Kyoto's Renaissance: Ancient Capital for Modern Japan ed. by John Breen et al. (review)
- Kyoto's Renaissance: Ancient Capital for Modern Japan ed. by John Breen et al.
Kyoto sometimes seems like an artifact of history through its reputation as the ancient capital. And yet, as recent scholarship has brought to light, Kyoto is a city that has remade itself in response to political, social, and economic changes with each new era. There is no doubt that the city faced a crisis of identity, population, and economy when the emperor left Kyoto in 1869. Indeed, accounts of modernization in Japan focus largely on Tokyo and other industrial cities such as Osaka and Nagoya. In this context, Kyoto's Renaissance is a valuable resource addressing what the authors call the "Meiji-shaped hole" in English-language resources on historical Kyoto (with the exception of Alice Tseng's Modern Kyoto [2018] which came out while this volume was in press) (p. xiii).1 The careful scholarship throughout the collection draws out the ways that Kyoto modernized in the Meiji period by focusing on the conceptual challenges to the city's identity as well as the pragmatic problems wrought by population decline and industry shifts. As the chapters attest, while Kyoto's stature shrank in this period, the city was frequently at the forefront of implementing modern changes in infrastructure including urban planning, roads, trolleys, and waterways for electricity. Moreover, Kyoto's Renaissance argues that it was through the process of modernization that Kyoto became "the historical capital" in ways that continue to reverberate in the city today.
There has been a renaissance in Kyoto studies in English in the last decade or so, and Kyoto's Renaissance is an important addition to that scholarship. Matthew Stavros's (2014) history of the premodern capital outlines the political, social, and cultural factors that shaped and reshaped the contours of the city.2 Tseng's architectural and urban history covers a longer period than this volume, from 1868 to 1945. She argues that Kyoto modernized through mobilizing its historic relationship to the emperor visible in the reconstruction of the city especially the Kyoto Imperial Garden and Okazaki Park. Morgan Pitelka and Alice Tseng's (2018) volume on visual culture draws attention to cultural production in two periods of transition, the early [End Page 191] Edo and early Meiji periods.3 Christoph Brumann's (2012) ethnography of the townscape at the turn of this century illuminates the debates and contestations over how to best develop the city4; and my own book, Kyoto Revisited (2022), centers on heritage and the tourism boom in twenty-firstcentury Kyoto.5 Across these recent books, several themes stand out: the space and aesthetics of the city, its national role, and the contestations, continuities, and changes across time.
To this emergent field, Kyoto's Renaissance makes important contributions concentrating on the specific moment when Japan was modernizing to highlight the nuanced negotiations that shaped the city, its aesthetics, and its imperial legacy. The nine chapters in Kyoto's Renaissance are revised, updated, and translated versions of essays published in Japanese in several edited collections on modern Kyoto (except for John Breen's chapter, which was written in English).6 This research by scholars who live and work in Kyoto focuses on primary sources—white papers both local and national, the excavation of committee minutes, as well as personal communication—all found in the archives and libraries of Kyoto. Drawing together the research of top scholars in Kyoto, this book will certainly be a critical starting point for future work on Kyoto beyond the modern period.
The introduction, "In Search of the Kyoto Modern," not only justifies the necessity for this volume but also provides a comprehensive overview of literature on Kyoto's history in both English and Japanese. In addition, it introduces the central libraries and document collections available in Kyoto. Framing the chapters that follow, the editors detail Kyoto's response to the physical, psychological, and economic devastation that came with the Meiji Restoration and the relocation of the capital. In many cases, Kyoto...
