Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital by Matthew Stavros

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital by Matthew Stavros Ethan Isaac Segal (bio) Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital. By Matthew Stavros. University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 2014. xxvi, 230 pages. $47.00, cloth; $29.00, paper. In the eyes of visitors, Kyoto may appear to be a timeless, unchanging city. It served as Japan’s imperial capital for over one thousand years and is the home to temples, festivals, and cultural traditions that were first practiced there centuries ago. Even today, the city retains much of its original eighth-century grid-like layout, and many of the major streets still bear the names given to them at that time. But those who study premodern Japan quickly discover that there were many different Kyotos. Literary scholars might engage with Kyoto as the site of elegant refinements and romantic escapades in Genji monogatari or as a capital groaning under Kiso Yoshinaka’s occupation in Heike monogatari. In the fourteenth century, it was home to active communities of moneylenders and sake brewers, but in the sixteenth century, the city was often under siege, divided by neighborhood moats and fortifications. As these examples suggest, Kyoto was a city of frequent changes and continual transformation. Matthew Stavros does a wonderful job of highlighting these transformations in his new urban history of Kyoto. He provides a guided tour through these many different Kyotos: from its initial construction as a Chinese-inspired capital with an orderly east-west design, to its shift into “upper” (for the nobility) and “lower” (for the commoners) halves in the early medieval age, and finally its radical makeover during the late medieval period. Given how important the city was as a political, economic, religious, and cultural center, it is surprising how little we know of its physical appearance. Therefore, although Stavros’s journey is more descriptive than argumentative, it is still a worthwhile contribution. Along the way, he [End Page 127] is able to connect his survey of Kyoto’s history to debates on public versus private authority, monumentalism, and the use of urban design to reflect state power and thereby meet his goal of demonstrating “how careful attention to space, place, and the built environment can reveal novel facets of old problems, enriching complexity and opening up new avenues of interpretation” (p. xxiv). Stavros’s work is not the first to explore Japan’s premodern urban history. Some have addressed Kyoto during particular eras, such as William McCullough’s account of the Heian-period capital, Suzanne Gay’s examination of the medieval commercial city, and Mary Elizabeth Berry’s exploration of the capital during the Warring States period.1 Others have delved into related aspects of Japan’s urban tradition, such as Ellen van Goethem’s book on Nagaoka, the failed capital that Kyoto was built to replace.2 The work in English that comes closest to Stavros’s book is John Whitney Hall’s “Kyoto as Historical Background,” a chapter in an edited volume from more than 40 years ago which, like the monograph under review, addresses Kyoto from its founding to the early modern era.3 Whereas Hall could only introduce some topics, Stavros is able to explore them fully, as well as bring up issues that were not yet known during Hall’s time. He also has the benefit of being able to draw on recent Japanese scholarship and the generous support of the University of Hawai‘i Press, which allowed him to include numerous maps and illustrations, many of them in color. The book has seven chapters covering the eighth to sixteenth centuries, with a short epilogue that looks at Kyoto during the Tokugawa period. The first two chapters address the capital when it was known as Heian-kyō (up to the eleventh century). They effectively explain how the city’s designers incorporated improvements over earlier Japanese capitals. For example, whereas Fujiwara and Nara had streets that cut into the residential blocks, resulting in blocks of uneven size, Heian-kyō had regular blocks that assured even distribution of plots. These chapters also provide a readily understandable explanation of how addresses worked in Heian-kyō and why the...