Kyoto

Kyoto is one of Japan's two urban prefectures (fu), a status it shares with Osaka. More than half of its residents live in the city of Kyoto, which was the imperial capital for over a thousand years and holds fourteen of the seventeen components of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto World Heritage site; two more lie in Uji and one, Enryaku-ji, in Otsu across the border in Shiga.

The prefecture is far larger than its famous city. To the south lies Yamashiro, with Uji and the green-tea districts of Wazuka and Ujitawara. North-west of the city the Tanba highlands, with Kameoka, Nantan and Ayabe, are a landscape of cedar forest, rice valleys and thatched villages such as Miyama. On the Sea of Japan coast, the Tango region includes the naval port of Maizuru, the sandbar of Amanohashidate at Miyazu, the boathouse village of Ine and the silk-weaving towns of Tango chirimen.

Kyoto is a centre of higher education, with Kyoto University and many private universities, and of high-technology firms such as Nintendo, Kyocera, Murata and Omron, many of which grew out of the city's craft traditions.

"Kyōto" (京都) simply means "capital city"; the name came into common use for Heian-kyō in the Middle Ages and was adopted for the prefecture in 1868, when Kyoto-fu was created immediately after the Meiji Restoration. The prefecture took its present shape in 1876, when the Tango area of Toyooka Prefecture and part of Tanba were added, while the western part of Tanba went to Hyogo.

The Kyoto Basin in the south is enclosed on three sides by hills – Higashiyama, Kitayama and Nishiyama – and opens southward towards the Yodo River, where the Katsura, Uji and Kizu rivers meet. The Tanba highlands, a dissected plateau of low mountains, occupy the centre of the prefecture and are drained northward by the Yura River and southward by the Hozu (Katsura) River, which cuts the Hozukyō gorge west of Kyoto city.

The north ends in the Tango Peninsula and the rias of Wakasa Bay. Amanohashidate, a pine-covered sandbar some 3.6 kilometres long, closes off the Aso-kai lagoon at Miyazu. The coast from Kyōtango westward belongs to the San'in Kaigan UNESCO Global Geopark.

The Kyoto Basin has hot, humid summers and cold winters with frequent frost; snow falls on some days but rarely lies. Northern Kyoto (Tango and much of Tanba) has a Sea of Japan climate with overcast winters and heavy snow, while the Tanba basins around Kameoka and Fukuchiyama are famous for dense autumn fog.

Before the capital came, the Kyoto Basin was settled by immigrant clans such as the Hata, who built Kōryū-ji and irrigation works. Emperor Kanmu moved the capital first to Nagaoka-kyō (784) and then to Heian-kyō (794), which remained the imperial seat until 1869. The city survived the Ōnin War (1467–1477), was rebuilt by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and flourished as a centre of crafts and religion under the Tokugawa.

The northern provinces had their own histories: Tango was the seat of powerful regional lords and the silk industry; Fukuchiyama was built by Akechi Mitsuhide; Maizuru became an Imperial Navy base in 1901 and, after 1945, the main port for repatriation from Siberia and the Asian mainland. After the capital moved to Tokyo, Kyoto modernised quickly – Japan's first elementary schools, the Lake Biwa Canal and hydroelectric power, and the first electric tram. It was largely spared from bombing in the Second World War.

Kyoto is the heartland of traditional Japanese arts: the headquarters of the major tea schools (Urasenke, Omotesenke, Mushakōjisenke), the Ikenobō school of ikebana, many Buddhist head temples and Noh and kyōgen families. The city's geiko and maiko culture in the five hanamachi is unique in scale. Outside the city, Tango has its own festivals of the sea and the Tanba villages preserve thatched farmhouses.

Kyoto cooking developed far from the sea, around vegetables, tofu, yuba and preserved fish, flavoured with kombu dashi and light soy sauce. Temple vegetarian cuisine, court cuisine and the tea kaiseki meal all shaped it. Uji supplies matcha and gyokuro, the Tanba area chestnuts and black soybeans, and the Tango coast crab and yellowtail.

Kyoto's economy combines tourism, education and research, and manufacturing. The city is home to globally active firms in electronics, components and instruments – Kyocera, Murata Manufacturing, Nidec, Omron, Shimadzu, Horiba – and to Nintendo. Traditional industries include textiles (Nishijin, Kyō-yūzen, Tango chirimen), sake brewing in Fushimi, and tea in southern Yamashiro. Tourism is a major employer, concentrated in the city.