96 Fun Facts About Kyoto

Emperor Kanmu's capital of 794 was laid out on which street pattern?

A grid on the Chinese model still shapes central Kyoto, where Shijō, the 'fourth avenue' of the original plan, is a busy shopping street today.

What was Kyoto's original name when Emperor Kanmu founded it?

Heian-kyō gave its name to the Heian period, the four centuries of court culture that followed; only late in that era did people begin calling the city simply Kyōto, 'capital city'.

Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to Kyoto partly to escape Buddhist clergy in which city?

The powerful Buddhist temples of Nara had meddled in court politics, so Kanmu left in 784 for Nagaoka-kyō and a decade later settled at the village of Uda in Yamashiro Province.

Tokyo, which replaced Kyoto as Japan's imperial capital, has a name that means what?

Eastern capital is what Tokyo means: Edo was given the name in 1868 when it took over as the emperor's seat, and Kyoto was for a time called Saikyō, 'western capital'.

Which decade-long conflict of 1467-77 left Kyoto in ruins, with trenches dug through the streets?

The Ōnin War of 1467-77, a succession feud among the Ashikaga shogunate's great houses, turned Kyoto into a battlefield; much of the city burned and took decades to recover.

Which warlord rebuilt Kyoto in the late 16th century, ringing it with earthwork walls called odoi?

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who completed Japan's unification in 1590, ringed Kyoto with the Odoi earthworks the following year and gathered the city's temples into one quarter along Teramachi Street.

Which US Secretary of War insisted that Kyoto be struck from the list of atomic bomb targets in 1945?

Henry L. Stimson, who had visited Kyoto and admired it, overruled the Target Committee; Nagasaki took the city's place on the list, sparing its prewar buildings.

Kyoto's great Meiji-era canal, completed in 1890, brought water and hydroelectric power from which body of water?

Lake Biwa, Japan's largest lake, fed the canal dug from 1885 to 1890; its Keage plant, the country's first commercial hydroelectric station, lit Kyoto's streets and powered its workshops.

Which tea master, perfecter of wabi-cha, was ordered to commit seppuku in Kyoto in 1591?

Sen no Rikyū served Japan's ruler as tea master until he was ordered to die in 1591, for reasons never made clear; his descendants founded the three Sen schools that still teach his way of tea in Kyoto.

Roughly how many temples and shrines stand in Kyoto?

About 2,000 temples and shrines crowd the city, and that cultural weight was the reason given when Kyoto was taken off the list of atomic bomb targets in 1945.

Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe are the three big cities of which region of Japan?

Kansai means 'west of the barrier', a name coined as the counterpart of Kantō in the east; the barrier was later taken to be the checkpoint on the pass just east of Kyoto.

The Golden Pavilion seen today dates from 1955 because the original was destroyed how in 1950?

Arson by a novice monk destroyed the pavilion on 2 July 1950; the 22-year-old then tried to kill himself on the hill behind, and Yukio Mishima turned the crime into his 1956 novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.

Fushimi Inari-taisha is the head shrine of Inari, the kami of what?

Rice and agriculture were Inari's first concern; once money replaced rice as the measure of wealth, merchants adopted the deity as a patron of trade, and the shrine, older than Kyoto itself, heads thousands like it.

Who pays for the torii gates lining Fushimi Inari-taisha's trails?

Donors give each gate as an offering, to ask for a prayer to be answered or to give thanks for one that was, a custom widespread since the Edo period.

Which animals, regarded as Inari's messengers, are found as statues throughout Fushimi Inari-taisha?

Foxes are honoured as Inari's messengers; worshippers offer them fried tofu, said to be a fox's favourite food, which is why tofu-pouch sushi is called inari-zushi.

The Japanese phrase 'to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu' means roughly what?

To take the plunge: the saying recalls a real practice, for temple records list more than 230 leaps from the 13-metre stage between 1694 and 1864, and about 85% of the jumpers lived.

Since 1995, Kiyomizu-dera has hosted which annual ceremony every 12 December?

The Kanji of the Year, chosen by public vote and organised by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation, is brushed by Kiyomizu-dera's head priest on 12 December, Kanji Day.

What do the geisha of Kyoto call themselves in the local dialect?

Geiko is the Kyoto word for a fully fledged geisha; an apprentice is a maiko, who graduates at about 20 in a ceremony called erikae, 'turning of the collar', trading her red collar for a plain white one.

The Gion district grew up as an entertainment quarter in front of which place of worship?

Yasaka Shrine was long known as Gion Shrine, and the town that grew up before its gate became the Gion quarter; the name Gion renders the Buddhist holy site Jetavana.

The Gion Festival originated in 869 as a ritual to appease the gods during what?

In 869 a plague swept the capital; 66 halberds, one per province, were raised at the Shinsen-en garden in a goryō-e rite to appease the spirits, and the festival grew from its repetitions.

The flatland castle in central Kyoto was ordered built in 1601 by which founder of a shogunate?

Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered the castle in 1601 as his Kyoto residence, levying the daimyō of western Japan for the work; his grandson Iemitsu completed it in 1626.

The corridor floors of Kyoto's Ninomaru Palace are famous for doing what?

Chirp when walked on is what the uguisubari, or 'nightingale floors', do: metal clamps under the boards shift and rub as the wood flexes, a sound popularly said to warn of intruders, though it may never have been intended.

At which Kyoto site did the last shogun announce the return of authority to the emperor in 1867?

Nijō-jō's Ninomaru Palace is where the fifteenth and last shogun gathered his senior retainers in 1867 to hand power back to the emperor, ending more than 260 years of rule by his family.

What is the Japanese term for the 'dry landscape' style of Zen garden exemplified at Ryōan-ji?

Kare-sansui gardens use rocks and raked gravel to stand for islands and water; they are made to be contemplated from a seat on the veranda as an aid to meditation, and are not for strolling.

The Arashiyama district on Kyoto's western edge is famous for a grove of what?

Bamboo towers over the paths of the Sagano grove, and the rustle of its stalks in the wind is prized enough that Japan's Environment Ministry lists it among the country's 100 soundscapes.

What does the name Arashiyama mean?

Storm Mountain is the literal reading, arashi meaning storm and yama mountain; strictly the name belongs to the wooded hills across the river, and the sightseeing district on the near bank borrowed it.

Which video game giant, founded in the 19th century, is headquartered in Kyoto?

Nintendo began in 1889 as Fusajiro Yamauchi's Kyoto workshop turning out hanafuda playing cards by hand, and it was another 88 years before its first home console, the Color TV-Game of 1977.

Which 1950 Akira Kurosawa film is named after the ruined southern gate of old Kyoto?

Rashomon opens with three men sheltering from a downpour under the crumbling gate, by then a notorious haunt of thieves; its Golden Lion at Venice in 1951 opened Western eyes to Japanese cinema.

The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in the city on 11 December 1997, committed countries to reducing what?

Greenhouse gas emissions from industrialised nations were to fall about 5% below 1990 levels over 2008-12; developing countries, China among them, were not required to cut theirs.

Kyoto Tower opened in December 1964, the year Japan first hosted which global event?

The Summer Olympics came to Tokyo in 1964; the 131-metre tower, Kyoto's tallest structure, had been planned to be ready for them but did not open until 28 December.

Which Kyoto temple, head of a Jōdo Shinshū branch, holds the Hiunkaku pavilion?

Nishi Hongan-ji holds the Hiunkaku, or 'Flying Cloud Pavilion', and a gate so richly carved that it is nicknamed the 'all-day gate', since a visitor could gaze at it until dusk.

Kyoto's original street plan followed feng shui and the model of which ancient Chinese capital?

Chang'an, the Tang dynasty capital, supplied the model: the palace sat at the north end facing south, which is why Ukyō, the 'right' ward, lies on the west of the map and Sakyō, the 'left', on the east.

Kyoto's basin is enclosed on three sides by mountains named for which directions?

East, north and west are the literal meanings of Higashiyama, Kitayama and Nishiyama, the mountains that wall the basin in on three sides; that enclosed inland setting gives Kyoto its hot summers and cold winters.

Which river runs along the eastern side of central Kyoto?

The Kamo runs down the east side of the old centre past Gion; from May to September the restaurants on its bank build open-air dining decks over the water's edge, a custom begun to beat the summer heat.

Which Kyoto speciality cuisine grew out of the simple meal served before a tea ceremony?

Kaiseki kept the tea meal's restraint as it grew into Japan's haute cuisine: a long run of small courses, with the Kyoto style prized for subtle flavours and menus that follow the seasons.

Kamigamo Shrine's courtyard is famous for two sacred cones made of what?

Sand is heaped into the two tatesuna cones to represent Kōyama, the sacred hill where the shrine's deity is said to have descended; they have been ritually made since ancient times and serve to purify the grounds.

On 16 August Kyoto marks the Bon Festival with the Gozan no Okuribi, which involves what?

Lighting giant fires on five mountains around the city sends the ancestral spirits back at the close of Obon; the 'dai' character on Mount Daimonji is the best known of the five shapes.

The Jidai Matsuri, held on 22 October, celebrates what?

A procession in costumes from every era marks Kyoto's history through the ages, walking backwards in time from the Meiji Restoration to Emperor Kanmu's court; it began in 1895.

Kyoto is the premier centre of manufacturing which traditional garment?

Kimono silk is still hand-painted in Kyoto by the yūzen method, named after Miyazaki Yūzen, a fan painter of the late 1600s whose designs proved so popular that dyers copied them onto robes.

Kyoto Sanga, founded in 1922 as Kyoto Shiko Club, won which national trophy in 2002?

Emperor's Cup winners Kyoto Purple Sanga came from behind to beat Kashima Antlers 2-1 in the final on 1 January 2003; Park Ji-sung headed the equaliser shortly before he left for PSV Eindhoven.

The Tōshiya, held for 255 years along Sanjūsangen-dō's 120-metre hall, tested samurai in which discipline?

Archery contests called Tōshiya had samurai shooting arrows the length of Sanjūsangen-dō's west veranda until 1861; each January a successor meet, the Ōmato Taikai, still draws some 2,000 archers.

Which Japanese film studio opens its Kyoto backlot of samurai-era streets to visitors as a theme park?

Toei opened part of its Uzumasa backlot to the public in 1975; visitors stroll an Edo-period town that still doubles as a working set, and can sometimes watch a period drama being filmed.

Which private railway runs from Osaka-umeda to Kyoto-kawaramachi, with a branch to Arashiyama?

Hankyu's Kyoto Line ends in the Shijō shopping district at Kyoto-kawaramachi, a station that was plain Kawaramachi until 2019, when 'Kyoto' was added to its name; the Arashiyama branch leaves the main line at Katsura.

Kyoto's traditional wooden townhouses, many of which survived the war, are known as what?

Machiya are nicknamed 'eel beds': their fronts, said to have been kept slim because property taxes were once charged on street frontage, are only five or six metres wide, yet the houses run some 20 metres back.

Samurai from which domain attacked Kyoto's Imperial Palace gates in 1864, leaving much of the city in ashes?

Chōshū, expelled from Kyoto the year before, tried to force its way back to court; Aizu and Satsuma troops beat it off at the Hamaguri Gate, and the flames that followed consumed tens of thousands of houses.

Which Kyoto museum, opened in 1897 as an imperial museum, faces the long hall of Sanjūsangen-dō across the street?

Kyoto National Museum was built to house treasures from the region's temples and shrines; its red-brick hall by court architect Katayama Tōkuma was finished in 1895 and opened in 1897.

Which bullet-train line, the world's first, has linked Kyoto with Tokyo and Osaka since 1964?

The Tōkaidō Shinkansen takes its name and its route from the old Tōkaidō highway, whose 53 post stations between Edo and Kyoto the artist Hiroshige made famous in his woodblock prints.

Which festival's procession runs from the Imperial Palace to the Shimogamo and Kamigamo shrines?

The Aoi Matsuri is named for the aoi leaves, usually translated 'hollyhock', worn by its marchers; more than 500 people in court costume walk from the Imperial Palace to the two shrines each 15 May.

The huge veranda of Kiyomizu-dera's main hall was famously built without a single what?

Nail is the one thing the builders did without: tall wooden pillars and crossbeams lock together by joinery alone, holding the stage about 13 metres above the hillside.

What does the name Kiyomizu, as in the temple Kiyomizu-dera, mean?

Kiyomizu means 'pure water', after the Otowa waterfall beneath the main hall, where three channels fall into a pond and visitors drink from long-handled cups.

Which narrow downtown arcade of more than 100 food shops is nicknamed 'Kyoto's kitchen'?

Nishiki Market grew up as a fish market because cold groundwater under the street kept the catch fresh; its shops once stored fish and vegetables in wells sunk into that water.

The Phoenix Hall of Byōdō-in temple appears on which Japanese coin?

The 10 yen coin shows the Phoenix Hall, completed in 1053 and the only original building left at Byōdō-in: the rest of the temple burned in a civil war in 1336.

Gekkeikan, a Kyoto company founded in 1637, is one of the world's oldest makers of what?

Sake has been brewed by Gekkeikan since Jiemon Ōkura set up in Fushimi in 1637; the district's clean, soft spring water drew brewers, and dozens of them still work there.

Which product, made around Byōdō-in temple since the 13th century, is famous across Japan?

Green tea has been grown around the temple since the 13th century; local farmers later worked out how to shade the bushes before harvest, the method behind matcha, and the Tsuen tea shop nearby has traded since 1160.

Iwatayama park above Arashiyama is home to a troop of free-roaming what?

Macaques roam free on the hillside, kept there by regular feeds from the staff; visitors who want to feed them step inside a fenced hut, so it is the people who end up in the cage.

Saihō-ji in western Kyoto earned its nickname from a garden carpeted in 120 kinds of what?

Moss was never part of the 14th-century design: it spread on its own in later centuries, as floods and lean years left the garden untended, and earned Saihō-ji the nickname Koke-dera, 'Moss Temple'.

Kyoto Tower's smooth white shaft, completed in 1964, is often likened to what?

A Japanese candle is the popular reading of the slim white shaft, though its operator says the design was meant as a lighthouse for landlocked Kyoto; the tower opened on 28 December 1964.

Yatsuhashi, Kyoto's best-known souvenir sweet, is flavoured with which spice?

Cinnamon, called nikki, gives yatsuhashi its flavour; the baked kind is a hard cracker curved like a koto, while soft nama yatsuhashi folded round bean paste dates only from the 1960s.

Parts of which 2003 film were shot at Kyoto's Nanzen-ji temple?

Lost in Translation sends Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte on a solo day trip from Tokyo; Sofia Coppola filmed her wandering Nanzen-ji and crossing the stepping stones of a Kyoto shrine garden.

Which warlord razed Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei in 1571, slaughtering its monks?

Oda Nobunaga, at war with the temple's allies the Azai and Asakura, destroyed most of Enryaku-ji's halls in 1571 and killed most of the people on the mountain, ending the power of its warrior monks.

Ginkaku-ji is nicknamed the 'Silver Pavilion', yet the silver covering supposedly planned for it was what?

Never carried out, if it was ever planned: no silver was ever applied, and the nickname, coined generations after Ashikaga Yoshimasa began the villa in 1482, may simply pair it with the Golden Pavilion.

Lonely visitors to Jishu Shrine at Kiyomizu-dera walk between two 'love stones' how?

With eyes closed is the test: reaching the far stone unaided is said to bring luck in love, while needing a friend's guidance means a go-between will be needed in love too.

Sanjūsangen-dō's long hall holds 1,001 statues of which many-armed Buddhist figure?

Kannon, the bodhisattva of mercy, appears here 1,001 times: a blaze in 1249 spared only 124 of the standing figures, and sculptors carved the other 876 for the rebuilt hall.

Which Kyoto temple's five-storey pagoda is the tallest wooden tower in Japan?

Tō-ji's pagoda has been destroyed and rebuilt four times since the 9th century; the present tower, raised on the shogun's orders in the 1640s, can be seen from much of the city.

Philosophy professors from which school gave the Philosopher's Walk its name?

Kyoto University philosopher Nishida Kitarō is said to have walked the canal path daily, deep in thought, and his colleague Tanabe Hajime is often named with him; it runs about 2 km from Ginkaku-ji toward Nanzen-ji.

What Meiji-era structure, odd for a Zen temple, cuts through the grounds of Nanzen-ji?

A brick aqueduct, the Suirokaku, still carries canal water across the precinct on a row of arches; built as plain waterworks, it has become one of the temple's popular photo spots.

Kyoto-based Kyocera took over which camera maker, holder of the Contax licence, in 1983?

Yashica was bought by Kyocera in 1983, bringing its Contax partnership with Carl Zeiss; Kyocera made cameras under both names until it halted all camera production in 2005.

Kitano Tenmangū's grounds are filled with which tree, a favourite of the deity Tenjin?

Plum trees fill the grounds because the scholar worshipped here as Tenjin loved them; legend says his favourite tree flew after him into exile, and the Baikasai festival on 25 February marks the day he died.

Whose surprise 1582 attack on Honnō-ji forced his warlord master to commit seppuku?

Akechi Mitsuhide turned his 13,000 men on the temple before dawn; his motive has never been settled, and less than two weeks later a rival general crushed him at Yamazaki.

In 1864, which shogunate police unit led by Kondō Isami stormed Kyoto's Ikedaya inn?

The Shinsengumi, a corps of masterless samurai policing Kyoto for the shogunate, raided the Ikedaya on 8 July 1864; Kondō's party struck first, and the raid, said to have foiled a plot to burn the city, made the unit famous.

Courtiers of old Kyoto prized the site of Katsura Imperial Villa as a spot for viewing what?

The moon over the Katsura River was a classical poetic theme; Prince Toshihito built the villa in the early 1600s with a moon-viewing platform, echoing the Tale of Genji's description of the site.

Kurama, in the hills north of Kyoto, is called the birthplace of which 'energy therapy'?

Reiki traces to Mikao Usui, who is said to have found the healing method during a 21-day fast on Mount Kurama in the early 1920s; in folklore the mountain is home to Sōjōbō, king of the tengu.

Which country's ratification in 2004 finally brought the Kyoto Protocol into force?

Russia's ratification in November 2004 lifted the protocol past its threshold, countries producing 55% of the industrialised world's 1990 emissions; it took effect 90 days later, on 16 February 2005.

Kyoto's municipal subway has only two lines, the Karasuma Line and which other?

The Tōzai Line, whose name simply means 'east-west', opened in 1997 and crosses the north-south Karasuma Line, named for the street it runs beneath, at a single station, Karasuma Oike.

Which Tosa-born reformer shot his way out of an 1866 ambush at Kyoto's Teradaya inn?

Sakamoto Ryōma was warned by his future wife Oryō, who ran from her bath to raise the alarm, and held off the shogunate's men with a Smith & Wesson revolver; he was assassinated in Kyoto the following year.

The name of which Kyoto geisha district is thought to come from a Portuguese word?

Ponto-chō's name is most often traced to a Portuguese word, ponto or ponta ('point') or ponte ('bridge'), written with kanji chosen for their sound; a rival story hears the 'pon' of a drum.

The last ten chapters of The Tale of Genji play out in which town near Kyoto?

Uji is the setting of the 'Uji chapters' that close the novel, and the town now has a museum devoted to the tale; it also saw three medieval battles, the first of which opened the Genpei War in 1180.

In Edo-era belief, what did surviving a leap from Kiyomizu-dera's stage earn?

A granted wish was the promised reward for trusting one's life to the temple's deity; most jumpers survived the 13-metre drop, and the practice was banned in 1872.

Kitano Tenmangū was built in 947 to appease the angry spirit of which exiled scholar?

Sugawara no Michizane, exiled to Dazaifu in 901 and dead there in 903, was blamed for lightning strikes and deaths at court; enshrined at Kitano, he became Tenjin, patron of learning.

Who founded Enryaku-ji, the Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei above Kyoto, in 788?

Saichō, known posthumously as Dengyō Daishi, built a small hall on Mount Hiei in 788 and returned from Tang China in 805 to establish the Tendai school; the monastery's kaihōgyō 'marathon monks' keep its ascetic tradition.

Kyoto city lies inland, but which sea does the coastline of Kyoto Prefecture face?

The Sea of Japan was the old capital's fish larder: mackerel landed in neighbouring Wakasa was salted and carried over the hills on foot, and is said to have arrived cured just right for Kyoto's mackerel sushi.

An umbrella tucked into the rafters of Chion-in's main hall is said to ward off what?

Fire was the great danger to the wooden hall, and an umbrella calls up rain; one tale has a master carpenter leaving it as a charm, another a grateful white fox.

Kyoto Station's futuristic glass-and-steel building opened in 1997 to mark which milestone for the city?

Its 1,200th anniversary fell in 1994, counting from the founding in 794, though Hiroshi Hara's 15-storey building of shops, hotel and theatre was not finished until 1997.

Kyoto-raised Hideki Yukawa won the 1949 physics Nobel for predicting which particles?

Hideki Yukawa proposed mesons in 1935 as carriers of the nuclear force binding protons and neutrons; Cecil Powell's team found the pi meson in 1947, and Yukawa became Japan's first Nobel laureate.

Tōfuku-ji, famed for its autumn maples, also preserves Japan's oldest communal what?

The tōsu, a Muromachi-period communal toilet for a hundred monks, is Japan's oldest surviving one; the temple's name splices together Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji, two great temples of the earlier capital.

Kyoto's Omron built the world's first what, later honoured as an IEEE Milestone?

Electronic ticket gates by Omron, a firm better known to shoppers today for blood-pressure monitors, went into service at Kita-Senri station near Osaka in 1967, and the system was named an IEEE Milestone in 2007.

Which employee of Kyoto instrument maker Shimadzu won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

Koichi Tanaka, a 43-year-old engineer with only a bachelor's degree, shared the prize for a way to weigh proteins with a laser; his embarrassed employer promptly made him a fellow and named a laboratory after him.

Hydropower from Kyoto's great canal, finished in 1890, enabled Japan's first what?

Power from the Keage hydro plant let the Kyoto Electric Railway open Japan's first electric tram line in February 1895, part of a push to revive a city the imperial court had abandoned.

Daigo-ji is famed for a lavish party Japan's ruler threw there in 1598 to admire what?

Cherry blossom drew the ruler and his court to Daigo-ji in the spring of 1598, and the temple's garden was rebuilt for the party; he died that September, and the pagoda of 951 that looked on is Kyoto's oldest building.

The sliding doors of the Ninomaru Palace are painted by artists of which school?

Kanō Tan'yū and his school painted the Ninomaru's gilded screens of pines, tigers and leopards in 1626, with the fiercest subjects placed in the outer rooms to overawe visiting lords.

Which two emperors returned to the Kyoto Imperial Palace to be enthroned after the court had moved to Tokyo?

The Taishō and Shōwa emperors were enthroned in the palace's main hall in 1915 and 1928, as the pre-war imperial rules required; Akihito's ceremony in 1990 was the first to be held in Tokyo.

Which Kyoto district, named for an army camp in the war of 1467-77, became the home of fine silk weaving?

Nishijin means 'western camp': the western army made its base there, and when the fighting ended the weavers who had fled the war came back to Kyoto and set up their looms in the district.

Which form of theatre began in 1603 with a troupe of women dancing on a dry riverbed in Kyoto?

Kabuki's founder, Izumo no Okuni, drew crowds with her all-female troupe; the shogunate banned women from the stage in 1629, and men have played every role since.

Ashikaga Takauji founded Tenryū-ji in 1339 in memory of which emperor, once his foe?

Go-Daigo and Takauji had been allies until the general turned on him; when the emperor died in 1339, Takauji built the temple to calm his spirit, and trading ships were sent to China to pay for it.

Visitors with a reservation at Saihō-ji must first do what before they may walk its famous garden?

Copy out a sutra: the temple ended walk-in visits in 1977, a step said to protect its delicate garden from crowds, and has since asked every guest to join this small act of devotion first.

Kyoto and Osaka are the only prefectures designated with which suffix instead of 'ken'?

Fu, 'urban prefecture', marked the three great cities of early Meiji Japan, Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka; Tokyo traded its fu for 'to', metropolis, in 1943, leaving the other two as the only pair.