MAP B: Uptown and Downtown Kyoto.

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This map includes the area between the old Imperial Palace grounds (The Kyoto Gosho) to the North, and Kyoto Station and Higashi-kujo to the south. The main subway lines are in RED. The route I took between my house and Higashi-kujo is marked in narrow green. The WIDE GREEN line marks an historical boundary: the “Odoi,” an earthen defensive wall that was constructed by Toyotomi Hideoshi at the close of the 16 century (Yamasaki 1994). Generally ten feet tall and thirty feet wide, it created not only a line of defense, but also a demarkation of an interior Kyoto city space from the surrounding environs. No traces of this wall can be found today, but vestiges of its spatial effects are still visible. Along the river, its presense marked an outside district: Kawaramachi (River Town). Here is where an outsider community of “kawaramono” (literally “river people”) itinerant beggars and actors, whose sentimentalized history is exemplified by the life of Izumo no Okuni, the woman credited with founding Kabuki drama in the 17th century. The entertainment quarters of Pontocho and Gion developed here. Here too is where buraku districts were administered on both sides of the Kamo River.

Go to aerial photograph of Kyoto