Kyoto

Kyōto ( listen^{? /i}, in German usually Kyoto, more rarely also written Kioto; jap. 京都市 Kyōto-shi listen^{? /i}) is one of the historically and culturally most important cities in Japan. It is located in the southwest of Japan's main island of Honshū in the Kansai metropolitan area. Both characters of the present-day city name are each read "Miyako" alone and literally mean "imperial residence" in Japanese. In today's Sino-Japanese reading, the syllable "Kyō-" corresponds to a Go-on reading and the syllable "-to" to a Kan-on reading.

Kyōto was the seat of the Imperial Court of Japan from 794 to 1868 and is now the administrative seat of Kyōto Prefecture.

14 temples and Shintō shrines, along with three others in the neighboring cities of Uji and Ōtsu, were designated UNESCO World Heritage Historic Kyōto (Kyōto, Uji and Ōtsu) in 1994.

Geography

Kyōto is located about 400 km southwest of Tokyo in the mid-west of Japan's main island of Honshū, about ten kilometers southwest of Lake Biwa and about 40 km from Osaka. Its location in a basin open only to the south causes the sultry air to accumulate in summer; the northern part of the city becomes considerably colder in winter than the neighboring cities of Osaka and Kōbe. Unlike the latter, however, Kyōto is largely protected from typhoons by mountains rising to over 1,000 metres and is also hardly at risk of flooding.

The city is laid out like a chessboard according to classical Chinese geomancy. The center and the south are the economic heart of the city. Some of the tourist attractions are located in the center; however, most of the famous temples are located in the northeast and northwest of the city or on mountain slopes in the surrounding area.

City breakdown

Kyōto is divided into eleven municipal districts (-ku):

the districts of the city of Kyōto
Code with check digit	Name		Area (in km²)	Population	Population density (Ew./km²)
	Rōmaji	Kanji	1 January 2021	1 March 2021	01.10.20153
26101-7	Kita-ku	北区	94,88	116.442	119.474	1248,86
26102-5	Kamigyō-ku	上京区	7,03	83.350	85.113	12036,98
26103-3	Sakyō-ku	左京区	246,77	165.364	168.266	680,52
26104-1	Nakagyō-ku	中京区	7,41	110.009	109.341	14957,35
26105-0	Higashiyama-ku	東山区	7,48	36.105	39.044	5000,00
26106-8	Shimogyō-ku	下京区	6,78	81.905	82.668	12200,15
26107-6	Minami-ku	南区	15,81	101.507	99.927	6400,76
26108-4	Ukyō-ku	右京区	292,07	202.180	204.262	698,44
26109-2	Fushimi-ku	伏見区	61,66	275.138	280.655	4512,89
26110-6	Yamashina-ku	山科区	28,7	134.029	135.471	4681,74
26111-4	Nishikyo-ku	西京区	59,24	147.825	150.962	2517,99
26100-9	Kyōto-shi	京都市	827,83	1.453.854	1.475.183	1774,49

Population development of the city

Year	Population			Gender ratio Men per 100 women	Population density (inhabitants per km²)	Surface area km²
	total	Male	female
1889	279.165	——	——	——	9377,4	29,77
1899	358.573	180.756	177.817	101,7	12.044,8	29,77
1909	453.046	232.504	220.542	105,4	14.483,6	31,28
1920	591.323	299.686	291.637	102,8	9785,3	60,43
1925	679.963	350.759	329.204	106,6	11.252,1	60,43
1930	765.142	396.756	368.386	107,7	12.661,6	60,43
1935	1.080.593	555.792	524.801	105,9	3743,6	288,65
1940	1.089.726	545.107	544.619	100,1	3775,3	288,65
1947	999.660	483.028	516.632	93,5	3463,2	288,65
1950	1.101.854	533.426	568.428	93,8	2054,0	536,45
1955	1.204.084	585.963	618.121	94,8	2188,2	550,27
1960	1.284.818	628.250	656.568	95,7	2104,2	610,61
1965	1.365.007	670.157	694.850	96,5	2235,5	610,61
1970	1.419.165	697.418	721.747	96,6	2324,2	610,61
1975	1.461.059	718.213	742.846	96,7	2392,8	610,61
1980	1.473.065	721.402	751.663	96,0	2412,5	610,61
1985	1.479.218	721.281	757.937	95,2	2422,5	610,61
1990	1.461.103	708.601	752.502	94,2	2394,4	610,21
1995	1.463.822	706.859	756.963	93,4	2398,9	610,21
2000	1.467.785	704.281	763.504	92,2	2405,3	610,22
2005	1.474.811	703.210	771.601	91,1	1781,4	827,90
2010	1.474.015	701.088	772.927	90,7	1780,4	827,90
2015	1.475.183	699.748	775.435	90,2	1782,0	827,83
2018	1.468.980	695.829	773.151	90,0	1774,5	827,83
2019	1.465.448	694.130	771.318	90,0	1770,2	827,83

Source: Kyōto City Population Change PDF file 人口及び世帯数の推移(京都市).

• For the years 1889 to 1909 - status at the end of the year (population register)
• For the years 1920 to 2015 - status on census day (1 October).
• 2018 - Status as of 1 October - Population update
• 2019 - As of March 1, 2019 - Population update.

The boroughs

History

Under the name Heian-kyō, Kyōto became the second permanent capital of Japan in 794 under Emperor Kammu (781-806) after the abandonment of Heijō-kyō (Nara, 784) and a failed attempt at nearby Nagaoka-kyō (Nagaokakyō).

After the Dōkyō Incident, the influence of Buddhist monasteries was to be pushed back by banning them from the inner city area of about 4500 × 5200 meters in the new capital.

The Heian period, in which political power essentially emanated from Kyōto (though soon no longer from the emperor himself), lasted until 1185. Then, during the Muromachi period from 1333 to 1568, the Shōgunate, initially formed on the east coast, once again resided in Kyōto, but steadily lost power. With the devastation of the Ōnin War (1467-1477), the city began to decline, eventually consisting of only two separate areas on the eastern half of the city. It was not until the reign of Hideyoshi that reconstruction began in 1580. Only now temples were built within the city, which had been forbidden in the times before. In 1568, a first Christian place of worship was built, which was popularly called Namban-ji.

In the Edo period, beginning in 1603, the political center of Japan finally shifted away from Kyōto to the east coast. Courtly culture continued to be cultivated at the seat of the Tennō.

From the shogunate administration for the city of Kyōto and shogunate or imperial estates in the surrounding countryside, the (in the early years: city) Kyōto prefecture (-fu) was created in the Meiji Restoration, but it expanded to include extensive rural areas in several provinces when the prefectures were consolidated in the 1870s. In 1878/79 the prefectures were divided into counties (-gun) and urban counties/"districts" (-ku), with Kamigyō-ku and Shimogyō-ku established in the Kyōto urban area on April 10, 1879. These became the modern Kyōto County Free City (-shi) on April 1, 1889, as part of the reorganization of Japan's municipal system, and the -ku became boroughs. Until 1898, however, following an exemption of the empire's three largest cities from the city ordinance (shisei tokurei), the city of Kyōto remained without an independent administration and was governed directly by Kyōto's governor. Only then were independent mayors appointed. On April 1, 1929, the new districts of Higashiyama-ku, Nakagyō-ku, and Sakyō-ku were separated from both. On April 1, 1931, a number of surrounding towns were incorporated, creating Fushimi-ku and Ukyō-ku.

In World War II, Kyoto was originally high on the list of targets for the first use of the atomic bomb. In particular, General Leslie R. Groves called for Kyoto to be dropped because its location in a valley would have increased the impact of the blast. However, at the insistence of U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had once visited the city and knew of its cultural significance, it was removed from the list. For the same reason, Kyoto was spared heavy air raids.

On September 1, 1951, Kita-ku was separated from Kamigyō-ku and Minami-ku from Shimogyō-ku. The last change in city division took place on October 1, 1976, when Nishikyō-ku was separated from Ukyō-ku and Yamashina-ku was separated from Higashiyama-ku.

Model of the Heian-kyō of the 8th century


Kyoto, Main Street, 1891