In a small studio in the foothills of northeast Kyoto, Shotei Ibata, master calligrapher, picks up a giant paintbrush half his height. Ibata is a reed-thin man pushing seventy-four, but, wielding the horsehair brush like a saber, he seems to grow younger, taller and more powerful by the minute. Pausing for a moment of meditation, Ibata stands before his canvas, an enormous sheet of thick, rough washi paper that covers the floor, then dips the brush into a bucket of deep black sumi ink.
Steve Beimel, an expert on Japanese arts and crafts who has led me to Ibata's studio, whispers, "This kind of artwork is like exposing your heart to the world. Calligraphy experts can read the soul of a person in his brushstroke." Ibata removes his brush from the ink, then, in a set of swift, complex motions that are more like dance steps than strokes, he drags the wet brush across the fibers, forming an ideogram that means "cloud." The painting is completed in these few seconds of supremely focused and creative motion. The sumi is so concentrated that it won't run, even when the canvas is submerged in water to be mounted. To balance his composition, Ibata selects an empty space and stamps it with a small red character, his personal seal.
Ibata's predecessors hardly thought of themselves as artists; they were artisans working for hire, producing calligraphy to decorate teahouses, temples and stately homes. But after World War II, once he'd viewed modern art and imagined a life outside the constraints of his craft, Ibata conceived a performance that dramatized what he did with his brush, ink and paper. In 1969, when he began to travel the world and create his paintings as performance art, other calligraphers in Japan were caustic in their criticism: this wasn't what Japanese calligraphy was supposed to be. Even today, few artists practicing traditional Japanese disciplines dare move beyond the exacting confines of their specialties. But those who do are some of the most interesting figures in the country, and the people I want to meet.
Most foreigners come to this city in search of a mythical Japanese past: a sighting of a geisha clicking down an alleyway in wooden shoes; a bite of a kaiseki meal cooked the same way it has been for centuries; a soak in a warm bath at a ryokan (inn). Since A.D. 794, when it became Japan's capital — a reign that would last more than a thousand years — Kyoto has served as the guardian of time-honored Japanese customs. This is the birthplace of the tea ceremony and its related crafts, headquarters of the creators of the country's finest kimonos and home to people who take age-old practices seriously, so it makes sense that visitors expect to find a city untainted by modernity.
But I'm here for something different. I've spent a long time in Japan exploring the periphery of its culture, from the cutting-edge architecture in Kyushu to the American-style cocktail bars of Osaka. In my relentless search for the new and unexpected, it has become obvious to me that in Kyoto a quiet revolution is under way. Led by Ibata and other traditional craftsmen, artists trained in the finest, and strictest, customs are taking their art forms in startling, impressive and wonderful new directions while maintaining the quality and integrity of the old ways. Here the past isn't a limitation; it's an inspiration. So on this visit to Kyoto, I'll seek out artists like Ibata, as well as kettle makers, kimono dyers and even chefs, who are redefining what craftsmanship means in modern-day Japan.
After downing a cup of tea and a rice cracker that Ibata's wife serves me, I bicycle along the quiet streets on the east side of the Kamo River, which bisects Kyoto. In this low-rise area, ancient wooden structures housing restaurants, tea shops and inns surround cobblestoned streets and hundreds of temples large and small. A few minutes east of the river, streets give way to little streams, tracts of green forest and steep mountains, and Kyoto comes to an abrupt end. Cycling along these paths after the tourists have gone back to their hotels, when only a few lanterns illuminate the darkening alleyways, I can imagine that this is the real Kyoto: pristine, tranquil and locked forever in a magical past.
But then I pedal west across a bridge spanning the Kamo into another cityscape altogether: hulking high-rises, an eyesore of an observation tower and tangles of aboveground electrical wires. As I ride north along the swiftly flowing river — new Kyoto on one side, old Kyoto on the other — hopeful buskers, young goths and kimono-clad grandparents playing with small children watch the sun set from the riverbank. It's hard to imagine how one city can merge so many disparate worlds.
The next morning, I open my window wide to breathe in the air from a garden at the rear of my hotel. I'm staying at the Hyatt Regency, in southeast Kyoto, not just because it's the best full-service hotel in town but also because it represents the Kyoto I'm seeking. Tucked between two huge temple complexes and behind a wall of bamboo, the building was once a smoke-stained business hotel, but two years ago it was gutted and rebuilt under the guidance of Japanese design wunderkinds SuperPotato. The lobby glows with warm light from standing paper lanterns. The ceiling and walls are made of open-worked aluminum frames that play on traditional designs. And the grounds of the hotel now meld seamlessly with the temple gardens that flank it. This is ancient Kyoto reflected in the most contemporary of architecture.
A few visitors climb into a Ferrari parked in front, but I hop back onto my bike and head out to meet Steve Beimel at Somushi, a modern teahouse in the city center. A thick wall of plants encircles the entryway; sunlight filters in through layers of textiles dyed orange and brown with persimmon juice. We remove our shoes, of course, and step up a few feet onto the comforting leather of the teahouse floor. We sit at the counter and drink a sweet herbal brew from rough-hewn ocher cups that feel like stone freshly dug out of the earth.
For fifteen years Beimel has been bringing institutions and foreigners interested in the arts to Japan; he recently moved to Kyoto and now works only with individual travelers. Beimel's aim is not to lead these patrons to museums and lecture them about art; he wants them to see artists at work in their studios and to understand how these practitioners fit into a larger, vital Kyoto community of craftsmen, suppliers and tea-ceremony devotees.
When I finish my tea, Beimel asks me if he can examine my cup. "Yours is different from mine," he says. "In Japan they're usually not a matched set." Though he has been an authority on Japanese crafts for a quarter century, the rigorous tea-ceremony studies Beimel began two years ago at the renowned Daitokuji Institute have helped him see the profound link between the culture of tea and the crafts of Kyoto. "The 'way of tea'" — the proper Japanese term for the tea ceremony — "is really about cultivating your sense of wonder," he says. "It's taught me that to touch and use beautiful things is one of the great joys in life."
In search of those beautiful things, I go to meet Seiwemon Onishi, the current master of the famed House of Onishi, maker of Japan's most exceptional teakettles. I expect a kimono-clad old workman, but Onishi is in his mid-forties, with a shaved head and wearing tight black jeans. At seventeen he went to art school to learn to sculpt, then returned home to study the work of his ancestors. At a glance he can identify which of the sixteen generations of Onishi artisans designed and produced a given iron kettle. His is a dying breed: on this street in central Kyoto, dozens of kettle makers once turned out their wares (the street is, in fact, called Kamanza, which means "kettle district"). Now he is one of the last on the block.
Everything in the studio is done by hand. In the same way that a contemporary artist may intentionally mar a painting by scratching the canvas, Onishi aims to show that imperfection is a kind of beauty; he leaves deep cracks at the tops of his kettles and marks that scar their surfaces. He has been crafting some of these kettles for more than two decades: that's not twenty years of work on one design, that's twenty years on one kettle. Even a simple Onishi piece can take three months to manufacture and costs about $25,000. Each mold is used once and then destroyed. "I design kettles to be loved hundreds of years from now," Onishi tells me. "It takes that long for a work to become appreciated and really interesting."
At the end of a day spent sipping frothy green matcha tea and seeing the craftsmanship behind a seemingly simple kettle, I'm ready for a taste of something stronger. So I ask some Kyoto friends for a tip on a cocktail bar, a conversation that leads me to a dramatically lit boîte called Setsugekka. It's behind a small door on Sanjo Street, down a twisted hallway, one floor belowground, a place I never would have found on my own. In Japan the most sought-after spaces are private and inward-looking, designed to be hard to find.
Usually in a bar, my eyes are immediately drawn to the cocktail list, but here I stare at the walls, which are made of roughly textured, carefully patterned washi fibers and backlit so the patrons seem to float in a phosphorescent sea. As the bartender mixes my manhattan, he explains that the walls were constructed by one of Kyoto's hottest contemporary artists, Eriko Horiki. Horiki single-handedly revitalized the ancient art of washi, and now the works of Eriko Horiki and Associates hang not just in this stylish bar but also at Narita airport's new terminal and at some of Japan's most important sites for modern architecture.
At a recommended (and, again, somewhat secret) restaurant near the Pontocho neighborhood, noted for its eateries and nightlife, I could easily believe I'm in another artist's studio. Giro Giro's kitchen is ringed by diners on three sides; the fourth side is a floor-to-ceiling window fronting a small tree-lined canal. The food takes the kaiseki concept to radical new heights: goya, a bitter gourd grown in Okinawa, flavors tofu; a local river fish is fried in front of me, then dipped in tartar sauce made with okra and mayonnaise.
Truth be told, much as I like the tradition and serenity of an old-fashioned kaiseki restaurant, I'd rather eat at Giro Giro, which transforms the same ingredients into something singular and unexpected and serves it in a space designed not just for somber appreciation but also, dare I say, for fun. It's a world apart from the tatami mats and low seating of typical kaiseki places, the kind I've eaten in countless times.
On my last day in Kyoto, I meet Beimel to visit a couple of the spots he loves most. Inside the home and studio of dye artist Shihoko Fukumoto, row after row of brilliant blue swaths of fabric hang from the ceiling and sway in the breeze that blows in from her tiny backyard garden. Fukumoto shows me the vats of natural dye she produces by composting indigo leaves and mixing them with ash; she lets the vats ferment for varying lengths of time to extract the shades she needs. Unlike many other dye artists, Fukumoto specializes in just one color and its infinite variations: through careful control of her indigo supply, she extends the range of the dye from light blue to deep purple.
Fukumoto works with fabric from several sources, including hand-spun bark and vines and a kimono-like farmer's coat that's been made in northern Japan for a thousand years from pieces of recycled cloth. She takes these garments apart along the seams, careful never to cut them. Then she dyes each swatch of fabric a different shade before reassembling each coat on a flat surface. Every piece must be dyed as many as fifteen times, so a wall hanging can take up to three months to complete.
Although Fukumoto's current work has a contemporary look, it is still made only from old coats and kimonos she has dyed. "The modern fabrics look very slick," she tells me, "but the human element has been removed." Years ago, Kyoto's traditional craftsmen labored under their own self-imposed constraints, whether dictating their subject matter, materials or audience. Perhaps today, in a world filled with choice and possibility, using only indigo dye has let Fukumoto be more imaginative than if she had the whole spectrum to work with.
This culture of tradition through innovation thrives all over Kyoto. In a small gallery on a street near the Imperial Gardens, centuries-old clothing scavenged from every region of Japan is offered for sale as folk craft by an enterprising dealer who supplies collectors, such as Fukumoto, with some of their raw materials. I meet embroidery artist Toshiaki Nagakusa, who shows me his elaborate silk designs for portable temples, then casually lets drop that he also does window installations for Hermès in Paris. I sit with Shuren Sakurai, the abbot of a Zen temple who took up carving Noh theater masks to pay for the temple's upkeep in the bleak years after World War II and fell in love with the art of mask making. As I talk with these people and others, I learn that while Kyoto's customs may not live on unchanged, even the most modern artists glean ideas, guidance and techniques from preceding generations.
Beimel suggests that we contemplate a final kind of Kyoto artwork: the temple garden. We travel to the far northeast part of town and walk up a stone path through tall ginkgo trees to the Renge-ji temple. I sit on a tatami mat and gaze at the moss-covered landscape. A natural stream that originates in the mountains rushes past bright anemones. Beimel explains that this kind of Taoist garden was inspired by a fabled group of islands off the coast of China. For centuries, emperors searched for this place of legendary beauty, said to grant immortality to anyone who discovered it. But about 2,000 years ago, a Han dynasty emperor decided that since he could not find these Elysian islands, he would emulate them to attract immortal beings to his own temple compounds.
I've spent a week in Kyoto seeking out artists who manipulate traditional materials and employ ancient techniques to create a modern vision. Now I sit before what may be the most startling work I've seen: a simple garden made from only water, wood, shrubs and moss — the most traditional materials of all.
When calling the telephone numbers below from the United States, except for those that are toll-free, first dial 011-81-75.
Spring, for the cherry blossoms, and fall, for the leaves, are the standout seasons in Kyoto. Summer — especially July, after the rainy season — can be humid and brutally hot. Spectacular cultural festivals take place throughout the year; the most famous is Gion Matsuri, held in July.
There are frequent flights from the United States to Kansai International Airport, in Osaka, a seventy-five-minute train ride from Kyoto. I prefer to fly into Tokyo, though, and spend time in the capital before taking the Shinkansen express train (japanrail.com) to Kyoto (two hours).
Kyoto has a good subway system, and the taxis, offering standard Japanese white-glove service, are plentiful, but the best way to navigate the city is on a bicycle. Kyoto Cycling Tour Project (from $10 a day; kctp.net/en) rents bikes at five locations; the most central is a five-minute walk from Kyoto's train station.
Japanese addresses are difficult to decipher even for natives. Though Kyoto is laid out on a grid and is less perplexing than some other cities in Japan, ask your hotel concierge to mark the following places on a map.
To see Kyoto's artisans in action, you'll have to go with an insider, who can introduce you and translate, since most of them don't speak English. Steve Beimel (steve@esprittravel.com) lives in Kyoto and knows every important craftsperson in town.
At Club Okitsu Kyoto (524-1 Okitsu-an, Shinmachi Higashi-iru, Kamichojamachi-dori, Kamigyo-ku; 411-8585; okitsu-kyoto.com/english), Minako Iue hosts tours and lectures on Japanese music, the tea ceremony and incense. Iue's associate Kiyotsugu Nakaji, an antiques dealer, takes visitors to meet artisans, like Toshiaki Nagakusa, one of Kyoto's best embroiderers, whose work ranges from Hermès installations to clothing for the Japanese royal family. Nakaji escorted me to the studio of teakettle artist Seiwemon Onishi, but you can see his work on your own, at the Onishi Seiwemon Museum (Kamanza-cho, Shinmachi Nishi-iru, Sanjo-dori, Nakagyo-ku; 221-2881; seiwemon-museum.com).
Hyatt Regency Kyoto: The Hyatt, dreamed up by the edgy firm SuperPotato, is a temple of design. Its 189 guest rooms and suites are subdued, but the public spaces look like modern art. Pop downstairs to the moody Touzan Bar, with two walls made of stacked books, for a well-mixed cocktail. Double rooms from $345, suites from $1,040. 644-2 Sanjusangendo-mawari, Higashiyama-ku; 800-233-1234; kyoto.regency.hyatt.com.
Yoshida-Sanso: Built in 1933 as the residence of the current emperor's uncle, this guesthouse, at the foot of a mountain in northeast Kyoto, became a ryokan, or inn, after World War II. Much of it is constructed from priceless hinoki cypress; the stained glass fuses Western and Japanese motifs. Double rooms from $790, including dinner and breakfast. 59-1 Yoshida Shimo-ooji-cho, Sakyo-ku; 771-6125; yoshidasanso.com.
Meticulously restored machiya (town houses), built for Kyoto merchants, are rented out by the cultural organization Iori, which is run by American-born Alex Kerr, an expert on, and longtime resident of, Japan. The machiya are furnished with futons and modern conveniences; many have wonderful soaking tubs and gardens. One-bedroom town houses from $280, three-bedroom town houses from $560. 352-0211; kyoto-machiya.com.
Café Gallery David: This café is more like a museum than a coffee shop; it displays magnificent Southeast Asian Buddhas and Chinese obelisks from the private collection of Yasuyoshi Morimoto, a former buyer for Tiffany & Co. The man behind the counter creates an incredibly rich cup of filtered brew using what looks like a chemistry set. 15 Sanjo-dori, Takakura, Nishi-iru; 212-8580.
Giro Giro: 420-7 Namba-cho, Nishi Kiyamachi-dori, Higashigawa, Matsubarashita, Shimogyo-ku; 343-7070.
Nishiki: Izakaya restaurants serve snacks to go with your sake. Updated versions, like Nishiki, offer an array of small plates that mix Japanese and Western tastes in experimental, flavorful ways. 317 Uradeyama-cho, Nishikikoji, Nishi-iru, Nakagyo-ku; 257-5748.
Sent James Club Pontocho: For a cocktail overlooking the Kamo River, duck into the (misspelled) Sent James. 180-3 Sanjo Sagaru Zaimokucho, Pontocho, Nakagyo-ku; 223-0707.
Setsugekka: Sakura Bldg., Sanjo Tominokoji Nishi Kita Kado, Nakagyo-ku; 231-0070.
Somushi: Sanjo Karasuma Nishi-iru, Nakagyo-ku; 253-1456.
Teramachi Street, north of city hall and south of the Imperial Palace, is a perfect place to stroll and shop. It's less hip and more classical than Sanjo Street, west of the Teramachi shopping arcade. The main thoroughfare and the small streets radiating from it define up-to-the-minute fashion and design in Kyoto.
Gallery Hitamuki: West Rarely will you find a small gallery with such a wide selection: ceramics, glass bowls, wooden sculptures. 471 Kamihonnoujimae-cho, Nakagyo-ku; 221-8507.
Gallery Kei: Owner Kei Kawasaki tracks down vintage fabrics from all over Japan. Look for Okinawan textiles made from banana fiber and Hokkaido kimonos of thick cotton (for the cold northern winter). But most of the kimonos for sale are meant to be displayed as art, not worn. 671-1 Kyuenmaemachi Teramachi Ebisugawa-agaru, Nishigawa, Nakagyo-ku; 212-7114.
Ippodo Tea: At this classic old-world Kyoto tea shop, you can also sit and sip pungent brew. Teramachi-dori Nijo Agaru, Higashigawa, Nakagyo-ku; 211-3421.
Ten Ten Ten: Vintage kimonos with colorful patterns are turned into bags and T-shirts at this pocket-sized shop. 1F Sacra; 257-8228. ~T.D.