninji, and Chion’in temples. The exhibition was held thereafter under the same name until its fourteenth iteration in 1885. In 1886, it was thematically split into the Kyoto Textile Competition (Kyōto irozome orimono shūketsu kyōshinkai) and the Exhibition of Modern and Ancient Fine Arts (Shinko bijutsukai), under which guises these events continued until 1927. With the establishment of the Exhibition of Modern and Ancient Fine Arts, the idea of a bijutsuten, that is a fine art exhibition, finally emerged. However, from the late 1870s to the late 1880s, the meanings of the term bijutsu were subject to a serious buffeting. The word bijutsu appears to have been first used on the occasion of Japan’s participation in the World Exposition held in Vienna in 1873; it was a Japanese translation from the German terms for the exhibit categories of kunstgewerbe and bildende kunst. The “Rules concerning entries to the Exposition of the City of Vienna, Austria” stipulated in Article 2 that “Exhibits are to be divided into the following twenty-six categories,” and gave this Japanese rendering of Category 22: “Bijutsu (in the West, music, painting, sculpture, and poetry are referred to as bijutsu).…”38 37

38

Meiji yonen Kyōto hakurankai mokuroku 1871nen (Amagasaki Shi Kyōiku Iinkai). Kitazawa 2000, p. 40.

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At this point, the concept of bijutsu encompassed the entirety of the arts, including music and poetry. Again, in 1882 the aforementioned Okakura Tenshin declared both music and poetry to be constituents of bijutsu in his essay “Sho wa geijutsu narazu no ron o yomu,” (Reading the Argument against Calligraphy Being Art”), and did not limit its application to the visual arts alone.39 However, the “Dai Ikkai Naikoku kangyō hakurankai kubun mokuroku” (The First National Industrial Exhibition: inventory of categories) published in 1877 has this: “The third category is bijutsu. However, this category comprises only paintings, calligraphy, photographs, sculpture and, in addition, all products that show exquisite and delicate craftsmanship.”40 Such a definition limited the concept of bijutsu to the visual arts and the plastic arts. Indeed, in the second inventory published in 1881, the category bijutsu was divided into four parts, the third of which was shoga (paintings and calligraphy) and this, in turn, was further subdivided into 1. paintings and dyeing and weaving, 2. makie (raised gold and silver lacquer) and urushie (lacquer paintings), and 3. ceramic, glass and enamel paintings.41 It can be seen, then, that this was a transitional period in which the concept of “visual arts” began to establish itself as the bijutsu we are familiar with today. Notably, this period coincides with the founding of the Kyoto Prefectural School of Art. After Tanomura Chokunyū, Bairei and Mochizuki Gyokusen had submitted their afore-mentioned proposal for the establishment of a School of Art in 1878, the Kyoto prefectural governor issued a formal notice of the establishment of a School of Art in the following January. A related notice underscored the artistic foundations of the proposal: In former times, elegant, sophisticated paintings existed in Kyoto. However, the period of the Restoration saw a misunderstanding of Western theories, and a new emphasis was placed solely on the 39 40 41

Okakura 1979, pp. 5–12. Aoki and Sakai 1989, pp. 405–406. Aoki and Sakai 1989, pp. 405–406.

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encouragement of industry. This led to the establishment of expositions that stimulated the production of the arts and crafts; and this, in turn, has led to even traditional, [non-craft-related] artists studying Western styles and abandoning the unique elegance of traditional Japanese art. Consequently, the establishment of this school is intended as a location for the pursuit of learning, and is not a workshop for research into industry.42

When the word kōgei or arts and crafts first appeared in the Meiji period, it included the idea of industry (kōgyō), too. It was not until 1888 that kōgei was restricted to its present-day connotation of the plastic arts. The sensitivity toward new industry evident in the afore-mentioned school proposal, which Bairei and his colleagues composed, underwent a process of refinement. There was the trial and error of the late 1870s through the 80s, in which the concept of bijutsu was debated, before finally it acquired a fixed understanding in the 1890s. In the years from 1877, the concept of bijutsu was in a state of constant flux. It became the practice, after the Second National Industrial Exhibition, to combine the categories of “visual arts” (shikaku geijutsu) and “plastic arts” (zōkei geijutsu) as “fine art” (bijutsu). This was the time of the foundation of the art school in Kyoto. The thinking of Bairei and others underwent a shift. The Kyoto School of Art was not to function as a factory for the study of industry; rather, it was a place now for promoting the arts. This was precisely the point emphasized in the Kyoto prefectural governor’s Official Notice of the Establishment of a School of Art (Gagakkō setsuritsu kokuyu). Subsequently in 1888, the school was reorganized and a course in applied arts (ōyō bijutsu) was set up.43 Bairei stepped in as vice-principal and relaunched his academic career, overseeing the practical aspects of the reform. In his efforts to reform the field of creative design, he drew on his progressive understanding as a painter. Indeed, he attempted to institute the same sort of modern instruction in the 42 43

Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakunenshi 1981. Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakunenshi 1981.

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field of applied arts as he was attempting in the field of painting. In other words, at the same time as the concept of fine arts was establishing itself, the teaching of fine arts in art schools was to find its direction. However, on his return to the school, Bairei was once again unsuccessful, and he left for a second time. Control of the Kyoto School of Art was then handed over to Kyoto City. This series of events led to the establishment of the aforementioned Kyoto Fine Arts Association in 1890 and, ultimately, it contributed to the development of the world of arts and crafts in Kyoto. CONCLUSION

Japanese art in Meiji-period Kyoto was faced with two questions: What is its relationship with the applied arts? And how should it respond to increasingly closed definitions of bijutsu and its corresponding artistic and aesthetic standards? Until 1887 – that is, until the three luminaries Kansai, Chikudō, and Bairei arrived

Figure 10: Kōno Bairei. Shūjitsu denka zu. 1892. (This image is reproduced with permission from Kyōto gadan kyoshō no keifu. Kōno Bairei to sono ryūha ten. Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1990.)

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on the scene – the Kyoto art world was vehemently tossed about on the seas of modernization. The association, and subsequent dissociation, of painting and industry was, particularly in Kyoto, an especially complex phase in this process of modernization. In terms of painting methods, the greatest influence was exerted by Fenollosa’s afore-mentioned essay “The True Theory of Art.” Bairei’s masterpiece Shūjitsu denka zu (Rural residence on an autumn day) in the Tokyo National Museum has a clearly defined foreground, mid-ground, and background, and is an attempt to create a pictorial space that organically links the viewer’s gaze through these three areas. The foreground is replete with color and, in its visual expressionism, hints at the germination of a modern style. Fenollosa had suggested that traditional Nihonga could be improved through a more sophisticated use of color and greater emphasis on realism, and Shūjitsu denka zu might be considered an experimental piece striving to attain these ideals. (Figure 10) It was earlier noted that Fenollosa declared Bairei to be his “good friend in Kyoto for many years.” In one respect, Bairei’s familiarity with Fenollosa’s essay “The True Theory of Art,” which set out a theory that acquired nationwide currency, might ironically have been the very trigger that led to the unique “Kyoto style” being lost to the world of Japanese painting. It cannot be denied that “The True Theory of Art” contributed significantly to the development of Kyoto Nihonga in its structure and artistic character. Yet, Nihonga in Kyoto was always to be found in the living space: it became familiar and was loved as art that brought color to everyday life and, as such, developed an intimate, symbiotic relationship with arts and crafts. With their refined sensibility and expert technique, painters produced work to order for the merchant classes. At the risk of some exaggeration, it might be said that their familiarity with “The True Theory of Art” elevated their work to the level of fine arts, and removed them from the realm of the everyday; and it conferred upon painters an honor becoming to artists in the service of the state. Fenollosa advocated a close relationship between painting and architecture as a key measure for encouraging fine arts, and this

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was reflected in the construction of the imperial palace in Tokyo, completed in 1888. Chikudō, Bairei, and their contemporaries worked on the palace construction but, more importantly, they came subsequently to number among the rank of Imperial Court Artists (teishitsu gigeiin), a position that was established soon after the palace’s completion. While this undoubtedly conferred great honor, it serves as proof that Kyoto painters became caught up in the modern state system. They were headed in a direction that spelt the dimming of the artistic flame unique to the Nihonga of Kyoto. Rooted as it was in art for the living space, it sanctioned a symbiosis between architecture and the arts and crafts. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Iwata 1990b Iwata (Kuniga) Yumiko ed. “Kōno Bairei ryaku nenpu.” In Kyōto gadan kyoshō no keifu Kōno Bairei to sono ryūha ten. Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1990, pp. 108–111. Iwata 1995 Iwata (Kuniga) Yumiko. “Kōno Bairei no Meijiki bijutsu kōgeikai ni okeru senkuteki gyōseki ni tsuite.” In Kōno Toyokazu ed,. Kōno Bairei. Unsodō, 1995, pp. 277–286. Kanzaki 1928–1929 Kanzaki Ken’ichi. “Kōno Bairei no shōgai: kare no seikatsu, kare to Kyōto gadan.” Daimai bijutsu, 7–10 to 8–8 (October 1928 to August 1929). (Reproduced in Katō Ruiko ed., Kyōto gadan sansaku: aru bijutsu kisha no kōyū roku. Kyōto Shinbunsha, 1994, pp. 13–86.) Kanzaki 1929 Kanzaki Ken’ichi. Kyōto ni okeru Nihonga shi. Kyōto Seihan Insatsusha, 1929. Kanzaki 1942 Kanzaki Ken’ichi. “Ashiato o tadoru.” Kokuga 2–12, February (1942) (Reproduced in Katō Ruiko ed., Kyōto gadan sansaku: aru bijutsu kisha no kōyū roku. Kyōto Shinbunsha, 1994, pp.87–119.) Kitazawa 1989 Kitazawa Noriaki. Me no shinden. Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1989. Kitazawa 1991 Kitazawa Noriaki. “‘Nihonga’ gainen no keisei ni kansuru shiron.” In Meiji nihonga shiryō, ed. Aoki Shigeru. Chūō kōron bijutsu shuppan, 1991, (Reproduced in Kitazawa Noriaki, Kyōkai no bijutsushi: ‘bijutsu’ keiseishi nōto. Buryukke, 2000, pp. 131–217.) Kitazawa 2000 Kitazawa Noriaki. Kyōkai no bijutsushi: “bijutsu” keiseishi nōto. Buryukke, 2000. Kōno 1999 Kōno Motoaki. “Edo gadan ni okeru Bunchō to shinkeizu.” In Iida Shi Bijutsu Hakubutsukan ed., Tokubetsuten Edo nanga no chōryū 1: Tani Bunchō to Suzuki Fuyō. Iida Shi Bijutsu Hakubutsukan, 1999, pp. 108–111. Kōno 1940 Kōno Seiko. “Bairei den.” In Takeuchi Itsu and Takeuchui Shirō, ed. Bairei iboku. Takeuchi Seihō Shuppan, 1940, pp. 57–61. Kuroda 1899 Kuroda Tengai (Yuzuru). Meika rekihō roku, vols. 1 and 2. Kuroda Yuzuru, 1899. Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan 1998 Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan ed., Miyako no eshi wa hyakka ryōran Heian jinbutsu shi ni miru Edo jidai no Kyōto gadan. Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan, 1998. Kyōto Furitsu Sōgōshiryōkan 1970 Kyōto Furitsu Sōgōshiryōkan ed., Kyōto fu hyakunen no nenpō 8: Bijutsu kōgei hen. Kyōto fu, 1970. Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakunenshi 1981 Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku Hyakunenshi, ed., Hyakunenshi: Kyōto shiritsu geijutsu daigaku. Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku, 1981.

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Mori 1974 Mori Kansai. Mori Kansai nikki. In Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan ed. Kyōto fu hyakunen no shiryō 8: Bijutsu kōgei hen, Kyōto Fu, 1974. Morse 1971 Morse, Edward. Nihon sono hi sono hi, vol. 3. (Tōyō Bunko 179), Heibonsha, 1971. Murakami 1927 Murakami Ayame. Kindai Yūzen shi. Unsodō, 1927. Nakatani 2007 Nakatani Yoshihiro. “Hakurankai to Kyōto gadan.” In Kyōto to kindai nihonga bunten, teiten, shin bunten 100 nen no nagare no naka de. Kyōto Shi Bijutsukan, 2007, pp.10–12. Namiki 2012 Namiki Seishi et al eds., Dentō kōgei no kindai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2012. Okakura 1979 Okakura Tenshin. “Sho wa beijutsu narazu no ron o yomu.” Tōyō gakugei zasshi 11,12,15 (1882) (Reproduced in Kumamoto Kenjirō ed., Okakura Tenshin zenshū 3. Heibonsha, 1979, pp. 5–12.) Okazaki 2004 Okazaki Asami. “Kōno Bairei no kaiga rinen ‘jikkaku’ to Fenorosa “Bijutsu shinsetsu”: sono sakuga to kyōiku.” Bijutsushi 157, (2004), pp.13–23. Sakazaki 1917 Sakazaki Shizuka ed., Nihongaron taikan 2, Mejiro Shoin, 1917. Satō 1991 Satō Dōshin. “Meiji bijutsu to bijutsu gyōsei.” Bijutsu kenkyū 350, (1991), pp.14–27. (Reproduced in Satō. Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: bi no seijigaku. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1999, pp.22–42.) Satō 1993 Satō Dōshin. “Kindai shigaku toshite no bijutsu shigaku no seiritsu to tenkai.” In Tsuji Nobuo Sensei Kanreki Kinenkai ed., Nihon bijutsushi no suimyaku. Perikansha, 1993, pp. 145–170. (Reproduced in Satō. Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: bi no seijigaku. Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1999, pp.124–154.) Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan 1987 Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan ed., Tokubetsuten Kishi Chikudō: Kindai Kyōto gadan no yo’ake. Shiga Kenritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 1987. Shimomise 1963 Shimomise Shizuichi. “Kyōyaki to Rokubē no rekidai.” In Kiyomizu Rokubē rekidai sakuhinshū. Maria Shobō, 1963, pp.1–13. Shimura 1977 Shimura Mitsuhiro. Kindai zufu: Takashimaya shiryōkan shozō no kachōfūgetsu shitae shū. Fuji Āto Shuppan, 1977. Tajima 2010 Tajima Tatsuya ed. Kyōto shiritsu geijutsu daigaku sōritsu 130 shūnen kinenten Kyōto nihonga no tanjō: kyoshō tachi no chōsen. Kyōto Shiritsu Geijutsu Daigaku and Mainichi Shinbunsha, 2010.

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Takagi 1995 Takagi Hiroshi. “Nihon bijutsushi no seiritsu shiron: kodai bijutsushi no jidai kubun.” Nihonshi kenkyū 400 (1995), pp.74–98 (Reproduced in Takagi. Kindai tennō sei no bunkashiteki kenkyū. Azekura Shobō, 1997, pp. 345–381.) Takagi 2006 Takagi Hiroshi. Kindai tennōsei to koto. Iwanami Shoten, 2006. Takashimaya 1982 Takashimaya 150 Nenshi Hensan Iinkai, ed. Takashimaya 150 nenshi. Takashimaya, 1982. Takashina 2011 Takashina Erika. “Kono Bairei, Shūjitsu denka zu.” Kokka 1394, (2011), pp. 28–32. Takashina 1991 Takashina Shūji et al. eds., Edo kara Meiji e: kindai no bijutsu I, Nihon bijutsu zenshū 21. Kōdansha, 1991. Tanaka 1988 Tanaka Hisao. Takeuchi Seihō. Iwanami Shoten, 1988. “Teishitsu gigeiin Kōno Bairei kun rireki.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 19 (1893), pp.18–22. Uemura 1985 Uemura Shōen. Seibishō sono go. Kyūryūdō, 1985. Unknown 1893 Unknown. “Teishitsu gigeiin Kōno Bairei kun rireki.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 19 (1893), pp.18–22. Translated by Simon Breen

CHAPTER 9

TRENDS IN MODERN KYŌ-YAKI POTTERY: ON DESIGN IN THE MEIJI PERIOD Yoshii Takao Y

INTRODUCTION

Products typical of Kyoto industries are textiles and ceramics. Famous amongst the former are textiles woven in the Nishijin district of Kyoto, known as Nishijin-ori, and dyes known as yūzen-zome. Ceramics for their part are best represented by Kyō-yaki pottery. Kyō-yaki is a generic term for such varieties of pottery produced in Kyoto as Awata-yaki, Kiyomizu-yaki and Omuro-yaki. All are made by high-grade production techniques; they feature designs that combine refined shapes, coloring and patterns, and are typically valued more highly than ware from other pottery producing areas. Kyō-yaki owes its flourishing to the design motifs created mainly by potters active in the first half of the Edo period (1600–1867) such as Nonomura Ninsei (whose dates of birth and death are unknown) and Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743). Edo period practices are still in evidence in the twenty-first century, but a new approach to Kyō-yaki design, at variance with that of former generations, came to be adopted in the early Meiji period. Indeed, it was in Meiji that the wide divergence of Kyō-yaki designs familiar to us today had their origins. 220

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With the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the new government actively promoted exports based on a policy of energizing new industry; the pottery manufacturing industry in Kyoto was gifted a role here. Modern Kyō-yaki differed from the pottery of the Edo period not least in that it went in search of an overseas market. There emerged a need therefore to gauge the preferences of Western consumers when producing artifacts that had previously been made to match Japanese tastes. This proved to be a serious challenge for ceramic artists, whose aim throughout the Meiji period was of course to promote the sale of their products. So it is that, in this chapter, I first offer an overview of the activities of ceramic artists who sought out markets in Europe and America in the Meiji period, before examining designs of special note, which artists created especially for this purpose in the production of their wares. Earlier discussions about design have tended to focus primarily on clarifying transformations based on contemporary works or design albums or the archives of expositions. In this chapter, however, my discussion will not be limited to observations about transformation alone, for I wish also to clarify the thinking that lay at the root of change. To this end, I also set forth the perspective of intellectuals who had investigated the situation in Europe and America, before comparing it with the circumstances in Japan. Out of this endeavor, I hope to be able to pinpoint a direction for the future. 1. FOREIGN TRADE AND CERAMIC ARTISTS IN ACTION

From the Edo period onwards, Kyō-yaki was produced in the two Kyoto quarters of Awata and Gojō Kiyomizu. It was the artisans of Awata who were the first to engage in foreign trade. The pioneering Awata potter was the sixth generation Kinkōzan Sōbē (1823–1884). It was around 1866 or 1867, just before the beginning of the Meiji period that, he first made contact with foreigners; and, it is said that he dealt with them by gestures and gesticulations. It sometimes happened that his foreign

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customers would raise their feet to stamp on the products that he had worked so hard to make if they were unhappy with the color or shape of an object. Nevertheless, Sōbē persevered doggedly and the export side of his business flourished.1 Sōbē endured these hardships, but still made his pottery with due consideration to foreigners’ taste. His works were received favorably, and he acquired renown overseas for his pieces which all bore the legend “Made by Kinkōzan, artist of Awata-yaki.” In 1870, he incorporated the pottery techniques of Satsuma-yaki from Kyushu, and conceived what he styled the Kyō-Satsuma-yaki painting method, which he used to expand his market further. Essentially this involved creating patterns in gold, red or green in cracks that appeared on the white glaze. And, in 1872, he received an award from Kyoto Prefecture for exercising ingenuity in all manner of ways, producing and exporting ceramics for foreign countries, and so contributing to local prosperity. The volume of ceramic ware exported from Kyoto duly increased in the early Meiji period, but exports started to decline from the mid 1880s onwards. Sōbē’s son, the seventh generation potter Sōbē (1868–1927), took over his father’s work in the midst of these difficulties. From around 1897, he advocated making everyday items for export in place of the vases and other decorative ornaments that had been the staple until then. He then embarked on a fact-finding tour to Europe to explore new possibilities. At the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris, he witnessed the art nouveau style that was in vogue in Europe at the time. And then, in 1903, he himself exhibited art nouveau style vases at the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition that was held in Osaka.2 (Figures 1, 2) The Kinkōzan Sōbē family was not the only potter family in the Awata area to engage in trade and exhibit in expositions. Both the eighth and ninth generations of the Taizan Yohē family, which 1 2

Mori 1906, pp. 214–5. See, for example, “Gei’en sōwa” pp. 23–26, and Ogawa 1989, pp. 102– 103.

TRENDS IN MODERN KYŌ-YAKI POTTERY

Figure 1:

Painted Plate by Awata Kinkōzan. Export item. Painting of fruit, vegetables, branches and leaves on plate rim. 12.9 x 2.2 (cm)

Figure 2:

Oyster Plate by Awata Kinkōzan. Export item. Painting of typical Japanese items such as cranes, butterflies and chrysanthemums. 10.8 x 12.3 x 1.2 (cm)

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was hardly less prestigious in Awata-yaki circles than Kinkōzan, also produced ceramics for export, but his family went out of business in 1894. Likewise, the fourteenth generation Yasuda Genshichi (??-1883), another renowned artisan, made ceramics initially for the domestic market. As the demand for Awata ware was actually expanding overseas, domestic producers responded by mass-producing inferior export goods, and this generated the obverse effect of diminishing overseas demand. Yasuda responded to this situation, around 1880 and 1881, by taking great pains to produce wares for the foreign market that would atone for the harm caused. He worked on this new project of top quality wares for export with his brother Yasuda Kisaburō (??-1886). When the fifteenth generation potter Genshichi (??-1932) took over the business, he too pursued an interest in the export market. He and Kinkōzan Sōbē, were awarded first prize at the 1888 Barcelona Universal Exposition. His works were highly prized overseas as was evident in the second prize he won at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris.3 There were many other families in Awata who had been engaged in pottery manufacturing since the closing years of the Edo period, and who continued to be active into the Meiji period. Tanzan Seikai (1813–1887) was famous for developing a method of decorating ceramics using copperplate paintings. He exhibited at the First Kyoto Exhibition in 1872, and continued to exhibit in such venues. And, in 1877 he was awarded the Flower Design Prize Silver Medal at the First National Industrial Exhibition held at Ueno Park in Tokyo. Abroad, he was also awarded a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris. His son, Tanzan Rokurō (1852–1897) went to Nagasaki in 1866 just before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, where he studied chemistry under a German teacher and acquired the latest knowledge. In 1873, he visited the exposition in Vienna as a member of a Japanese government sponsored mission. And, in the same year, he studied at the Vienna School of Industrial Arts, from where he brought back to Japan plaster molding methods, and samples 3

Ogawa 1989, p. 111.

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of liquid gold for use in coloring the illustrations on his wares. His contributions to the technological innovation of Kyō-yaki were considerable.4 The first-generation potter Itō Tōzan (1846–1920) was among the first to try his hand at Western-style tableware for export around 1871 or 1872. Awata wares reached their exporting peak around 1879 and 1880. Their decorations were intricate but sometimes nondescript, and as a whole they were dull, not least since they abandoned the distinctive mark of Awata-yaki. Also, the price of these pottery items fluctuated depending on

Figure 3: White-haired God of Longevity holding a precious orb, by second generation Itō Tōzan (1871–1937), the adopted son of the first generation potter. 23.8 x 12.2 x 12.7 (cm) 4

Ogawa 1989, p. 117.

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the amount of imported liquid gold used; liquid gold being the coloring material for the ornamental finish. These products were primarily then a golden color, so they had an undeniable brilliance about them, but they distinctly lacked grace and elegance. In this respect, it is worth mentioning that in his endeavors to reform Awata-yaki, Tōzan discovered a multicolor glaze.5 (Figure 3) The various pottery families in Awata were thus proactive in developing exports from the end of the Edo period through early to mid-Meiji, but other ceramic artists were equally active during the same period elsewhere in Kyoto. Kiyomizu Rokubē (1822–1883), a ceramic artist in the Gojō-zaka quarter of the city, who succeeded to his title of third generation potter in 1838, was an expert, for example, in blue and white ceramics and red painting on ceramics. In the early years of Meiji, he studied Western-style pottery techniques in Yokohama, and from 1871 onwards he started making Western-style tiles, and for their sheer beauty he received an award from Kyoto Prefecture the following year. In 1873, he was appointed commissioner to the Kyoto Prefectural Institution for Industrial Promotion (Kyōto fu kangyōjō) and made prototypes of Western-style tableware and other ceramic items.6 Kanzan Denshichi (1821–1890), who was born in Seto in the Owari district of central Japan, came to Kyoto in 1862 to make pottery in the Higashiyama Ryōzen area. In 1870, he was the first to try out Western paint in Japan, and was publicly recognized in 1872 for contributing to local prosperity by manufacturing and exporting ceramics overseas from Kyoto Prefecture.7 Miyagawa Kōzan (1842–1916) was born as the third (possibly fourth) son of Makuzu (Miyagawa) Chōzō who operated a pottery kiln in the Higashiyama Makuzu-ga-hara area of the city. In 1870, he moved east and set up a workshop in Yokohama where he made Makuzu-yaki pottery in the style of Satsuma-yaki pottery, and it won him some acclaim. After this, he attracted 5 6 7

Ogawa 1989, pp. 106–120 and “Kōgei shiryō” pp. 4–16. Nakanodō 1979 (unpaginated). Nakanodō 1979 (unpaginated).

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admiration in America and Europe for creating the new technique of overlaying replica plants or fish and shellfish on pottery. From around 1882, he set off on a completely new venture with a style of wares using a glaze that showed color variations during firing. His imagination and creativity earned him the title of master craftsman (meikō), and he became an Imperial Court Artist in 1896.8 As argued above, the primary focus of Kyō-yaki throughout the Meiji period was on foreign markets. The chief promoters of exports up to the mid-Meiji era were the artisans who gathered in the Awata and Gojō Kiyomizu districts of Kyoto. Those potters were proactive in revamping traditional techniques. For example, they expanded the types of glaze and coloring materials available for their use; this enabled freer use of color and so the manufacture of richly colored works. The copperplate painted decoration techniques referred to above also meant improved efficiency in production. Potters achieved much on their own initiative by expanding the breadth of goods for export. They looked into the production of new types of items such as coffee cups, for example, which had never before been seen in Japan. In addition to these various activities, it is worth mentioning as a key moment in modern Kyō-yaki ware that ceramic artists (potters) won glittering prizes in expositions overseas, and this ensured the high level of their skills was celebrated in Europe.9 2. ESTABLISHING THE KYOTO CERAMICS COMPANY (KYŌTO TŌJIKI KAISHA)

So far, we have dealt mainly with various trends among individual ceramic artists (potters) and their families. The Kyoto Ceramics Company, which adopted a factory system quite unlike a household industry, was established in 1887 at the exhortation of a number of men of influence in Kyoto, in industry and in government at the time. They include Tanaka Gentarō, a Kyoto 8 9

Nakanodō 1979 (unpaginated) and “Honkai kiji” 1896, pp. 12–13. Nakanodō 1979 (unpaginated).

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entrepreneur who was a Prefectural Assembly member, and later a member of the House of Peers; he played a major role in constructing the new road that ran from Kyoto to Miyazu; Hamaoka Kōtetsu, entrepreneur, Prefectural Assembly man, member of the House of Representatives, founder of the Hinode newspaper, and a major figure in the financial world of the Kansai region; and Naiki Jinzaburō, who was the first city mayor of Kyoto, later member of the House of Representatives, who did much to shape the modern history of Kyoto City. The primary purpose of the company was to overcome the decline in overseas demand for Kyō-yaki from around the middle of the Meiji period.10 The total value of ceramics produced in Kyoto Prefecture in 1871 was, in the money of the time, 90,000 yen. Of this total, export amounted to no more than roughly 30,000 yen or about 30% of the total. This percentage increased exponentially on the occasion of the Philadelphia Exposition held in 1876. In 1879, when pottery sales boomed, total production rose to 505,000 yen, of which exports accounted for 364,000 yen or over 70% of sales. This was a temporary, though welcome, increase in exports, for the value of exports was set to fall to 389,000 yen in the following year, 1880, and further to 222,000 yen in 1884, a drop of over 40%.11 Almost the same tendencies were apparent in the total production value of ceramics produced elsewhere in Japan. The 1881 value was 711,000 yen, which fell to 525,000 yen in 1884. Potters in Aichi and Gifu Prefectures responded to these circumstances by switching to the production of daily use tableware from 1878 onwards in response to foreign demand, which spurred the rapid growth of exports until around 1889. However, in the Awata area of Kyoto, potters were at first content with the boom in sales of ornamental items and toys; and in spite of subsequent shifts in overseas demand, they continued to produce the same items as usual. By around 1885, Awata potters were exporting vases, lamp stands, coffee cups, cloisonné ware, tea utensils; Kiyomizu potters, likewise, were exporting 10 11

Fujioka 1962, pp. 52–53. Fujioka 1962, p.28.

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lamp stands, coffee cups and vases. All these ceramic wares were mainly ornamental, decorated with an abundance of gold.12 The Kyoto Ceramics Company was established as a strategy for extricating Kyō-yaki from its primary focus on the export of ornaments to foreign markets. The idea now was to produce wares essential for daily living following the example set by potters in Aichi and Gifu Prefectures. This, it was hoped, would hold in check the decline of overseas exports of Kyō-yaki. It goes without saying that the company upon its establishment kept a keen eye on competition with other countries; that is, the focus was on price above all else. Although craftsmen’s wages in Western countries were on average at least four times higher than those in Japan, Japanese craftsmen were every bit as accomplished as their overseas counterparts in terms of skill and dexterity. The company was founded on the belief that it could export ceramics overseas and sell them more cheaply than those made in Europe and America because Japanese craftsmen worked for lower wages. Some ninety percent of the items manufactured in the porcelain-producing area of Limoges in France were exported to the American market. Indeed, all the products manufactured at the Avilán works in Limoges, which employed over 1,000 craftsmen, were exported to America. The Kyoto Ceramics Company was established on the confident assumption that it was well placed to compete with France in its American export drive. Since the company was aiming at mass-production, and needed experienced craftsmen, it recruited from the Seto area of central Japan, as well. The company was dissolved in 1899, however, because it failed to generate profit commensurate with the immense capital outlay and with the increased costs arising from the employment of experienced craftsmen. There was critically a steady drop in the price of coffee cups, the company’s main export item, compared with prices when the company was founded. A coffee cup and saucer set sold for 30 sen at around the time coffee cups were first produced in Japan in the Owari area in early Meiji Japan. When the Kyoto 12

Fujioka 1962, pp. 28–29, 33.

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Ceramics Company was established, the price had dropped to 15 or 16 sen; it fell further to 5 sen per set in 1891 and 1892. The chief cause of this price drop was a price war among domestic producers.13 Fujioka Kōji has pointed out that the sample designs made by this company in 1889 show their patterning was no different to that of the “products currently being exported to America even now.” He was writing in 1962. Indeed, it was only later generations that spoke of these products as being “daring in their design.”14 Although the Kyoto Ceramics Company was established with the aim of expanding the overseas market for ceramics - from ornamental items to daily-use ceramics - excessive competition mostly between domestic producing areas resulted in poor business performance and eventually closure. The patterning of the products manufactured by the company was much admired, so it is safe perhaps to assume that they were superior to the designs of items produced elsewhere. There was, however, no higher sale price to reflect, for example, this admiration for the quality of the product. This situation led in time to a re-recognition of the fact that the value of Kyō-yaki lay not in the mass-production of items for everyday use, but in the crafting of traditional, high-end ornamental wares individually or in small lots. 3. THE SITUATION IN EUROPE

As mentioned above, the decrease in Kyō-yaki exports became more conspicuous from the mid-Meiji period onwards. Those involved in Kyō-yaki made trips to Europe to observe conditions there, the better to devise measures to improve the export situation. One such tourist was Nakazawa Iwata (1858–1943). He returned from Europe to Japan in February 1901, having gained a detailed knowledge of the European situation. His verdict was that the huge strides apparent in European arts and crafts over the past five or six years were down to “progress 13 14

Fujioka 1962, pp. 52, 53, 58, 61. Fujioka 1962, p. 54.

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in design.”15 He reached his understanding of the emergence of new design trends - “new schools” - that conformed to no conventional mold after interviewing those involved with the arts in Germany about design teaching methods. To train designers, it was essential to conduct training in stages, they told him: Above everything else, let them sketch natural objects; the teacher should never give them examples to work from. Sketching begins with plants and vegetation, then progresses to birds and so on, and then finally to the human body.16

Nakazawa learned that “sketching is not of the kind performed by Japanese painters. It is extremely intricate and detailed, and attention is paid also to sunrays when drawing shadows, so it is important first to train the eyes and hands.” “Thought should not yet be given to design in this early stage of training.” When a sketch is finished, there comes a second stage, when the student is made to “combine natural objects one with another: perhaps flowers with flowers or leaves or birds with flowers,” and now the student sketches these combinations. “When this second stage is complete, then the student is encouraged in a third stage to deconstruct natural objects into patterns.” Nakagawa reported that they deployed patterns from Egypt, Greece, China, Spain, America, and other countries as reference sources. He also noted that, “They use Japanese patterns, which may contain aspects of Kōrin and Kōetsu in some places, and may also be refined and luxurious elsewhere as with the patterns of the Shijō School of late.”17 In other words, in Europe, artists were using fine designs, and subjecting them to “re-design.” Designs were formulated on the basis of intricate sketches. In the “re-design,” artists were referring to patterns from all over the world, but these were not straight copies. Rather, the idea was always to take what was unique from a particular pattern and re-deploy it. This was the thinking at the root of design in Europe. At the same time in Japan, it was 15 16 17

Kuroda 1901c, pp. 22–25. Kuroda 1901c, p.23. Kuroda 1901c, p.23.

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commonplace simply to copy established designs. So, Nakazawa now introduced European-style design training with its primary focus on eliciting originality; originality had not been given importance in Japan up till now. Nakazawa also imported novel techniques for use in designcreation. He reported back on daring designs created by cutting a flower in half across its center, or designs being made by opening out a flower into a horizontal projection. These innovations were based on the approach of trying anything that sprang to mind, and not being held captive to long-established forms. At the same time, Nakazawa did report that some in Europe argued that this sort of approach was excessive.18 We can infer from his appraisal that the creation of designs from natural objects was the norm in Europe at the time, but also that there were the incipient signs of a leap away from natural objects towards abstraction. In response to these design trends in Europe, Nakazawa suggested a direction that Japan should take. He cited Ogata Kōrin, whose patterns were popular in Europe, as an example. On learning of the popularity of Kōrin’s patterns, he had exported some to Europe only to find that they were already outmoded once they arrived there. Rather than making a fuss of “fashion for fashion’s sake,” Nakazawa saw it as more important to cultivate designers. It was his view that, “If European methods of education are imported, and we train designers who then create original designs, then those designs will not fail to attract attention even in Europe and America.”19 Nakazawa considered it most important that design education should lead to originality. In 1902, the year after Nakazawa published his report on Europe in the journal Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi, the Kyōto Handicraft High School (the forerunner of today’s Kyoto Institute of Technology (Kyōto kōgei sen’i daigaku) was established, and he was appointed the first school principal. It is not hard to imagine that he put to effective use at this newly established 18 19

Kuroda 1901c, p.23. Kuroda 1901c, p.24.

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school the knowledge that he gained in Europe. Nakazawa reported that all the teachers at European schools that train up designers were themselves designers, that craftsmen asked teachers for their designs, and that the relationship between schools and actual production sites was extremely close. 20 The practice of designers inspiring ceramic artists and other craftsmen would soon make its appearance felt in Japan, too. Kuroda Tengai, an art critic who, like Nakazawa, showed a keen interest in the European situation analyzed the contemporary state of affairs in Japan in the aforementioned Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi. His assessment was that, in Japan, artists were absolutely reliant on what had been written down and drawn by ancestors several generations back, and had no notion of creating new designs. As a consequence, there was not the slightest trace of progress evident in the exhibits submitted to expositions such as the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. Kuroda compared the new movements in Europe with traditional, outdated Japan, and offered the following comments about the course of the future.21 “It is truly regrettable that Japan lags behind the times in Europe and other countries in terms of new designs.” For Kuroda, “Japanese ceramic artists are afraid that if they put out ill-formed new ideas and then go in search of creativity, the resulting design will be bizarre, uncouth and of benefit to no one; their reputations will be tarnished and they will lose profit. That is why they have recourse to existing designs.”22 A new taste and a new style for the Meiji period could not be created with this traditional way of thinking, so Kuroda advocated a new, ideal design befitting the new age: On looking at the general trends of the world, our mission must be to create designs worthy of the new age without clinging to established styles and ideas. We should not, however, search aimlessly for the new, or devote ourselves unthinkingly to trends in 20 21 22

Kuroda 1901c, p.23. Kuroda 1901a, pp. 1–4 and Kuroda 1901b, pp.1–3. Kuroda 1901a, pp.1–2.

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Europe and abandon the grace and style of traditional designs. Rather, we should savor the traditional beauty and excellence of Japan, apply ourselves to historical research and then use those foundations to set about original design.23

Kuroda Tengai advocated a reform of design in Japan along European lines, but insisted Japan should not deny long-established traditions. The ideal future direction for Japan, as he saw it, was for craftsmen to create new designs out of the treasure trove of traditional Japanese design with its particular patterns and taste. We could say that Kuroda’s stance came to constitute the mainstream approach in Kyō-yaki which endures to this day. Also, his way of thinking was accepted by people in positions of leadership at the time. Artists and intellectuals were, then, paying attention to design at the beginning of the 1900s. Already the Meiji government had established a “design section” in its various national industrial fairs precisely to promote the creation of designs and drawings, with the greater objective of promoting domestic industry. At the Third National Industrial Exhibition held in Ueno Park, Tokyo in 1890, the design section was set up as “Division 4, Category 8.” However, at the time, general awareness of design and its importance was low, and a mere five items were exhibited, with only one artist receiving a certificate of merit. Consequently, it was predicted that there would be no outstanding exhibits in the design section at the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition held in Kyoto in 1895, and so the design section was removed. Yet, by the time of the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition held in Osaka in 1903, the situation had changed, and people were preaching the necessity of design, while others were now specializing in design. As a result, the exposition featured the “Design and Models in Arts and Crafts” class in its “Division 58, Category 2” to encourage designers to exhibit their ideas.24 It is clear from the number and type of exhibits at this Fifth National Industrial Exhibition that people in the early 1900s had started to recognize the necessity of design. 23 24

Kuroda 1901b, pp.1–2. Kaneko 1903, pp. 10, 11.

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4. DESIGN AND DESIGN INNOVATION

The increasing attention paid to design in Kyō-yaki was clear from the activities of the Yūtōen artists’ group formed in 1903. The group was established for the purpose of producing ceramics and studying design, and it was headed by Nakazawa Iwata, the afore-mentioned principal of the Kyoto Handicraft High School. Also participating in the group were the oil painter Asai Chū (1856–1907), whom Nakazawa brought in as professor to the school in 1902; Kamisaka Sekka, the manager of the Kyoto Municipal Industrial Arts Design Coordination Office (Kyōto shiritsu kōgei zuan chōseisho) established in 1890, and then a bevy of ceramic artists such as Kinkōzan Sōbē, Kiyomizu Rokubē, Miyanaga Tōzan, and Itō Tōzan amongst others. Yūtōen ceramic artists produced and sold works based on designs proposed by designers; their purpose was to innovate traditional crafts and design. The Yūtōen group also sought to offer economic support to craftsmen in financial hardship.25 In 1906, Nakazawa Iwata organized designers and lacquer artists into the Kyōshitsuen artists’ group, which shared similar aims with the Yūtōen. Instruction in design was conducted by the likes of Asai Chū, Kamisaka Sekka, and Takeda Goichi, who took up the post of professor of the Kyoto Handicraft High School in 1903.26 These two artists’ groups made inroads into Tokyo in 1912 with a view to promoting sales of their works, and held their first exhibition at the ministry of agriculture and Commerce Exhibition Building there. The exhibition proved to be more popular and successful than expected. Lots of visitors were already gathered at the venue before it opened, and the majority of the exhibits sold out soon after opening time. For several years before this exhibition was held, artists and craftsmen from these two groups met monthly with scholars and designers, always ready to share their new knowledge, and to improve on established production methods. The reasons for the success of this event according to Maekawa Masahide were three-fold. “Firstly, works were of a new ‘taste’; 25 26

Maekawa 1996, pp.151–153. Maekawa 1996, pp.151–153.

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Figure 4: Picture of Birds on Pampas Grass by Kamisaka Sekka. Painting of a tranquil riverside scene. 108.1 x 41.6 (cm) (All items in author’s collection.)

secondly, all exhibits shared this “taste” in common; and, thirdly, there were no products of the sub-standard sort that had plagued exhibitions of this variety till now.”27 The works on display were produced under the pervasive influence of Asai Chū. (Figure 4) A distinctive feature of the Yūtōen and Kyōshitsuen groups was that the craftsmen, the men responsible for actually producing the wares, studied there under the guidance of designers. Asai Chū and Kamisaka Sekka, mentioned earlier, were both highly esteemed by those in the know as designers representative of the 27

Maekawa 1996, pp. 151, 152, 156.

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Meiji period. Kuroda Tengai, a contemporary of these two men, offered an elaborated analysis of their activities and the esteem in which they were held.28 Kuroda’s analysis was that two separate schools of new thinking were active in the arts and crafts world of Kyoto during the decade or so from 1900. He referred to two “schools,” owing to differences in approach and tendencies in the work of their leading figures, one of whom was Asai Chū. In addition to paintings, Asai had a keen interest in arts and crafts. The majority of other Japanese Western-style painters were illinformed of Japanese painting, and could not understand the distinctive taste of the Japanese. Asai by contrast appreciated the strengths of Japanese paintings even as he worked in oils; he was also a close observer of arts and crafts in Europe. Asai made a point of researching the works of Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637), Tawaraya Sōtatsu (dates unknown), Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716), Ogawa Haritsu (1663–1747), and others who left their names in the history of Japanese crafts. Kuroda Tengai analyzed Asai’s achievement in the following terms: the Kyoto environment at the time was stale, with artists typically imitating old, conventional works or currying favor with foreigners for the most vulgar of motives, but Asai breathed fresh air into the Kyoto world of crafts and sought to open up new frontiers. Asai, in the later years of his life, was active in reforming the conventional world of handicrafts. He turned his immense enthusiasm to arts and crafts and away from his forté, oil painting. He rallied together young ceramic artists, and provided them with designs, and enthusiastically encouraged them to associate with one another. His designs and drawings were true to the substance of Kōetsu’s designs described earlier, but they were made with the techniques of oil painting. They were fresh and full of novelty and originality without violating Japanese taste.29 Asai’s arrival on the scene led to the discovery of a new direction in the Kyoto arts and crafts world which, at the time, was in a state of extreme inactivity and confusion. Kuroda was 28 29

Kuroda 1911, pp. 1–5. Kuroda 1911, pp.1–2.

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fulsome in his praise of Asai and his works, declaring him to be the number one innovator in the field. However, Asai on whom such great hopes were pinned as a leader in the world of arts and crafts, passed away in 1907. Kuroda expressed his disappointment saying that, “It was as if the thirty-six peaks of the Higashiyama Hills, just about to emerge [into the sun], were once again veiled in mist.”30 Kuroda also mentioned the Japanese painters Taniguchi Kōkyō (1864 -1915) and Kamisaka Sekka as leaders of the other school and elaborated on their activities and their standing. Both artists were well versed in Japanese arts and crafts, and their designs and drawings were serene, elegant and evinced a new kind of charm. In spite of their serenity and elegance, though, they lacked the vitality needed to break through the many years of inertia in the arts and crafts world. Asai, who had what it took to be an innovator, came on in elegant leaps and bounds, and always held center stage while he was alive. But Taniguchi and Kamisaka attracted much less attention. Kuroda Tengai remarked that Asai’s death was a setback for reform in the arts and crafts world, and young craftsmen fell thereafter into a state of confusion. Taniguchi was in charge of instructing design and drawing at an arts and crafts school, but his work centered on the production of paintings. At the time, however, he was recuperating away from Kyoto due to poor health. For this reason, the burden of arts and crafts in Kyoto fell unexpectedly on the shoulders of Kamisaka Sekka. Kuroda’s understanding was that that Kamisaka in his turn applied himself with courage to his allotted task. Asai and Taniguchi were involved mainly in painting, whereas Kamisaka had from his youth been engaged in creating designs and drawings. So, Kamisaka was ahead of Asai and Taniguchi in this field of research. Moreover, Kamisaka had visited the Glasgow International Exhibition in Great Britain in 1901. Thereafter, he carried out a Europe-wide investigation into design, broadening his perspective on arts and crafts 30

Kuroda 1911, pp.1–2.

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everywhere he went. According to Kuroda, Kamisaka was of a mild disposition and shunned disputation. Nevertheless, he rallied together promising young ceramic artists with the aim of reviving the arts and crafts world, and he presided over the Kabikai and Kyōbikai associations, established in 1909 and 1910 respectively. The associations merged in 1912 to become the Katsumikai. The two associations held their first exhibition at Konchiin Temple in the Nanzenji Temple complex on 22–23 October, 1910. Kuroda rated this exhibition highly. For him, the event marked a renovation in the most “glittering” of senses.31 Kuroda related that young ceramic artists produced works that were not clichéd but, in all respects, demonstrated Japanese “taste” and, moreover, pioneered new territories that were unlike the works of Kōetsu, Sōtatsu, Kōrin, Haritsu, and other artists. This was all the outcome of the advice on design that Kamisaka constantly imparted to the artists, and the unstinting efforts and energy they devoted to this exhibition. Kuroda also compared the dispositions of Asai and Kamisaka, and concluded that Asai’s foundations were in “Japanese taste,” although he adopted oil painting techniques to express it. Kuroda’s analysis of Kamisaka Sekka was that he often accommodated the sensitivities of the Japanese people, which everyone took kindly to. But opinion is divided on Kuroda’s analysis here. Kuroda believed that the success of the first exhibition of works produced by the Kyōbikai and Kabikai associations - presided over by Kamisaka - were responsible for a resolute policy about the future course of Japan’s arts and crafts. Kuroda granted that Kamisaka’s designs and drawings fitted well with the sensibilities of the Japanese people, and he once posited the question of whether or not his designs would ever be to the liking of foreigners, if they were exported. Kuroda’s conclusion that this was “quite possible.” His reasoning was that, “Foreigners these days are not the foreigners of old. What they desire is pure Japanese taste and not something like a crossbreed31

Kuroda 1911, pp.3–4.

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ing of Japanese and European tastes.”32 That is, he presumed that Kamisaka’s style of pure Japanese taste would find favor in Europe since nobody in Europe longed now for an unthinking mix of Japanese and European-style elegance. CONCLUSION

Exports of Kyō-yaki towards the end of the Edo period were driven by the ceramic industry areas of Higashiyama and Awata. The Kiyomizu Gojō area joined in, and ceramic artists (potters) exercised ingenuity in various ways to increase the volume of Kyō-yaki exports. As well as modifying glaze, coloring materials, decorating methods, and such like, ceramic artists exhibited their wares in expositions held in various European countries and in America. Deploying Kyō-yaki techniques and traditional figurative art, they took advantage of the “Japonisme” boom to enhance their reputations. However, against a background of the waning popularity of “Japonisme” in Europe, a drop in the quality of artifacts for export and other factors, Japan’s arts and crafts at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris came in for some harsh criticism.33 As mentioned above, Kuroda had observed the situation at the time in Europe and America, and reported that arts and crafts there had come on in leaps and bounds over the past several years, primarily in the aspect of design. The tendency to accord importance to design came to be seen in Kyoto’s handicraft circles, too. Traditional designs were not to be imitated as they were. Not only theorists but also ceramic artists engaged in the actual production of wares acknowledged the necessity to originate new designs. As a result, they formed all sorts of associations that allowed craftsmen to meet with designers and scholars to examine and contemplate design. Asai Chū and Kamisaka Sekka were representative figures in positions of leadership in these groups. Likewise, they provided 32 33

Kuroda 1911, pp. 3–4. Tanaka and Yamanashi 1997 (unpaginated).

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designs for and gave guidance to young craftsmen. This facilitated in Kyoto the sort of collaboration between craftsmen and designers seen in Europe and America. This trend brought an awareness to those associated with ceramics in Kyoto that there was no originality in conventional methods, where ceramic artists (potters) speculatively imitated or re-arranged traditional designs. As is clear enough from his surviving oeuvre, Asai often based his designs on sketches which he then further simplified. However, their subject matter was rich in variety, and their charm did not always borrow from conventional Japanese taste.34 In contrast to this, the majority of Kamisaka’s designs inherited the style of painting of the Rinpa School, connected with Tawaraya Sōtatsu and Ogata Kōrin, whose style was gorgeous and decorative.35 Kamisaka’s designs differed from the Kanō and Maruyama Shijō Schools in that his lucid and lively Rinpa School style of patterning was a neat fit with the modern aesthetic advocated in this new age. This accounts for their broad appeal. At the same time, however, some were of the opinion that, although Asai’s designs may have stimulated the activation and reform of these circles, they disappeared without ever being accepted in Kyoto’s handicraft circles with their long tradition. It has also been pointed out that, after Asai’s death, crafts and designs succumbed to the sort of “imitation and plagiarism” that was prevalent before Asai organized the Yūtōen and Kyōshitsuen artists’ groups.36 The latter opinion was voiced by Tsuda Seifū, an artist who advocated innovative thinking. There existed then a more negative view among commentators like Tsuda that, while Asai’s work was in itself epoch-making, there was no one in Kyoto to keep his legacy alive after his death, at least in terms of the wares produced. This conclusion suggests that their estimation of Kamisaka was hardly high. In comparing Kyoto and Tokyo, Nakazawa Iwata once offered the following view: 34 35 36

Marquet 1995, pp. 176–182. Steel 2003, pp.60–62. Maekawa 1996, pp.161, 170.

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In Kyōto, if there is an innovative design, no matter how well lines are arranged, no matter how clever the color harmony may be, businessmen will not accept it since it deviates considerably from long-established design. Yet, if you go to Tokyo, they will at any rate say, well, let us give it a try. And, lo and behold, artifacts with these designs are put to practical use and become the fashion.37

This is a perspective that was motivated by commercial concerns, of course. As Nakazawa pointed out, it goes without saying that Kamisaka, in the creation of his designs, placed importance on the preferences of Kyoto purchasers. The novelty of his designs attracted people’s attention in Tokyo, but Kyoto did not favor novelty to the point of denying tradition; rather, Kyoto wanted a freshness. Kamisaka knew this perfectly well, and that was why he developed a style different to Asai’s. Though the tendency to give preference to traditional patterns in Kyō-yaki has stayed the course from past generations up to the present day, subsequent generations inherited the Meiji idea of giving value to originality, and works exhibiting multiple trends are apparent to this day. The current status of Kyō-yaki with its rich variations is the legacy of nothing so much as the impetus toward design innovation implemented in the latter half of the Meiji period. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fujioka 1962 Fujioka Kōji. Kyō-yaki hyakunen no ayumi. Kyōto Tōjiki Kyōkai, 1962. “Gei’en sōwa.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 19 December, (1893), pp.23–26. “Honkai kiji.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 51, August, (1896), pp. 12, 13. Ikeda and Wood 2003. Ikeda Yūko and Donald A. Wood ed. Kamisaka Sekka: Rinpa no keishō, kindai dezain no senkusha. The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; The Asahi Shinbun, 2003. Kaneko 1903 Kaneko Shizue. “Dai 5 Naikokuhaku no bijutsuhin.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi N133, July (1903), pp.4–98. Kaneko 1899 Kaneko Shizue. “Kōgei Shiryō.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 85, July (1899), pp. 4–16. 37

Cited in Shimizu 2003, p. 284.

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Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan Tomonokai 1979 Friends of Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives ed., Meiji no Kyō-yaki. Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan, 1979. Kuroda 1901a Kuroda Tengai. “Ronsetsu: bijutsu kōgei to zuan 1.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 106 (1901), pp.1–4. Kuroda 1901b Kuroda Tengai. “Ronsetsu: bijutsu kōgei to zuan 2.” Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 107 (1901), pp.1–3. Kuroda 1901c Kuroda Tengai. “Zappō” (“Nakazawa hakase no danwa”) Kyōto bijutsu kyōkai zasshi 105, (March 1901), pp. 22–25. Kuroda 1911 Kuroda Tengai. “Ronsetsu: Kyōto ni okeru bijutsu kōgei kakushin no kiun.” Kyōto bijutsu 21 (1911), pp.1–4. Kyōto Kindai Bijutsukan 1998 Kyōto Kindai Bijutsukan ed., Kyōto no Kōgei 1910–1940. Kyōto Kindai Bijutsukan, 1998. Maekawa 1996 Maekawa Masahide. Kyōto kindai bijutsu no keishō. Kyōto Shinbun, 1996. Marquet 1995 Christophe Marquet. “Asai Chū to ‘Design’.” In Kenchiku to dezain: kindai no bijutsu 4, Nihon bijutsu zenshū 24. Ōkawa Naomi et al eds. Kōdansha, 1995, pp.176–182 Meiji-Taishō Jidai no Nihontōjiten Jikkō Iinkai 2012 Meiji-Taishō Jidai no Nihontōjiten Jikkō Iinkai ed. Meiji / Taishō Jidai no Nihon tōji, 2012. Mori 1906 Mori Ujō (Mori Ippei). Kyōto shin hanjōki. 1906 (reproduced in Shinsen Kyōto sōsho Vol. 8 Shinsen Kyōto Sōsho Kankōkai ed., Rinsen Shoten, 1987, pp.214–5. Nakanodō 1979 Nakanodō Kazunobu. “Tōgeika ryakuden.” In Meiji no Kyō-yaki. Kyōto Furitsu Sōgō Shiryōkan, 1979. Nakazawa 1907 Nakazawa Iwata. “Zuan to Kyōto.” Hinode Shinbun, 1 January, 1907, cited in Shimizu Aiko. “Kōgei no kakushin o mezashita zuanka, Kamisaka Sekka.” In Kamisaka Sekka: Rinpa no keishō, kindai dezain no senkusha. Ikeda Yūko and Donald A. Wood ed. Kyōto Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 2003, pp.281–284. Ogawa 1989 Ogawa Kinzō. “Awata-yaki no tōshōtachi.” In Awata-yaki Hozon Kenkyūkai ed. Awata-yaki, Awata-yaki Hozon Kenkyūkai, 1989. Shigakenritsu Tōgei no Mori 1996 Shigakenritsu Tōgei no Moried. Meiji no Yakimono, Shigakenritsu Tōgei no Mori, 1996.

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Shimizu 2003 Shimizu Aiko. “Kōgei no kakushin o mezashita zuanka, Kamisaka Sekka.” In Ikeda and Wood, 2003, pp. 281–284. Steel 2003 Tanya Ferretto Steel. “Kamisaka Sekka: Modern Rinpa Master.” In Kamisaka Sekka: Rinpa no keishō, kindai dezain no senkusha. 2003, pp. 60–62. Tanaka and Yamanashi 1997 Tanaka Jun and Yamanashi Emiko. “Kaidai.” In Meijikibankoku hakurankai bijutsuhin shuppin mokuroku. Tōkyō Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjo ed., Chuō Kōrin Bijutsu Shuppan, 1997 (unpaginated). Translated by Julian Holmes and John Breen

THE CONTRIBUTORS Y

John Breen PhD is professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto, where he edits the journal Japan Review. He has published widely in English and Japanese on the modern imperial institution and the history of Shinto. Among his English publications are the following books: A Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital (Bloomsbury, 2017; with Mark Teeuwen), and A New History of Shinto (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011; with Mark Teeuwen). Recent articles in English include the following: “Abdication, Succession and Japan’s Imperial Future: An Emperor’s Dilemma.” Japan Focus, 17:9, 3 (2019); “Lies and yet more lies! Fukansai Habian’s ‘On Shinto’.” Japanese Religions 42:1, 2 (2018); and “Amaterasu’s progress: the Ise shrines and the public sphere of postwar Japan.” The Japan Society Proceedings, 152 (2016). He is presently writing a book on the making of monarchy in Meiji Japan. Maruyama Hiroshi PhD is professor emeritus at Meijō University, Nagoya. He received his doctorate in agriculture at Kyoto University. Among his publications is a book-length study of modern Japanese public parks (Kindai Nihon kōenshi no kenkyū. Shibunkaku, 1994) and two co-edited volumes on modern Kyoto: Miyako no kindai and Kindai Kyōto kenkyū, both by published by Shibunkaku in 2008. His major articles include studies of modern tourism (“Kindai tsūrizumu no reimei.” In Yoshida Mitsukuni ed. Jūkyū seiki no jōhō to shakai hendō. The Institute for Research in Humanities Kyoto University, 1985); of early Meiji expositions (“Meiji shoki no Kyōto hakurankai.” In Yoshida Mitsukuni ed., Bankoku hakurankai no kenkyū, Shibunkaku, 1986); and of the modern history of Maruyama Park in Kyoto (“Maruyama kōen no kindai.” In Nakamura Makoto ed., Zōen no rekishi to bunka. Yōkendō, 1987). Takagi Hiroshi PhD is professor at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University and formerly head of the institute. He worked in the Faculty of Letters at Hokkaido University, before moving to the Institute in 1998. His research explores Japanese culture through its connectivity to politics, with a special focus on the emperor system. He is particularly interested in the creation of Kyoto and Nara as “ancient capitals” in the modern period.

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His major publications reflect these interests. Kindai tennōsei no bunkashiteki kenkyū: tennō shūnin girei, nenjū gyōji, bunkazai (Azekura Shobō, 1997) is a multidisciplinary study of imperial ceremonial, of cultural properties and of museums. Kindai tennōsei to koto (Iwanami Shoten, 2006) studies the modern images of Kyoto and Nara. Takagi Hiroshi is also co-editor of two books on modern Kyoto, and editor of a collection of studies on the modern emperor system, Kindai tennōsei to shakai (Shibunkaku, 2018.) Tanigawa Yutaka PhD is professor in the Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University. He is a historian of modern Japan whose concerns range from society to thought to politics. His specialty is the connectivity between religion and education. Among his major publications are a study of education and Buddhism in Meiji Japan (Meiji zenki no kyōiku, kyōka, Bukkyō. Shibunkaku, 2008) and an edited collection of essays on culture and religion at the Meiji Restoration (Meiji ishin to shūkyō, bunka. Yūshisha, 2016; with Takagi Hiroshi). Recent publications include a study of state Shinto research in the post war (“Kokka Shintō ron no genjō o dō miru ka: Shimazono Susumu’s Kokka Shintō to Nihonjin to sore igo e.” In Yamaguchi Teruomi ed., Sengoshi no naka no “kokka Shintō.” Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2018), and a collection of essays on high-school baseball (Kōshien no nagamekata: rekishi toshite no kōkō yakyū. Chiisagosha, 2018; with Shirakawa Tetsuo). Nakagawa Osamu is professor in the Faculty of Design and Architecture, Kyoto Institute of Technology. He has served as chairman of the Society of Architectural Historians of Japan, but his interests range beyond architecture to include urban history and the modernization of Japan and Asia. Among his books are a volume on the reorganization of urban space in modern Japan (Kindai Nihon no kūkan henseishi. Shibunkaku, 2017; co-edited), another on Kyoto and modernization (Kyōto to kindai. Kajima Shuppankai, 2015), a study of urban landscapes (Fūkeigaku. Kyōritsu Shuppan, 2008), and a study of taxation in Kyoto (Jūzei toshi: mō hitotsu no kōgai jūtakushi. Sumaino Toshokan, 1990). Articles in English cover such diverse subjects as roofed walkways in colonial Taiwan, local residents and urban reform projects in Meiji, and of the role of engineers in urban reform in Meiji. These articles have appeared in the Journal of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Engineering. Kobayashi Takehiro is professor in the Faculty of Letters, Doshisha University. He specializes in modern and contemporary Japanese history and the preservation of historical sources. He worked at the Kyoto City Historical Archive (Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan), and at Nara University before taking up his professorship at Doshisha. His major publications include a study of Kyoto in the Meiji restoration (Meiji ishin to Kyōto: kuge shakai no kaitai. Rinsen Shoten, 1998), a study of

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law codes in Kyoto City (Kyōto chō shikimoku shūsei. Kyōto Shi Rekishi Shiryōkan, 1999), and an exploration of public health in modern Japan (Kindai Nihon no kōshū eisei. Yūzankaku, 2001). He is also (co-)editor of volumes on the historiography of Kyoto (Kyōto ni okeru rekishigaku no tanjō: Nihonshi kenkyū no sōzōshatachi. Minerva Shobō, 2014) and the Meiji restoration (Kōza Meiji ishin 10: Meiji ishin to shisō shakai. Yūshisha, 2016). Takaku Reinosuke is professor emeritus at both Doshisha and Kyoto Tachibana University. His major publications include a study of local society in modern Kyoto (Kindai Nihon to chiiki shinkō: Kyōtofu no kindai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2011) and a study of local notables in modern Japanese society (Kindai Nihon no chiiki shakai to meibōka. Kashiwa Shobō, 1997). He is the co-editor of the diary of Kitagaki Kunimichi, the Meiji period Kyoto prefectural governor (Kitagaki Kunimichi no nikki: Jinkai. Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2010.) His research is empirical, and involves utilizing local government records in order to explore how local society in modern Japan and, above all, how politics and society in Kyoto Prefecture and Shiga Prefecture have changed with modernity. He has endeavored to demonstrate that those who shoulder responsibility for local society have come from ever lower reaches of society. He has also sought to shed light on society’s technological progress in the modern period. Kuniga Yumiko is concurrently professor of history in the Faculty of Letters at Otani University and director of Otani University Museum. Her specialty is Japanese art history, and her research has focused on scrolls, visual representations of festivals and rituals, and on the work of artists from Kyoto and Ōmi. Her books include studies of the Ishiyama temple scrolls (Ishiyamadera engi: emaki shūsei. Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 2016; with Aizawa Masahiko ); of the artist Kōno Bairei (Kōno Bairei. Unsōdō, 1995; with Harada Heisaku); and of Kyoto Nihonga paintings (Nihon no kindai bijutsu 5: Kyōto no Nihonga. Ōtsuki Shoten, 1994; with Hirano Shigemitsu). Her most recent articles focus on the Kokawadera scrolls (“Busshin ni mezameru toki: “Kokawadera engi emaki no setsuwa o megutte.” Bijutsu Fuōramu 21, 33 (2016)) and the work of Ogura Yuki (“Botsugo 10nen Ogura Yuki no gagyō o furikaette.” In Botsugo 10nen Ogura Yuki ten. Hyōgoken Bijutsukan, Utsunomiya Bijutsukan, Asahi Shinbunsha, 2010). Yoshii Takao PhD is a folklorist, who graduated from the History Department in the Faculty of Letters, Kokugakuin University. He works in Japanese cultural history and material culture. He is now emeritus professor of Hanazono University, having served there as vice-chancellor, and as director of the Hanazono History Museum. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Ema Prize of the Japan Society for Historical Research of Manners and Customs.

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His publications include the following books, which treat the history of weaving, and of Kyoto festivals, including the Gion festival. He is author of a prize-winning, multi-disciplinary study of Japanese culture from the perspectives of artisan skills, urban culture, ritual, and museum culture. Those books are respectively: Orimono gijutsu minzokushi. Senshoku to Seikatsusha, 1991; Kyō no matsuri. Kōsei Shuppansha, 1994 (with Yokoyama Kenzō); Gion matsuri. Shōraisha, 1995 (edited); Minzoku bunka fukugōtai ron. Shibunkaku, 2005.

INDEX Y

Amenomori Kikutarō (1850-1920) 125–27 Amino Yoshihiko (1928-2004) 19, 31 Andō Masazumi (1876-1955) 87 Aoi Festival xi, xiii, 24, 27, 30, 33, 34, 39, 44–9, 62 Arashiyama 66, 148, 155, 156, 159, 160, 169, 178 Asahi newspaper (Asahi shinbun) 46, 47, 53, 60 Asai Chū (1856-1907) 235–42 Asia-Pacific War xxi, 68, 83, 85, 87 Awata-yaki 220, 222, 224–26 Azuma Tōyō (1755-1839) 197 Boshin War 17, 44 Bukkyō University 83 Bunrin School 201 Chion’in xvi, 77, 88, 152, 153, 156, 158, 211 Chūgai nippō (Kyōgaku hōchi) 86–7 Chūō kōron 87 City Planning Law 121, 160–63 Daigokuden 29, 39, 40–2, 128, 131– 33, 135–38, 142–44 Daijōsai 8, 10, 22, 25, 35, 56–59, 61, 100, 111, 112 Daitokuji 74 Dōshisha xxx, 82, 83 Eleventh Centenary xiv, 101, 123–28, 130–37, 139, 140, 142–43 249

Emperor Gotoba (1180-1239) 42 Emperor Kanmu (737-806) xii, 14, 26, 35–7, 40, 41–4, 62, 100, 124, 131, 132, 139 Emperor Kōmei (1831-1867) xii, 13, 14, 20, 24 Emperor Meiji (1852-1912) 17, 23, 24, 35, 41, 111, 143 emperor system xiii, xxvi, 19, 67, 73, 84 Emperor Taishō (Crown Prince Yoshihito) (1879-1926) 33, 44, 56, 160 Enryakuji 18, 19, 23, 73, 152, 164 Enthronement Celebration Association (Tairei Hōshukukai) 113, 114, 116 Etō Shinpei (1834-1874) 16 Exhibition Glasgow International Exhibition, 1901 238 Kyoto Exhibition (hakurankai), 1871–1928 viii, x, 37, 77, 211, 224 National Industrial Exhibition, 1877 (First) 244 National Industrial Exhibition, 1881 (Second) 213 National Industrial Exhibition, 1889 (Third) 234 National Industrial Exhibition, 1895 (Fourth) xi, xii, xiv, 29, 39, 41, 80, 98, 101, 123–33, 137, 142, 143, 185, 212, 224, 234

250

National Industrial Exhibition, (Fifth) 222, 234 Exposition Exposition of the City of Vienna, 1873 (Vienna Universal Exposition) 211, 224 Philadelphia Exposition, 1876 228 Exposition Universelle, 1878 in Paris 224 Barcelona Universal Exposition, 1888 224 Exposition Universelle, 1889 in Paris 222 Chicago Exposition, 1893 28 Exposition Universelle, 1900 in Paris 29, 224, 233, 240 Family Register Law 75 Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco (18531908) 27, 208, 209, 215, 218 Forest Law (Shinrin hō) 157, 159, 163 Fūchi xiv, 147, 152, 160, 162, 166 Ganku (1756-1839) 192, 193, 195, 216 Gesshō (1813-1858) 70 Gion Festival (Gion matsuri) xi, xiii, xix, xxix, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 38, 39, 49, 50–52, 55, 56, 62, 107 Gion Shrine (Gion sha) 5, 16, 50, 73, 148 Goshun (1752-1811) 191–95 Grand Council of State (Dajōkan) 16, 18, 37, 147, 148, 150, 163 Great Kantō Earthquake 20 Great Treason Incident 84 haibutsu kishaku 23, 73, 90, 147 Hamao Arata (1849-1925) 208 Hamaoka Kōtetsu (1853-1936) 125–28, 228 Hanazono University 83

INDEX

Hanseikai zasshi 85–7 Hayashiya Tatsusaburō (1914-1998) xxiii, xxx, 7, 30, 31 Heiankyō 3, 5, 7 Heian Palace 40 Heian Shrine (Heian Jingū) xii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xix, xxi, xxiv, 26, 29, 30, 40–2, 44, 57, 66, 101, 104, 123, 124, 134, 142–44, 185 Heian tsūshi xi, xvi, 29, 64, 125 Heirakuji Shoten 85 Higashiyama xxix, 5, 7, 12, 57, 137, 151, 152, 155, 156, 159, 160, 163, 166, 181, 185, 196, 197, 226, 238, 240 hikisaki jōchi 149 Hinode newspaper (Hinode shinbun) xxiii, 40–44, 46, 47, 52, 63, 125, 137, 154, 228 Hōkōji 17, 74, 129 Honganji (Nishi Honganji, Higashi Honganji) xx, xxiv, 4, 5, 12, 66, 67, 69, 70, 73, 77–80, 81, 83–5, 88, 90, 144, 165, 185, 211 Honkokuji 69 Honnōji 73 Hoshōkai (Preservation Society) 155, 166 Hōzōkan 85 Ichimura Mitsue (1875-1928) 55 Iida Shinshichi , fourth generation (1859-1944) 198 Iinuma Kazumi (1892-1982) 162 Imperial Court Artist (teishitsu gigeiin) 216, 227 Imperial Household Law (Kōshitsu tenpan) 26, 37, 56, 111 Imperial Palace (Kyoto (Imperial) Palace) ix, 6, 12, 23, 26, 33, 35, 36, 39, 48, 60, 100, 104, 112, 163, 173, 174, 176, 178, 185, 198

INDEX

Imperial (Palace) Garden (gyoen) xx, 5, 9, 23, 24, 26, 28, 66, 82, 101, 132, 176, 178 Inoue Enryō (1858-1919) 82 Inoue Kaoru (1836-1915) 78, 79, 128, 133, 136, 137, 143, 144, 150 Ittōen 90 Itō Hirobumi (1841-1909) 70, 128, 133, 143 Itō Shōshin (1876-1963) 87 Itō Tōzan, first generation (18461920) 225, 226, 235 Iwakura Tomomi (1825-1883) xxiii, 3, 9, 13, 25, 33–38, 40, 46, 48, 56, 62, 63, 79, 100, 101, 111, 155 Jidai Festival (Jidai matsuri) xii, xiii, 33, 34, 39, 42–44, 49 Jingūji 14, 72 Jinkai (Kitagaki’s diary) xxii, xxxi, 154, 166, 187 Kabikai 239 Kakizaki Hakyō (1764-1826) 197 Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942) 235, 236, 238, 239, 240–44 Kamo Festival 8, 21, 30, 31, 37 Kamo River xii, xix, 4, 5, 10, 29, 39, 47, 58, 98, 116, 118, 123, 129, 171, 179, 181, 183, 185 Kamo Shrine (Upper Kamo Shrine, Lower Kamo Shrine) xvi, 16, 21, 24, 39, 45–8, 62, 164 Kanbi kyōkai 209, 210 Kanō School 205, 241 Kanzan Denshichi (1821-1890) 226 Kan’eiji 148 Kansai, Mori (1814-1894) 189, 199, 218 Katsura Imperial Villa (Katsura rikyū) 163 Kendō Shoin 85

251

Kido Takayoshi (1833-1877) 70, 78 Kikuchi Hōbun (1862-1918) 200, 206 Kinchū narabi ni kuge shohatto 8 Kinkakuji 65–6, 74, 129, 165, 178 Kinkōzan Sōbē, sixth generation (1823-1884) 221–22 Kinkōzan Sōbē, seventh generation (1868-1927) 222, 224, 235 Kishi Chikudō (1826-1897) 189, 199, 200–202, 210, 214, 216, 218 Kishi Renzan (1804-1859) 195, 196, 199 Kishi School 193, 195, 199 Kitagaki Kunimichi (1836-1916) xxii, xxxi, 25, 35, 37, 38, 79, 97, 105, 133, 154, 155, 166, 176–79, 182, 187, 247 Kitano Tenmangū 15 Kitayama Kangan (1767-1801) 197 Kiyomizu Rokubē, third generation (1822-1883) 198, 226 Kiyomizu Rokubē, fourth generation (1848-1920) 201 Kiyomizu Rokubē, fifth generation (1875-1959) 201, 235 Kiyomizu Temple (Kiyomizudera) xxiv, 5, 65, 66, 74, 148, 152, 156, 158, 164 Kiyomizu-yaki (pottery) 169, 220 Kiyozawa Manshi (1863-1903) 82, 90 Kōdaiji 66, 74, 152, 156, 158 kōdō kumiai 108, 109, 121 Kōetsu, Hon’ami (1558-1637) 231, 237, 239 kokufū culture 7, 28, 29, 30 Kōno Bairei (1844-1895) 189, 195, 199–201, 203–06, 208–10, 212–19 Konoe Atsumaro (1863-1904) 125, 128, 133, 138 Kōrin, Ogata (1658-1716) xxviii, 232, 237, 239, 241

252

Kōsaikai 83 Kubota Beisen (1852-1906) 203 Kuki Ryūichi (1852-1931) 203 Kumagai Kyūemon (Naotaka), seventh generation (1817-1875) 211 Kurama Temple 66, 74, 158 Kuroda Tengai (1866?-?) 217, 233, 234, 237, 238, 243 Kuroita Katsumi (1874-1946) xxiv Kusube Yaichi (1897-1984) 201 Kuwayama Gyokushū (1746-1799) 197 Kuze Michifumi (1859-1939) 126, 127, 129, 130, 139 Kyōbikai 239 Kyōgaku hōchi 86 Kyōō Gokokuji (Tōji) xxiii, 71, 164 Kyōshitsuen 235, 236, 241 Kyoto Ceramics Company 177, 227, 229, 230 Kyoto Chamber of Commerce 55, 125, 142, 181, 187 Kyoto City Assembly (shikai) 105, 125, 127–129, 131, 134, 140, 141, 143, 144, 178, 183 Kyoto City Buddhist Association (Kyōto Shi Bukkyōkai) 89 Kyoto City Council (sanjikai) 125, 128, 140, 144 Kyoto Commercial Bank 177 Kyoto Electric Light Company 142, 177, 178 Kyoto Fine Arts Association 203, 214 Kyoto Great Forest Section Office (Kyōto Dairin Kusho) 153 Kyoto Handicraft High School 116, 232, 235 Kyōto hinode 54, 56, 107, 186 Kyoto-Miyazu Road 176–78 Kyoto Prefectural School of Art (Kyōto Fu Gagakkō) 203, 204, 206–208, 212 Kyōto shinbun xxiii, 87, 188 Kyoto Textile Company 177–78

INDEX

Kyō-yaki xv, 198, 220, 221, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 234, 235, 240, 242, 243 Lake Biwa 38, 54, 61, 97, 98, 170, 179, 180, 181, 185 Lake Biwa Canal xiv, xvii, xxii, xxvii, 30, 97–9, 101, 104, 129, 130, 131, 140, 170, 175, 179, 180–86 Machida Hisanari (1838-1897) 203 Makimura Masanao (1834-1896) 23, 25, 77, 78, 97, 175, 176, 204 Maruyama Park 16, 49, 178 Maruyama School 191, 195, 210, 241 Matani Ruikotsu (1869-1956) 86 Matsukata Masayoshi (1835-1924) 79, 80 Meiji Constitution 23, 26, 143 Meiji Shrine 160, 161 Minagawa Kien (1735-1807) 196 Mitsui Hachirōemon (Takayoshi), thirteenth generation (1808-1885) 211 Mitsui Takaaki (1837-1894) 128 Miyagawa Kōzan (1842-1916) 226 Miyanaga Tōzan (1868-1941) 235 Mochizuki Gyokusen (1673-1755) 204, 212 monzeki temple 8, 19, 21, 75 Morimoto Kōchō (1847-1905) 141 Morse, Edward Sylvester (1838-1925) 201, 218 Motoda Nagasane (1818-1891) 143 Myōhōin 71, 76, 152, 156 Myōshinji xvii, 88, 144 Nagai Kafū (1879-1959) 30 Nagata Bunshōdō 85 Nagatani Nobuatsu (1818-1902) 175, 211

INDEX

Naiki Jinzaburō (1848-1926) 105, 127, 128, 134, 135, 140, 141, 228 Nakabayashi Chikutō (1776-1853) 192 Nakai Hiroshi (1838-1894) 140, 143 Nakajima Raishō (1796-1871) 195, 196, 197, 199 Nakamura Eisuke (1849-1938) 125, 133, 155 Nakamura Hōchū (?-1819) 197 Nakazawa Iwata (1858-1943) 230–33, 235, 241–43 Nanjō Bunyū (1849-1927) 82 Nanzenji 66, 69, 80, 152, 158, 179, 185, 239 National Forest and Fields Law (Kokuyū rinya hō) 157, 163 National forests 152–54, 156, 159 Nihonga xv, xxviii,, 189–91, 215, 216–218 Nijō Castle xvii, 3, 4, 12, 27, 66, 112, 165, 171, 178 Nijō Imperial Villa 44, 112, 163 Ninnaji 80, 164 Nishijin-ori 169, 181, 220 Nishimura Sutezō (1843-1908) 126, 133, 136, 143, 144 Nishimura Sōzaemon (1855-1935) 198, 199, 201, 202 Nonomura Ninsei (?-?) xxviii, 220 Nomura Yasushi (1842-1909) 41 Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) 21, 26, 42 Ogata Kenzan (1663-1743) 220 Ogawa Haritsu (1663-1747) 237, 239 Ogawa Jihē (1860-1933) xxi, xxix, 99, 122, 185 Okakura Tenshin (1863-1913) 27–29, 208, 212, 218 Okazaki xii, 29, 57, 98–101, 104, 111, 120–123, 129–134, 137, 142, 185, 188 Okazaki Park xx, 111

253

Ōkubo Toshimichi (1830-1878) 173, 174 Ōkuma Shigenobu (1838-1922) 59, 60 Ōkyo Maruyama (1733-1795) 191, 192, 193, 195, 196, 199 Ōmori Shōichi (1856-1927) 54 Omuro-yaki 220 Ōnin Wars xxi, xxvi, 4, 7, 98 Ono Zensuke, eighth generation (1831-1887) Osaka Regional Forest Bureau 159, 160 Ōtani University 83 Ōzu Tetsunen (1834-1902) 70 Restoration (Meiji) ix–xi, xiii, xvi, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, xxviii, xxx, 6, 11, 14, 16, 19, 33–35, 45, 46, 48–50, 67, 71, 72, 75, 83, 89, 96, 100– 102, 108, 146, 156, 174, 197–200, 204, 212, 221, 224 Russo-Japanese War 27, 54, 57, 84 Ryūkoku University 83 Saigō Kikujirō (1861-1928) 105, 106, 186 Saigō Takamori (1828-1877) 106, 186 Sanjō Sanetomi (1837-1891) 13, 26, 47, 70 Sano Tsunetami (1823-1902) 126, 128, 138, 139, 142–144 scenic beauty xiv, 24, 118, 121, 146, 147, 150, 155, 159, 160, 162, 165 scenic zones (fūchi chiku) 160–164 Senda Sadaaki (1836-1908) 127, 128, 133, 140, 143 Sentō Palace 10, 23, 58 Shijō School 193, 195, 210, 231, 241 Shimaji Mokurai (1838-1911) 70, 71, 78 Shinto-Buddhist Separation Laws (Shinbutsu bunri rei) 14, 15

254

INDEX

Shiokawa Bunrin (1808-1877) 195– 97, 199, 205 Shrine and Temple Land Confiscation Law (Shaji jōchi rei) 147, 149 Shrine and Temple Managed Forest Entrustment Regulations 153 Shuchiin University 83 Shōkokuji xxiv, 69, 70, 82, 90 Shūgakuin Imperial Villa xvii, 163 Soejima Taneomi (1828-1905) 22 State-Owned Forests and Fields Law (Kokuyū rinya hō) 153 Suiheisha 87 Sumie Buzen (1734-1806) 197 Suzuki Fuyō (1749-1816) 197, 217 Suzuki Hyakunen (1825-1891) 205, 209 Suzuki Shōren (1779-1803) 197, 206

three major construction projects (sandai jigyō) xiv, 30, 54, 104-106, 110,111, 113, 116, 120, 172, 186 Tōfukuji xvi, 80, 152 Tokugawa Iemochi (1846-1866) 13, 14, 69 Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) 3, 4, 8 Tokugawa Nariaki (1800-1860) 17 Tokugawa Yoshinobu (Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu) (1837-1913) 14, 69 Tōkyō nichinichi 183 Tourism tax (kankōzei) 88, 89 Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) 3, 4, 10, 26, 29, 77 Treaty of Amity and Commerce 13, 173 Tsuda Seifū (1880-1978) 241 Tsuji Kakō (1871-1931) 206

Takagi Bunpei (1843-1910) 181 Takagi Kenmyō (1864-1914) 84, 90, 91 Takeda Goichi (1872-1938) 116, 119, 235 Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942) xxviii, 200, 205, 210, 219 Tale of Genji 27, 30 Tanaka Gentarō (1853-1922) 227 Tani Bunchō (1763-1841) 193, 197, 217 Taniguchi Kōkyō (1864-1915) 200, 206, 238 Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965) 30, 32, 40, 63 Tanomura Chikuden (1777-1835) 192 Tanomura Chokunyū (1814-1907) 204, 212 Tanzan Rokurō (1853-1897) 224 Tanzan Seikai (1813-1886) 224 Tawaraya Sōtatsu (?-?) 237, 239, 241 Tenryūji 69, 80, 84, 156, 158, 165

Ueda Akinari (1734-1809) 191 Ueno Park xii, 224, 234 Usui Kosaburō (1865-1928) 125–27 Watanabe Chiaki (1843-1921) 40, 155 World Heritage 80, 164, 165 Yamagata Aritomo (1838-1922) xxi, 180 Yasaka Shrine 39, 49, 51–53, 56, 66, 73, 148, 154 Yasuda Genshichi, fifteenth generation (?-1932) 224 Yōga 189 Yokoyama Seiki (1793-1865) 195, 197 Yosa Buson (1716-1784) 193 Yoshida Shōin (1830-1859) 70 Yumoto Fumihiko (1843-1921) 29, 64, 131, 132, 136 Yūtōen 235, 236, 241 yūzen dyes 169, 181