Memories of Kyoto, Japan
Each visit I make to Kyoto helps me understand the former imperial capital a bit more. But this time around, for seven days, I sought to go deeper and pierce the city’s air of dignified gravitas.
Kyoto is a city that intrigues me, but I find it hard pinpoint exactly why. Perhaps it is the juxtaposition of old and new; the countless power wires crisscrossing the skies above small townhouses, tourists with the latest smartphones wandering around the wooden shop fronts of Higashiyama, or even the (bizarre) Hitachi advertisement signs across most historical monuments.
As a way to try to understand Kyoto, I turned to the words of Lost Japan’s author, Alex Kerr:
“Kyoto is unfriendly, and it is unfriendly for a reason: it is an endangered species. (...) the Kyoto way of life is nearing its last gasp as modern development sweeps over it, and so the guardians of Kyoto culture are nervous. Their way of life is fragile, like a dying person who mustn’t be allowed too many visitors lest he becomes overexcited.”
Kyoto is refined in everything, even amidst the concrete and the power cables it’s possible to notice small hints (because with Kyoto is always a hint) of beauty.
In fact, according to Kerr, “(...), the people of Kyoto have developed the technique of never saying anything. In conversation, the true Kyotoite waits patiently for the other person to figure out the answer for himself.”
No wonder the uninitiated – all visitors to the city, really – can get easily tripped up by obscure and unspoken protocols.
But despite all this unfriendliness, as Kerr puts it, the web of artifice, snobbery and artistic refinement that Kyoto cultivated over the centuries should be preserved as much as possible. Otherwise, future generations will only know Kyoto as a theme park.
