A timeless city of ancient tradition — this is how Kyoto, arguably more than any urban center in Japan, projects itself. From tourism posters to its recent kimono-wearing mayor, the image of Kyoto as rooted in the premodern is omnipresent in its external (and often internal) branding. Far from being a natural continuation of the past, however, this image has been shaped and nurtured throughout the modern period, particularly in response to two major factors. Crisis: the destruction of much of the city and the loss of capital status between the 1850s and 1870, then the upheavals of the Pacific War and postwar Occupation. And tourism: Kyoto’s redevelopment from the Meiji period as a destination for recreational travellers from overseas and across Japan.
The “Modern Kyoto Research” online resource follows recent research on Kyoto’s modernity and explores continuity and change in Kyoto from the Bakumatsu (1853–1868) to the postwar and beyond. Based on up-to-date scholarship, and making full use of visual and other primary sources, various thematic units investigate not only how Kyoto’s image was constructed in the modern period but open a window on people and places often excluded from popular histories and public promotions.
Modern Kyoto Research will be regularly updated and new units added over time. Click on the links above to enter.
The Modern Kyoto Research team
Founders and general editors: Daniel Milne (Kyoto University) and Ran Zwigenberg (Pennsylvania State University)
Managing editor: Andrew Elliott (Doshisha Women's College)
IT consultant: So Miyagawa (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics)
Contributors
Andrew Elliott is a professor in the Department of International Studies, Doshisha Women’s College, Kyoto. His present research focuses on the history and culture of inbound tourism in the Japanese Empire from the 1890s to 1941. Publications include a co-edited special edition of Japan Review on tourism, war, and modern Japan (International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, 2019) and a chapter about “Hospitality and the Shaping of the Tourist(ic) in Modern Japan” in the Oxford Handbook of the History of Tourism and Travel (2023).
Riichi Endo is a lecturer in the Faculty of Tourism, Wakayama University. His research interests include the Occupation of Japan, military tourism, and mobility. Publications on these topics can be found in a number of academic journals, including Asian Journal of Tourism Research, Nenpō Shakaigaku Ronshū and Kankō Gaku Hyōron.
Daniel Milne is Senior Lecturer at Kyoto University’s ILAS. His research focuses on the modern history of tourism in Japan and Kyoto, and the political and cultural role the discourses and sites of tourism have played in war, occupation, and reconciliation. He has co-edited special issues of Japan Review (“War, Tourism, and Modern Japan,” 2019) and Japan Focus ("Re-examining Asia-Pacific War Memories," 2022), has ran workshops on POWs and the Asia-Pacific War and on Kyoto’s Imperial Modernity, and will publish a chapter on Mimizuka in Contesting Memorial Spaces of Japan's Empire (forthcoming, 2024). His recent research has been supported by grants from JSPS (POW tourism and reconciliation) and from the Toshiba International Foundation.
Oliver Moxham is a PhD student in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and a Daiwa Scholar in Japanese Studies (2022). He has been researching the history of the Japanese empire since his undergraduate in Japanese Studies and History. Through his master’s in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies, he focused his research on international engagement with conflict heritage site Mimizuka, a 16th century burial mound in Kyoto. He is currently undertaking ethnographic fieldwork for his PhD in Tokyo and Kyoto, examining how translation at Asia-Pacific War heritage sites affects heritage discourse and interpretation. Those based in Japan can participate in his research through the War Heritage Tours website until August 2024. He discussed his master’s research on the Beyond Japan podcast (Series 2, Episode 1), published a manifesto for equal translation at difficult heritage sites in Archaeology and the Publics, and has a chapter on ‘Camouflaged War Heritage’ published in War Memory and East Asian Conflicts, 1930–1945.