Kyōto Reimagined

Toyotomi Hideyoshi's vision for Kyōto died with him on 1598. Though he ended an age of more than a century of constant civil war and sought to revitalize Japan after his elevation to a noble and regent of the emperor, the Toyotomi house fell just two years after his death. Paranoid about his legacy, Toyotomi Hideyoshi forced his nephew Toyotomi Hidetsugu to commit ritual suicide on suspicion of a potential coup plot. The grand palace-castle of Jurakudai, which had one of his centerpiece construction projects in Kyōto, was dismantled in 1595, with parts taken to castles and temples in the region. A costly war with Joseon Korea, allied with Ming China, from 1592-1598 further weakened his eastern coalition supporters. With only his young son as the designated heir, loyalty to Toyotomi's house was tenuous at best.

Tokugawa Ieyasu 德川家康, once a reluctant ally of both Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, led his eastern coalition to victory against Toyotomi's colation at the Battle of Sekigahara 関ヶ原の戦い on October 21, 1600. Thus began the Tokugawa Shōgunate 徳川幕府, which ruled Japan until 1868. The Tokugawa Shōgunate maintained stringent security controls to secure such hard-won unification.

Trade with the outside world was greatly restricted. The Protestant Dutch were the only European nation to be allowed trade from their trade post of Dejima at the port of Nagasaki. Christianity was outlawed due to fears regarding Catholic European colonization in Southeast Asia. Samurai lords were required to establish estates in the capital and frequently attend the shōgunal court while their family members were sent as hostages in a practice known as sankin-kōtai 参覲交代 (alternate attendance). The Toyotomi house was eliminated altogether in 1615.

The full restoration of Kyōto was not to be, for the Tokugawa established Edo (present-day Tokyo) as the shōgunal capital. Kyōto would remain a major city. Toyotomi Hideyoshi's Kyōto formed the basis of much of "traditional" Kyōto today. By sheer accident of the Tokugawa policies, the required sankin-kōtai 参覲交代 not only spurred a building boom in Edo, but also had a far-reaching ripple effect as it brought cross-country traffic and allowed for a major "tourism" (often in the guise of pilgrimage) boom. Publishers produced special guides for the purpose of guiding visitors to its many famous sites. At the height of the Tokugawa era, the city reached a population of 400,000, making it the second-largest city after Edo, which boasted a million inhabitants. The relative peace, great prosperity, and re-urbanization of Japan's great cultural centers allowed for Kyōto to become a bustling metropolis all throughout the Tokugawa era. Kyōto may not have been the political center, but its symbolic importance was reaffirmed when Tokugawa Ieyasu established Ninomaru Palace at Nijō Castle upon receiving his title as shōgun.

As the 17th century painted folding screen Scenes in and around the Capital indicate, early into the Tokugawa Period, Kyōto was already a bustling city. After being ravaged by more than a century during the Age of the Country at War (1467-1573), the city re-emerged under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and then the relative stability of the Tokugawa Shōgunate. The bottom half of the screen shows that the city fully expanded eastward over the Kamo River, which began during Toyotomi Hideyoshi's time. At the bottom one can see the Gion Matsuri festival's grand procession. In the top left hand corner, one can see Nijō Castle restored with Ninomaru Palace within its walls. The painting is apparently not intended to be a geographical representation (as Kiyomizu Temple is shown in the west side when it is in the eastern hills of Higashiyama), but a lively and optimistic appraisal of the city in the early Tokugawa era. Perhaps the most important feature of the painting is the vitality of the city's street life and festival-like atmosphere represented all throughout.

Ninomaru Palace at Nijō Castle was a largely symbolic residence for the Tokugawa Shōgunate, but it was necessary to maintain links with the Kyōto-based imperial house. Nijō Castle was destroyed after Oda Nobunaga turned on the last Ashikaga Shōgun in 1573, but the castle, like many others in the post-civil war period, was rebuilt in 1603 for ceremonial purposes. Although Ninomaru Palace lacks shinden style architecture, its ritual purpose does hearken to classical precedents. Nijō Castle was built on the traditional north-south east-west axis of classical Heian, but its orientation is off by three degrees; use of European compasses brought in the late 16th century apparently produced less accurate results than the original 794 layout for Heian (Stavros 2014, 174)!

An aristocratic enclave was established since Toyotomi Hideyoshi's time to restore Kyōto's traditional nobility, which had long lost political power. This was a symbolic gesture. Under the Tokugawa Shōgunate, the 1615 Laws of the Imperial Household and Aristocratic Families essentially limited the imperial court and nobility to high cultural pursuits and ceremony while granting them financial support (178). This area around the present-day Kyoto Imperial Palace was largely vacated when the emperor moved to Tokyo after the 1868 revolution.

Kyōto lost its status as the political and economic center of Japan, but it was still esteemed all throughout the Tokugawa period. It continued to be home to headquarters temple complexes of the major Japanese Buddhist sects as well as a multitude of Shintō shrines. Many a visitor, artist, and writer continued to imagine the grandeur of the city's Heian golden age. It was in the mid- to late-Tokugawa era that Japanese scholars such as Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) reexamined Heian high culture in their search for defining, even if problematically, what comprised Japan's uniqueness. Early forms of tourism to Kyōto enhanced its prestige for people of all walks of life. The Tōkaidō road linked Kyōto with Edo and was the most-traversed route in the Tokugawa era. Kyōto also was conveniently close to the burgeoning merchant city of Osaka.

The Tokugawa Shōgunate was overthrown by a major insurrection led by the Chōshū and Satsuma domains (home to former Tokugawa rivals, the Mōri and Shimazu clans) that sought to "restore" the emperor as the principal head of state. In the following Meiji Period 明治 (1868-1912), named after the reign of Emperor Mutsuhito, Japan underwent revolutionary changes in every aspect as it emerged as an industrial power. Kyōto likewise was transformed in the zeitgeist of "modernization" - electricity and streetcars were introduced, streets were widened, and many of the city's characteristic machiya houses were dismantled (183-184). Many within Kyōto feared that the capital would meet the same fate as Nara after the imperial family relocated to Tokyo, but the city's allure remained.

Rapid modernization brought new anxieties. Many, both elite and non-elite persons, were alarmed at the overt effacement of "traditional" culture and spaces. Regulations to preserve remaining spaces amidst the industrialization rush were enacted as early as the late Meiji era, but became more prominent after the 1919 City Planning Law. Kyōto's muncipal government took charge of its "landscape zones" from 1930 (Yamasaki and Waley 2003, 347).

Kyōto, along with Kanazawa, escaped Allied firebombing and the atomic bombs during World War II due to a perception that the city was culturally unique. Cultural protection laws further were enacted throughout the 1960s and 1970s and four districts were designated as Important Conservation Districts by the late 1990s (348-350). What is striking about the revisions to these landscape zone laws, however, is that what was highlighted was a preservation of facades (rather than whole buildings, which were unable to have modern amenities). The intent was therefore to maintain the appearance of Kyōto as the timeless capital.

The greatest irony in Emperor Kanmu's desire for an eternal capital at the end of the eighth century was that even though the ideal never materialized even in his time, such ideas never faded. Many, from the highest echelons of the old nobility in the Heian Period to the peasant-turned-chancellor Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the end of the 16th century, looked to Kyōto as the center. Kyōto continues to inspire nostalgic reminiscences about "traditional" Japan, even though the city has changed constantly in every era and bears no semblance to Emperor Kanmu's vision in 794.

The city's persistent reputation as the heart of "tradition" in the twentieth century to the present is also not entirely fanciful - whereas Allied bombing ravaged most of Japan's major cities during World War II, Kyōto and its neighbors were spared destruction. Although much the city bears little in relation to its Heian origins or even its heyday as the Ashikaga Shōgunate's capital, the appearance of perpetual tradition remains meaningful as exampled in the Gion Matsuri. Kyōto may not be perfectly preserved in perpetuity, but it remains an inspirational city as the heartland of Japan's earlier urban culture. Emperor Kanmu's "eternal capital" may no longer exist intact, but its ideal has somehow withstood the test of time.