Kyoto. John H. Martin
in October and December.
Window shopping along Teramachi Street.
Food stalls at the Nishiki Koji Market.
4 CENTRAL KYOTO
The streets spreading out from the Kamo River west to Karasuma-dori between Shijodori and Oike-dori embrace the main shopping center of Kyoto. Along Shijo-dori are a number of well-known Japanese department stores and many specialty shops, which are always thronged with browsers and would-be purchasers. Covered arcades on Kyogoku-dori and Shin Kyogoku-dori between Shijo-dori and Sanjo-dori and in Teramachi-dori between Shijo-dori and Oike-dori provide all-weather enticement to purchase anything from fine old prints to the most outrageous of cheap souvenirs.
Numerous movie houses and restaurants offer further entertainment to locals and tourists alike. The area is always crowded with tourist groups from the provinces as well as hundreds of students on school tours and local citizens.
TERAMACHI This area of Kyoto became a commercial center fairly late in the city’s history. At the time of Hideyoshi (late 1500s), a protective wall (Odoi) was built along the eastern edge of the city where Karawamachidori now runs. Teramachi (Temple District), the name of this area, is so-called since, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi rebuilt Kyoto as “his” capital after 1583, he had many of the temples that were favored by the people relocated to two areas, one along Teramachi-dori in the center of Kyoto and the other at Teranouchidori in the north-central part of the city. Those along Teramachi were primarily of the Jodo sect of Buddhism, while the ones along Teranouchi were of the Nichiren persuasion. Both time and fires have seen to the dispersal of many of relocated temples, but some still remain in this area.
Among the temples in the Teramachi area, perhaps the most famous is Honno-ji, because of its associations with Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga was Hideyoshi’s predecessor who ended virtually all the internecine wars of the 1500s. It was at Honno-ji that Nobunaga was trapped by a traitor and was forced to kill himself and his family, a deed which Hide-yoshi later avenged. Today, it is an association in name only, since the original Honno-ji was located a few streets to the south and west (south of Rokkaku-dori and east of Aura-nokoji-dori) before it burned down, and thus the present temple complex is from post-Nobunaga times.
Kyoto’s Kamo-gawa River in spring.
In the post-Meiji era (after 1868), Kawaramachi-dori was opened and became a street of shops between Oike-dori and Shijo-dori. In addition, Kyogoku-dori and Shin Kyogokudori were created after 1871 and became known as “Theater Street” by foreigners who came to Kyoto. It is still an entertainment area, although now small shops, many specializing in tourist souvenirs of an ephemeral nature, and restaurants rather than theaters predominate. It is a thriving and often crowded area with bright lights, and is popular with Kyoto residents as well as Japanese school tour groups.
One of the interesting byways of central Kyoto is Nishiki-koji-dori, which houses the Nishi Koji Market (Brocade Alley Market). It is located one street north of Shijo-dori, and runs from Shin Kyogoku-dori (a torii gate stands at the entry to the street before the small Nishiki Tenmangu Shrine) to Takakura-dori near the Daimaru department store.
Since the middle ages, there has been a public market in central Kyoto. Virtually the entire city was destroyed in the Onin Wars of 1467 to 1477. The market was re-established in the late 1500s, however, when Hideyoshi replanned the city. There are about 150 food dealers along this 500 feet (150 m) long stone-paved street. Most of the shops remain open until early evening, and the street presents a fascinating aspect of everyday life. (Most shops close on Wednesday; fish stores are closed on Sundays.)
THE TOKAIDO ROAD This walk is a loop, returning to the Yasaka Shrine, and it thus next leads east on Sanjo-dori (Third Street), which runs through the arcaded streets mentioned above (and is itself arcaded for a short while) as it heads eastward toward the Kamo River and the Sanjo bridge. The Sanjobashi Bridge over the Kamo River was originally built at the order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1589, and after 1600 it marked the beginning of the Tokaido Road (To-kaido means “Eastern Highway”).
The Tokaido was a 320 mile (512 km) route with 53 relay stations between the Emperor’s capital in Kyoto and the Shogun’s headquarters in Edo (Tokyo). This link between Kyoto and Tokyo became a major commercial route between 1603 and 1868 as travel on Sanjo-dori headed east to the valley between Kyoto and Lake Biwa and the Tokaido Road. Its importance as a major highway diminished in the late 19th century with the coming of the railroad, and its eclipse was virtually completed when the new express-way to Kyoto entered the prefecture to the south of the city in the middle of the 20th century. The very first milestone of the route, from which all distances were measured, stood at the eastern end of the bridge, today a memento of a vanished era.
Later times have, of course, necessitated the replacement of Hideyoshi’s bridge by a structure that can carry the heavy traffic of a mechanized age. Only the giboshi, the bronze ornaments atop the posts of the railings, go back to the 16th century, all gifts of the leading daimyo of those days. Some of the stone pillars at each end of the bridge are original as well, the other stones having been used for the famous stepping stones in the garden pond of the Heian Shrine when it was created at the end of the 19th century.
At the southeast corner of the Sanjo Bridge, amidst the confusion of overhead electrical wires, the tracks of the Keihan rail line to Otsu, the terminal for many buses and the underground railway station, is a statue of a samurai bowing toward the northwest. The statue commemorates Takayama Masayuke (1747–93), also known as Takayama Hikokuro, who came to Kyoto when he was 18 and there began to delve into the history of the nation. Takayama was astonished to discover that the Shoguns had usurped the power of the Emperor to control the country. (He did not realize how powerless the Emperor had been through most of the centuries of the existence of the Imperial line.) He therefore traveled through the various provinces in an attempt to revive the prestige of the Imperial house. On his return to Kyoto, he fell upon his knees at the Sanjo Bridge to bow toward the Emperor in his palace to the northwest, to manifest the esteem due the Imperial house, as he is still bowing in this monument. Eventually, he offered himself as a symbolic sacrifice to the Imperial cause by committing hara-kiri for the sake of Imperial rule—one of the first overt acts of challenge to the Shogun’s supremacy. In his memory, a statue to this exemplar of fidelity to Imperial rule was erected at the corner of the Sanjo Bridge after the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
STREETS OF ANTIQUES Although antique and curio shops abound in various areas of Kyoto, several streets in the Gion/Shimbashi district are noted for a proliferation of such stores. Nawate-dori is one such street, a north–south street one street east of the Kamo River and running south from the transportation hub at Sanjo-dori. Parallel to it is Hanami-koji-dori to the east, and then two other streets which run from Nawate-dori to Higashi-oji-dori. These are Furomonzendori and Shinmonzen-dori, also a center for major antique shops. Furomonzen-dori is the second street from the transport square while Shinmonzen-dori is the next street south. The latter has the greatest concentration of such specialty shops.
In the shops of these streets the variety and splendor of Japanese arts and crafts can be obtained for a goodly price—since such antiquities are in great demand by connoisseurs of Japanese art. Among the treasures to be found here are screens (byobu), wood-block prints (ukiyo-e), chests (tansu), pearls, Imari porcelain ware, Kutani ware and other types of porcelain. Scrolls, wood carvings, netsuke, Noh masks, fans, obi, kimono, brocades, silk textiles, lacquerware, jade, silk embroideries, damascene-ware and Buddhist religious art are also for sale. The merchants of the area issue a brochure describing the stores of the district. This is available at hotels, at the Tourist Information Center downtown, as well as at member shops.
Moving further south on Nawate-dori, beyond Furomonzen-dori and Shinmonzen-dori, the fourth street on the left when coming from the Sanjo-dori area is Shirakawa-minami-dori, parallel to the narrow, canalized Shira kawa River. This section of the Shimbashi area, with its willow