⛩️Invisible Kyoto
00 min
Nov 17, 2024
Nov 17, 2024
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Walking along Kiyomizu-do in the hot sun, you are surrounded by divided “towns”, which are shown on the map: Tsukawa-cho, Hoshino-cho, Takemura-cho, Kojima-cho, and Shimo-benten-cho and Vairocana-cho, which are named after Buddhists. The living areas called “towns” are named after the stars, the moon, and the bamboo islands, adding a touch of mountainous fantasy to reality.
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When Heian-kyo was first laid down, it was modeled after the Jofang system of Chang'an and Luoyang in the Sui and Tang dynasties, and the communication between the aristocrats and the commoners was based on the urban planning and communication. The units of jinja, shobo, hobo, machi, and kaido were the veins that penetrated the veins of the city, and they carried beautiful names and went out into secular life.
In addition to Hanami-koji, which is a place where foreigners are intrigued by Geisha, I found the cute and childish name of Shio-koji, as well as Oil-koji, Needle-koji, Nishiki-koji, and Aya-koji, which are, needless to say, the products of handicrafts, daily necessities, and commercial trades, and the reality of the city is very concrete.
At the intersection of Shimizu-do and Yasaka-dori, turning into an alleyway, I saw a house with many potted plants in the corner of the wall, next to many animal ornaments of rabbits, puppies, and hedgehogs, and on the windowsill there were two tiny dinosaur pots, a blue brontosaurus and a green triceratops, with succulents growing on them.
Compared to the sights and attractions that I was about to see, this scene was insignificant. In the morning, the houses in the alleys of the town were all closed and Kyoto had not yet awakened, but when I faced the two Showa-style dinosaur flower pots, the human flavor of life awakened and Kyoto woke up to me in advance.
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The old houses of the “Kyomachi house” are lined with brown hinoki doors and lattice fences with red mailboxes hanging prominently. The wall tiles are modern synthetic panels, but they are also uniformly planned to be dark gray and teal with no luster. The second-floor windows were earlier called “bug-cage windows,” as small as cricket cages, and the long, deep structure of the house was called an “eel's bed,” and all of these metaphors were full of the characteristics of Japan, which is full of the best of the best.
I also noticed that there is a bamboo sloping cage where the wall of a townhouse meets the ground, called “Inuyarai”, which is a cover to prevent cats and dogs from defecating and horses from splashing in the mud. Nowadays, plastic water bottles are used in front of the door to reflect the sunlight and prevent kittens and small dogs from intruding.
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At the end of the ramp is the Yasaka Pagoda, which becomes a shadow in the backlight of Kyoto's unforgiving sun, its layers of wooden wedges and wedge structures solemnized in strict French style. Turning the ramp, you can see the back of Yasaka Pagoda, which stands under the blue dome of the sky with a straight sense of order, with its spires thrust into the air, its eaves flying over the clouds, and between the waterfalls of flowers and pines and cypresses, the distant mountains are like lying down, and the horizontal clouds are like practicing, so that the eyes become a picture frame with the beautiful sight line borrowed from the landscape.
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Hakwanji Yasaka Pagoda
The simplicity of Kyoto is not only the townhouses and temples, but also the coexistence of architecture and nature. The slope of Ninen-zaka is lined with roofs and trees, and as far as the eye can see, there are always mountains and clouds. When I look out over Mount Yonahama, I can see the city's man-made buildings bowing down to the mountains, and the distant mountains are either green or pale, with the right depths and shades, making Kyoto a city with a skyline.
Words are flat, and I can't look down on Kyoto from God's point of view. This is what Calvino called the “invisible city”, but I persistently want to know what's behind the city's invisibility, and where does beauty come from?
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Kiyomizu Temple Triple Pagoda
I found some answers in the official documents of the Kyoto city government. Since 1930, the Kyoto government has introduced the policy of landscape protection, which has evolved for nearly a hundred years, making Kyoto an ancient city of beauty where every detail is harmonized with the landscape.
The restriction of houses by the system of “building height” and “view and borrowed view” has made it possible to have a continuous view of the foothills of the mountains and low-rise houses, and to maintain the view of the river, the mountains, and the access roads from afar.
When I heard about Kamogawa, I thought that the name was a bit rustic, and when I visited the place, I did not have a sense of the magnificence of the river, but afterward, I remembered that what it showed was a living space in which the sky, the earth, and human beings lived together in harmony with the water, and that it became a river for the people and a source of the local land thanks to the preservation system, and I thought that the Kamogawa River would be even more beautiful when the river rose in abundance, when the water fowls flew, and when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.
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Summer Kamogawa
Kyoto is a city of low saturation, townhouses with brown, tea to show its “ancient”, modern buildings with white, gray to show its “simplicity”, green trees and flowers, vermilion shrine is on the background color of the “painted after the vegetarian! Green trees, flowers, and vermillion shrines are “painted afterward” on this background color.
This is a system of “building design” that secretly regulates the saturation, hue, and brightness of the walls. The slope of the roofs and the length of the eaves are very precise, and this is where the atmosphere of the city and the atmosphere of the old historic town comes from.
As Junichiro Tanizaki said in “Ritual of Shadows”, “the eaves are deeper, and the space that is too bright is stuffed with darkness”, thus creating “a world of shadows” (not only in architecture, but also in literature).
I am particularly impressed by the delicacy of the system of “outdoor advertising materials”. You have to get permission from the mayor for the size of your own outdoor advertising board. A parking lot sign is not a profitable advertisement, but the text on the sign must match the background color. Even the advertising object pillars have to be dark brown and cream in color. There are no restrictions on outdoor carp flags, but the words “sale” will be overstepping the mark.
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In contrast to the overbearing aesthetics of bright and saturated colors, the dazzling commercial pollution, and the hidden sense of power and “cultural conceit” behind the pursuit of grand perspectives, it is often the case that “pseudo-beauty” is attached to aesthetic beauty, and shallow vision usurps the space of aesthetic imagination.
It dawned on me that the beauty of Kyoto is not only in its cleanliness, simplicity and antiquity, but also in all the visual and sensory aspects of the city, which are the result of the continuous development of culture and the joint efforts of the government and the citizens.
The beauty of Kyoto is the beauty of the atmosphere in which one can stroll, and the beauty of the space in which all the images converge and the world's shadows harmonize. The space forms an inertial impression, deeply imprinted in the travel memory, which is in fact already rooted in the urban planning level, as if the visitor's brain is pre-programmed in a certain way.
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Before going to Kyoto, I read Yasunari Kawabata's “Ancient Capital” again. In the eyes of the long-lost twin sisters, Kyoto is very different from each other, Chieko, who was born in a wealthy family, is passionate about the early cherry blossoms at Heian Jingu Shrine, the bamboo-cutting ceremony held at Kurumaji Temple, the Gion Festival's float parade, and the Gosan fire on August 16th every year, and the present traditional Kyoto is the place where she lives.
Her younger sister, Miaozi, who lives in the dense forests of Kitayama since she was a child, sees the primitive as an existence older than tradition - “If there were no human beings in this world, there would be no Kyoto as a city. This area could have become a natural forest, or a grassland wilderness, maybe even a place for wild deer and mountain pigs.” She even carried a fear of the city itself.
In the eyes of Chieko's adoptive father, Taijirou, Kyoto is a declining presence between antiquity and innovation, with the traditional craftsmanship of Nishijin, the center of textile commerce, facing a modern industrial onslaught. Yasunari Kawabata looks at the changes in Kyoto from the perspectives of different characters, each of whom is covered with a light sorrow originating from nostalgia, and there is a wonderful line in the book - “It is hard to say that there are no lost pearls in this world”. This quote also has a special meaning for the continuity of the ancient capital and the preservation of cultural relics.
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Kyoto is too old, having been built more than 1,200 years ago by Emperor Hwanmu in the 8th century, almost destroyed in the 15th century by the Einin Rebellion, and devastated in the 18th century by the Great Fire of Tenmei during the Tokugawa Shogunate, which was the largest fire to have destroyed Kyoto. “The reconstruction after the Genji Fire lasted for half a century until the Meiji period, when the city was restored to its former glory. Kyoto is a survivor of thousands of years of wars, fires, earthquakes, wind erosion, and insect damage.
Kyoto is full of monuments, but none of them are completely ancient, especially because of the nature of wooden buildings, which cannot be preserved forever. The present Hokenji Yasaka Pagoda was built in 1440 during the Muromachi period, dating back as far as the 7th century, during which time it survived at least four devastating fires.
The Tenryuji Temple we see today was rebuilt in the late 19th century during the Meiji period, and I'm afraid it would have been considered a new building to the Japanese people of the Meiji period more than a hundred years ago, but the Tenryuji Temple they remotely thought of was a Zen temple originally built by the Ashikaga Zunji clan in the Muromachi period more than six hundred years ago to suppress the grudges of Emperor Daigo.
I am amazed at people's dedication to ancient architecture, which is the charm of both tangible and intangible culture, and it is Japan that has made a significant contribution to the preservation of monuments all over the world. The “intangible cultural heritage” that we often refer to nowadays is actually a very new concept, which was promulgated by UNESCO in 2003 as a convention for its protection, and its concept originated from Japan's “intangible cultural properties”. As early as 1950, the Japanese government enacted the Cultural Properties Protection Law, which was the first law in the world to protect tangible and intangible cultural properties.
The Venice Charter of 1964 was the dominant doctrine for the protection of monuments, initially stating that “any reconstruction of monuments should be stopped in advance” and “no additions are permitted. The Nara Charter (“Nara Document of Authenticity”), signed in Japan in 1994, revised this concept and extended the definition of “authenticity of cultural heritage.
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Nara Todaiji South Gate Ninjo Statue
Since then, as long as the cultural connotation of the intangible level is taken into account, the relocation and replacement of parts is no longer treacherous, and the protection of cultural relics is not just about sticking to the old and decaying buildings, but also about “clarifying and elucidating the collective memory of mankind”, which greatly expands people's knowledge and raises the physical heritage to the intangible spiritual level. As one Internet blogger said , “Architecture is not only the original version of the precious, the repair and reconstruction of the past dynasties are also part of the building, part of the history. The repairs and reconstruction of ancient buildings carried out by today's people will also be history later on."
Even the oldest buildings will one day die out, human beings, by and large, are still nostalgic creatures, the essence of the game of the new and the old God is to maintain the dignity of time, so that the oldest things to maintain the original flavor, so that the monuments survive. It can be said that Japan has made an indelible contribution to the world's cultural heritage, both in terms of legal perfection and long-term experience in conservation techniques.
Kyoto has the Zen of Buddhism, the spirit of Shintoism, the fireworks of the world, the poetry of the humanities, the purple of nature, and the shade of the gardens, making visitors feel as if they were in a huge bonsai. After visiting the visible Kyoto, I revisited the invisible Kyoto in my memories and the surrounding information. It was the first time I paid attention to the municipal planning and history of the city, and it was a “revolution” in the concept of travel for me.
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Fushimi Inari Shrine's Fox Shriner
 
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Just like fried pork cutlet, sashimi with ferns, tofu, and Wagyu beef yakiniku with draft beer and sake, so seasoned with salt and plums, not to lose the beauty. Kyoto you go alone beautiful, I think also to this, think also to this, dream also to this, just expect to meet again in the future.

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