Category: travel

Building Nara worked: no local lord grew powerful enough to challenge the throne. But Nara also failed, because soon the temples started interfering. Emperor Kanmu came along and decided it was time to end this bullshit. He moved out of Nara, leaving it to become the smaller sleepy city of temples it is today. He picked a spot of land on what was then the ass end of nowhere, and snapped up control of it himself, attaching it to the throne directly, so lords and temples were frozen out. And there he built Heian-kyo [Peaceful Capital], again a harmonious grid like Chang’an. Kanmu’s reign was an all-time high point for Imperial prestige and direct power. His city, later called Kyoto [Capital City] would remain the capital of Japan for the next thousand years.

On paper.

The emperor was both a governing ruler and the focus of an intense cycle of ritual and obligations to maintain spiritual purity. The combination made for a heavy schedule. After a while, emperors started splitting the duties; they’d retire and shunt the ritual schedule off on one of their young princes, but keep running the government from ‘retirement.’ This precedent proved dangerous: if a retired emperor could call the shots, why not someone else altogether? Great lords and clan leaders didn’t have to risk divine wrath or popular rebellion by usurping thrones. Instead, just sideline the emperor, let burn incense and hit gongs, and exercise power “in his name.” Marry him to one of your own clan’s daughters, and make sure the grandsons depend on you, and repeat the cycle. This method let first the Soga clan, and then the Fujiwara, rule Japan for centuries. These Fujiwara were the builders of the Kasuga Grand Shrine.

Between Fujiwaras and nobles and shoguns, Kyoto most often played host to an emperor who did not rule. Sometimes the actual ruler lived there, but often they did not. So the city basically spent a thousand years trying desperately to keep up appearances, spending their years conducting ceremonies and handing out grand titles and honors to their court of nobles. Sometimes the real government paid them a stipend to support the show; in other eras, they had to trade in on snob appeal to survive. Court nobles would give lessons in poetry, ceremony and painting to uncouth samurai warriors looking to rent a little polish. In some desperate times, the emperors themselves sold calligraphy to pay the bills.

Today Kyoto retains that creative focus. It’s no longer the official capital, despite its name. It hosts a lot of Japan’s modern creative institutions, such as as the anime industry and Nintendo. There are some lovely districts with sprawling piles of classic old Japanese houses, complete with low wooden gates and secret gardens. The Fushimi Inari stands above the city, a huge sprawling complex of red torii gates that seem to stretch to infinity. You’ve definitely seen photos of it whether or not you recognize the name. At the other edge is the famous Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, a towering collection of green bamboo that you’ve also seen. In between is the city, with its own impressive collection of shrines and temples, some more known for their beauty, some more for their historic fame. There’s also, of course, a large rectangle containing the old Imperial Palace where those often-impoverished emperors performed.

But honestly I didn’t find Kyoto as resonant as I might have. You’ll find little peace at the bamboo forest, even as photos of it are a very symbol of tranquility, mostly because of the thousands of people avidly snapping those photos at all hours. The Fushimi Inari is one of the last places you’ll find religious reverence; but you’ll certainly find wannabe influencers using the rows of torii as backdrops for selfies. Some of the historic neighborhoods have signs with rules about noise and photos that everyone disobeys. Even the palace served an emperor without actual power, or money — so the gardens are perfunctory, and the plain buildings mostly closed to the public. As soon as the emperor regained a nominal spot at the center of government in the 1860s, he immediately decamped, and you can empathize with him. As centers of powers go, Kyoto’s history largely consists of faking it without quite making it.

That undercurrent of pretense without power made me less beguiled by Kyoto than I might be. But there are still moments to be found. The Fushimi Inari never closes, and neither does the remarkable train system, so I went there at 10 PM and saw it in the moonlight. There were a few influencers still there, setting up their phone on tripods and looking ridiculous posing “sexily” in front of the torii. But the complex is so vast you can just keep walking and avoid them, and see the stone foxes and red gates in the dim light. The bamboo forest is likewise open around the clock, though here you do want daylight, so make jetlag work for you and head there just before dawn. I confess I did not take my advice here; instead I plugged in headphones, leaned into my height, and just looked up.

In town, the little alleyway called Pantocho, a narrow strip of restaurants and shops that follows the shallow river, has definite tourist trap vibes, but it’s still a twisting warren of fascinating old buildings letting you forget what century it is. It’s a nice antidote to the aggressive openness of its modern equivalent, the strip mall. Pantocho is for walkers and humans, not cars and parking, and we have few enough of those left. And you can trip on history anywhere. My hotel was two blocks from the Honno-ji temple, where the great warlord Oda Nobunaga was betrayed and killed by one of his retainers in the 1500s, just short of ending a 160 year civil war. Americans know Oda now primarily through a line of video games, but here’s a good a place as any to read more about the real stories.

And you do find things there. I stumbled into a print shop, and found names of artists I’d never heard, whose prints now hang on my wall. I found pen and paper shops enough to gladden the heart of anyone who’s long ago abandoned the humble Bic. There was a random wine tasting of California wines, which I crashed. The labels were all top-shelf and famous; luxury good seekers here look for Names, and have little interest in ‘this cute find in Sonoma I’d argue is better than the top names.’ But I still snagged a free taste of Opus One.

And best of all, Kyoto is at the heart of the sprawling Kansai region, the older sibling to Tokyo’s Kanto plain; some huge chunk of Japan’s population lives in these two areas. Kansai has multiple centers where the Kanto is pretty much all-Tokyo, and here is where Japan itself began. The whole plain is nicely meshed with a complicated train network. But don’t fear the trains. Hit the ATM at the airport, and use the cash to buy an IC card from the machines by the train station. Don’t skip steps: when I was there, the phone app would not work for phones sold outside of Japan, you can’t use a Western credit card to load a card, and there was a chip shortage meaning you could only buy a physical IC card at the airport. But it’s worth it: the thing is magic. You load it up with money, and tap to pay for fares on virtually any transit service in the entire country. Imagine if your Boston Charlie Card could pay for a bus in San Diego. IC cards will also buy you a bottle of water out of most vending machines, or a onigiri at 7-11. Some trains have a system where you must buy a fare ticket separately from a seat reservation — but that’s because nobody buys a fare ticket. Tap the IC card and move on.

Planning it out is also worthless, unless it’s a Shinkansen covering a long distance. If you’re in Kyoto and you want to go to Nara, you don’t read six timetables in other alphabets and writing systems. You just punch in “Nara” in Google maps or something, and it will tell you what to do. “Walk three blocks east, go into this station, stand on platform 3, and board the 773 train at 11:14 am.” It will supply you with exact directions for transfers. And then an hour later you’re in Nara. Or Osaka. Or Kobe. Then use your IC card again to take the local train, if you want.

Introduction

I begin the travel log.  We’ll see how long it lasts.  I’m no influencer, though — you’re getting my internal reactions, and I’ll be light on recommendations.  Honestly, if you’re reading this site, you should have seen that coming.

I’m going to start with Japan.  I’ve always wanted to go there, partly from a fascination with the culture, and partly because, as you’ll find out, I’ve read a ton about their history as well.  I finally bit the bullet and planned out a trip where I got an excellent deal on airfare — for May of 2020.

Sadness.  But if Covid taught us everything, it’s that we should go now.  We can’t always rely on the world to stay open and reachable to us.  So the earliest time I could find to rebook it pragmatically, I did.  I ended up there over Thanksgiving and early December in 2023.  It turned out to be an excellent time to go to central Japan — it was neither cold nor warm, and saw clear skies and colorful trees.

I decided to do the trip in terms of a historical theme, that got stuck in my head as the five capitals.  Japan actually had innumerable capitals, many before Tokyo was even a village. They’re literally innumerable: we don’t truly know how many there have been. “Capital” was mostly defined as wherever the emperor of the day was living.

The Japanese imperial clan is as timeless and permanent a human institution as exists anywhere. Their line is unbroken for over a hundred generations, albeit with some twists and turns along the way. The dynasty even lacks a surname, since only the one family has held the title. There’s no need to distinguish Tudors from Windsors from Plantagenets — there’s only one line, and their only name is “emperor”.

Legend says the Imperial line sprang from the sun goddess, but the more skeptical historians think those early emperors were likely firsts among equals, warlords who’d won an extra war. The throne was not just about power, however; like most monarchies, it surrounded itself with rites and spiritualism, to strengthen its claimed divine heritage. The emperor became the agent to secure the favor of the gods for his subjects. His consequent need for purity was why the palace kept moving — an old emperor’s death polluted his home, so a new clean palace was made for his heir.

That limitation became politically handy. A capital city attracts power, and not all of it is held by the ruler himself. Local lords became more important, and influential. They marry into the imperial line, and make sure future heirs were their own relatives, and come to exert control over the court to the exclusion of the ruler. So new emperors who wanted independence would often build their new palace in a different town, someplace the local lords were more friendly to him.  Boom, new capital!  The court hopped around like that for nearly 300 years. We don’t know exactly how many towns, or years, or even emperors, because in our records of those days, the line between legends and reality is soft.

I Nara

By the seventh century, though, Tang Dynasty Chinese culture was all the rage. The Tang government was built along centralized, controlling lines, emanating from an enormous and decidedly permanent capital, named the Chang’an [which means Eternal Peace, which would prove a tragic misnomer] which was built in a precise grid pattern believed to be rational, harmonious and ritually pure. The Japanese court decided to follow the fashion — and the idea of building an entirely new city free altogether of established local lords and powers sounded handy, too.

And so they built Nara, in the southern Yamato plain, at the edge of the mountains. And to build a deeper moat against local noble interference, much of the land around Nara was instead given to temples and monasteries, for another new Chinese import: Buddhism. And so the Seven Great Temples were made. The temples remain today, vast sprawling complexes of bells, wooden arches and towards, nestled in the forests above the main city.

There’s two train companies that serve Nara, but you want the Kintetsu line; the station is much handier. March east immediately: there’s not much city between you and the temple lands. You’ll find yourself among a thick crowd if you do this at a sane hour; just let the tide guide you. A fair few of the crowd will peel off to take selfies with the deer that inhabit a large, flat park between the town and the temples. The deer are a symbol of the temples, because they are native to the area and the forests around it, and therefore protected as holy figures. The upshot is you can buy a few crackers and feed them. I skipped that part; I can’t help but think of deer as road hazards instead of sacred animals, no matter the local opinion otherwise. The deer seemed in good health, at least, though the grass in the park was rather thin and dusty thanks to their hooves, or the tourists’.

Keep going east, and start to climb uphill. Most of the crowd that stays with you now peels off see and selfie the Todaji Daibutsu, which is the largest statue in the word of the Vairocana Buddha. I can’t begin to decipher the many schools of Buddhism and their corresponding Buddhas and related figures. To my faithblind eyes, the Vairocana Buddha is recognizable as “the skinny one.” But the stone statue is as massive as the crowds going to see it. I took a look, but did not linger.

My real target was the Kasuga Grand Shrine, which isn’t Buddhist at all, but Shinto. In English, generally, “shrine” means Shinto buildings, while Buddhist ones are “temples”. In Japanese, you have Shinto jinja and Buddhist ji. But as religions go, they mostly play well with each other, and few would describe themselves as a “shinto follower” to the exclusion of Buddhism, or vice-versa. Buddhist temples usually have a little shrine to the local Shinto kami tucked away somewhere, often the cute little fox spirits of the god Inari. This shrine was built for the powerful Fujiwara family, and it features hundreds of bronze bells and torii gates in the forest hills.

The shrine itself is grand, and its botanical gardens as well, but for me the real appeal was to walk past it into the Kasugayama Primeval Forest, a preserve where logging has been banned since 841. Its ancient trees sneer at Yellowstone as nouveau riche. And after the crowds of selfie-hunters at the Daibutsu and the deer park, you find a silence more suited to temples here. The people you do see will tend to appreciate it too. You share a silent nod before parting around another bend. There were some places where you can poke through the canopy to a great view of the town behind you, too. If you take your walk to the far northeastern edge, there’s a nice little waterfall too, which can drown out all the ambient noise you could ask for.

I descended a different way aiming for the Naramachi district — the old merchant’s town with tiny streets packed with tiny old houses in a simulation of what a bygone era was like. The effect is ruined by the curiously unfinished feel of most Asian cities — instead of the bloodless Historical Preservation rules of an old town in Europe or America, here electric wires, air conditioning units and satellite dishes are as often slapped to the front of a building as tucked behind a screen or on the roof. You can’t forget what century it is here, except maybe at night when the HVAC units blend into the dark. But you can at least appreciate the patterns of the past hiding behind the needs of the present.

I had a delicious okonomiyaki for a late lunch at Omitsu. Okonomiyaki is a street food, closest in concept to a frittata, with tempura flakes, eggs, and various veggies slammed together into a patty with the meat if your choice and cooked on the griddle. Omitsu, like many Japanese eateries, is the size of a larger American closet, with a tiny menu. But all six choices are tempting, and you can only have one. The chef speaks some English, and makes up for any linguistic failings with his boundless friendliness. He seems to be thrilled he gets to serve you his food. I was thrilled in turn that I got to eat it.