Kyoto

Kyoto is a city in Japan.

Long, long ago, the emperor lived here. Kyoto was the capital for more than 1,000 years! It has old wooden houses, temples and beautiful gardens.

Kyoto is a city in the middle of Japan's main island, Honshu, about 50 kilometers northeast of Osaka. Its name means "Capital City," and it was Japan's capital for more than 1,000 years, from 794 until 1868, when the imperial family moved to Tokyo.

About 1.4 million people lived in Kyoto in 2022. Hills surround the city on three sides, like the rim of a saucer. Kyoto is known as a center of traditional Japanese culture, with fine silk cloth, crafts, tea ceremonies and old-style theater.

Kyoto is the seat of Kyoto urban prefecture in west-central Honshu, about 50 km northeast of Osaka and about the same distance from Nara. The city slopes gently down from north to south, averaging about 55 m above sea level, and is cradled by hills on three sides, opening to the southwest toward Osaka. With Osaka and Kobe it anchors the Keihanshin industrial zone.

Imperial capital from 794 to 1868, it has carried several names: Heian-kyō ("Capital of Peace and Tranquility"), Miyako ("The Capital") and, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Saikyō ("Western Capital"). The city covers 828 km² and had 1,448,964 people in 2022. Britannica calls it the center of traditional Japanese culture and of Japanese Buddhism, and of fine textiles; hundreds of designated national treasures are kept here.

Kyoto has many old temples and shrines.

They are places of worship made of wood. One temple stands on tall wooden posts on a hillside. Another one shines gold beside a pond. Kyoto also has a castle with floors that squeak!

Kyoto has about 1,660 Buddhist temples and more than 400 Shinto shrines, and their grounds give the city lots of green space. Kiyomizu Temple is built on tall wooden stilts on the side of the eastern hills. Kinkaku Temple, the Golden Pavilion, sits beside a pond; it burned down in 1950 and was rebuilt exactly as before.

At Ryōan Temple, a famous garden is made of rocks and sand. Nijō Castle, built for the Tokugawa shoguns, has "chirping floors" that squeak when someone walks on them, to warn of an intruder.

UNESCO's Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto (1994) group 17 sites in Kyoto, Uji and Otsu: 198 buildings and 12 gardens, mostly built or designed between the 10th and 17th centuries. All but Nijō Castle are religious establishments, and UNESCO credits Kyoto's gardens with a profound effect on landscape design worldwide from the 19th century.

Britannica counts some 1,660 Buddhist temples, more than 400 Shinto shrines and about 90 Christian churches. Highlights include East and West Hongan Temples, Ryōan Temple's rock-and-sand garden, Kiyomizu Temple on stilts in the eastern hills, and the Golden and Silver Pavilions (Kinkaku and Ginkaku), both linked to the Ashikaga shoguns' interest in Zen; the Golden Pavilion burned in 1950 and was rebuilt exactly. Nijō Castle, built by the Tokugawa shogunate, has wall paintings of the Kanō school and floors that "chirp" to signal an intruder. The Katsura Imperial Villa is a model of traditional Japanese architecture and landscape design. Because of fires, earthquakes and wars, little of the city's architecture is older than the 17th century.

Many people in Kyoto make beautiful things by hand.

Some weave silk cloth. Some make fans, dolls and shiny lacquer boxes. In summer, big parades with decorated floats roll through the streets.

Kyoto has thousands of small businesses, many run by families. In workshops in the center of the city, craftspeople make fans, dolls and lacquerware, and for centuries the Nishijin district has been famous for silk weaving. Newer companies make electronics and robots.

Kyoto is also a city of students, with more than 40 colleges and universities. Three big festivals fill the streets each year: Aoi in May, Gion in July and Jidai in October. The Gion Festival dates back to the 800s and has more than 30 fancy, hand-pulled floats. In the Jidai Festival, people parade in costumes from every period of Japan's history.

Kyoto is a city of thousands of medium and small industries, many family-owned. Workshops produce fans, dolls, Buddhist altar fittings and lacquerware, and silk weaving, centered in the north-central Nishijin district, has been a major industry for centuries. Since the early 1980s firms such as Kyocera have put the city at the forefront of electronics, robotics and computing, though the economy struggled with recession from the 1990s.

More than 40 two- and four-year colleges enroll more than 100,000 students; Kyoto University dates from 1897 and Dōshisha University from 1875. Schools of tea ceremony and flower arranging, Noh and Kabuki theater, and museums such as the Kyoto National Museum (1889) keep traditions alive, and some craftspeople are named "living national treasures." The Aoi (May), Gion (July) and Jidai (October) festivals are almost national events: the Gion Festival dates from the 9th century and features more than 30 preserved hand-drawn floats, some hung with French Gobelin tapestries imported through Nagasaki, and the Jidai parade shows Japan's whole history in period costume. Building-height limits, tightened in 2007, protect the look of the historic city.