Kyoto, Japan

KYOTO, JAPAN | "京都 — The Capital of Peace and Tranquility"

Kyoto was the imperial capital of Japan for over a thousand years — from 794 CE when Emperor Kanmu moved the court to Heiankyō to 1869 when the Meiji Emperor relocated to Tokyo — and it remains the most concentrated repository of traditional Japanese culture, architecture, and artistic practice available anywhere in the country. The city contains 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, over 1,600 Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines, and the physical infrastructure of the Heian, Kamakura, Muromachi, and Edo periods in a density that makes every district of the city a different chapter in the same thousand-year document. The Gion district, the Higashiyama hillside temples, the Arashiyama bamboo grove, and the Fushimi Inari shrine with its 10,000 vermilion torii gates are not separate attractions but components of a single continuous cultural landscape.

The colors of Kyoto are the seasonal palette of the Japanese aesthetic tradition: the pink-to-white of the sakura against the grey temple walls in late March, the deep green of the moss gardens in summer, the brilliant scarlet and gold of the momiji maple leaves in November, and the specific monochrome silver of Kyoto in a winter snowfall when the golden pavilion of Kinkakuji reflects in the still pond below and the entire city achieves the visual perfection that seven centuries of gardeners and architects have been working toward.