along the main garden path in the Okouchi Sanso estate.
Kyoto (or Heian-kyo, as the city was named at its founding by Emperor Kammu in 794) has been the birthplace—the incubator and crucible—of what is now considered to be quintessential Japanese culture. Afflicted by fires, wars, typhoons, floods, and earthquakes, Kyoto was razed and rebuilt more than once during its thousand years as the capital of Japan, yet it has also witnessed extraordinary flowerings of stylistic invention in literature and theater, ceramics and calligraphy, clothing and cuisine, and, not least, architecture and gardens. Much of this coalesced in the fifteenth century as what is now collectively known as higashiyama bunka (east mountain culture), during which the arts became suffused by the Zen-inspired aesthetic of wabi sabi (best translated as “impoverished beauty”): the chado tea ceremony, ikebana flower arrangement, sumi-e ink painting, no theater, and so on. “Flowering” is indeed the right word; the quintessential Kyoto aesthetic and attitude is known as hannari, literally “to become a flower.” The goal—for people as well as artifacts—is to be elegant yet understated, vibrant yet delicate, and always exquisitely sensitive to the nuances of one’s surroundings. For all the damage that has occurred over the centuries, for all the relentless modernization still taking place today, Kyoto remains a rich, inexhaustible archive of Japanese cultural history.
On the site of what was in prehistoric times an enormous lake, Kyoto occupies a flat plain surrounded by a horseshoe of mountains open to the south—a secluded locale and climate judged to have ideal geomantic properties. Emperor Kammu paid token compensation to the local farmers that he forced to relocate, and then had the city laid out on a regular gridiron pattern comprising walled blocks called cho, each 120 by 120 square meters (40 by 40 jo in the traditional measurement system). Influenced by city planning models from China, Kyoto was intended as an ideal city ex nihilo, a kind of urban mandala or matrix that placed the Emperor as an intermediary between the gods and the citizens. Inevitably, the purity of the original vision was compromised by topography and distorted by demographics. Over the ensuing centuries, the city has ebbed and flowed across the land, shifting eastward and regenerating in the aftermath of intermittent destruction. The present layout of Kyoto largely dates from the late sixteenth century, when the city was reconfigured and rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98), an extraordinary figure who rose from peasant origins to become the unifier and ruler of Japan after centuries of unrest and civil war.
Kyoto’s residential architecture evolved gradually from the founding of the city onward, and has been retrospectively classified into three main stylistic subdivisions: shinden zukuri (palace style), shoin zukuri (study style), and sukiya zukuri (tea house style). Rather than distinct historical stages, these form a continuous evolution of shared themes, following a general progression from a somewhat rigid and monumental formality to a more emancipated and sophisticated eclecticism. Not quite styles in the strict art-historical sense, they reflect particular lifestyles and social stratifications. Though primarily intended for the nobility and aristocracy, these three architectural types have also influenced the design of minka, the traditional vernacular houses of the general population. The minka may be broadly subdivided into urban dwellings (machiya townhouses, nagaya rowhouses, and yashiki detached manors) and rural dwellings (noka farmhouses, gyoka fisherfolk dwellings, and sanka mountain huts), all of which comprise wooden post-and-beam structures surfaced with a variety of natural materials.
During the early Heian Period (794–1185), members of the aristocracy moved from all across the country to the new capital, where they built houses in the shinden style. Though commoners inhabited small subdivisions of a city block, a shinden dwelling often occupied an entire block, and in some cases two or even four blocks. Within perimeter fences made of tamped earth and capped with tiles, the northern half of the site would contain a roughly symmetrical array of pavilions linked by large sheltered corridors, arranged to contain a central courtyard that faced onto a garden and pond located to the south. The main building was the shinden itself, used for the daily life of the master of the house, with tainoya (secondary pavilions) for other family members and servants. The buildings lacked ceilings or internal partitions, their interior spaces articulated only by freestanding folding panels called byobu. The outer perimeters were closed by means of shitomido (detachable wooden panels), making the interiors completely dark at night and completely open to the environment during the day. Aside from a few movable tatami mats used for sleeping or sitting, the floors were wooden boards. No original shinden residences survive today, but their general characteristics are known from ancient picture scrolls and archaeological excavations. Some structures within the Kyoto Imperial Palace precinct (a reconstruction built in the nineteenth century) give a good sense of the shinden style, as does the Heian Jingu shrine (a partial, reduced-scale replica of the original Heiankyo Imperial Palace).
As effective political power shifted from the Imperial family to the samurai warriors during the Muromachi Period (1336–1573), samurai families adopted the courtly lifestyle manifested in the shinden style while adapting the dwellings to suit their own needs. As the samurai were expected to become monks upon their retirement, a number of distinctive elements intended to facilitate a life of scholarship appeared, such as the tokonoma (decorative alcove), chigaidana (staggered shelves), and tsukeshoin (built-in writing desk). These were initially contained in an annex that appeared as a component of the transitional shuden style, through which the shinden style evolved into the relatively opulent and formal shoin style of houses for both aristocrats and abbots. Made up of pavilions comprising an omoya (central volume) surrounded by hisashi (peripheral corridors), a shoin -style residence had a relatively free and asymmetric arrangement within its site. The floors became entirely covered with tatami mats, and wooden ceiling panels hid the roof beams. The cylindrical wooden pillars found in the shinden style were replaced with square pillars known as kakebashira, making it easier to divide rooms by installing a range of newly invented sliding fittings: shoji (translucent paper), fusuma (opaque paper), sugido (wooden panels made of Japanese cedar), and mairado (wooden panels with rows of horizontal wooden cross-pieces). The shikidai vestibule, with a wooden floor set at a slightly lower level than the tatami rooms, arose as the predecessor to the modern genkan entrance hall. The shoin style continued to develop over time, attaining its definitive form during the Edo Period (1603–1868) as exemplified by Kyoto’s Nijo Castle, residence of the Tokugawa shoguns.
The next key development was the soan chashitsu (rustic tea house), a small hut for holding tea ceremonies, created during the Azuchi Momoyama Period (1573–1603). The custom of chanoyu (drinking tea) had been introduced to Japan from China many centuries earlier, and was refined in the Zen temples of Kyoto into a precise ritual: chado, the “way of tea.” The practice became fashionable among the aristocracy, who competed in the accumulation of expensive tea ceremony utensils from China and Korea, and gradually gained in popularity with the general public. The tea ceremony tended to be an elaborate performance before a large audience, held in a partitioned-off section of a shoin -style room decorated with an opulence that bordered on vulgarity. It was the Zen Buddhist priest Murata Shuko (1422–1502) who introduced the radical innovation of an intimate gathering in which the host himself served the tea, thus creating the basis for the tea ceremony as it is known today.