From Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s mountain villa to the modern monzen-machi, the painters of Kitashirakawa, and the postwar approach to Ginkaku-ji.
An eight-chapter local-history archive, slowly walking through 500 years of Sakyō’s eastern edge,
built on old maps and photographs from Kyoto University and the Kyoto Prefectural Library and Archives.
In 1591, Toyotomi Hideyoshi built a 22.5 km earthen wall (Odoi) around Kyoto. Kitashirakawa lay outside the wall. The 1331 nenbutsu legend at Hyakumanben, the Shiga-goe ancient road, and 130 years of the Ginkaku-ji intersection — traced through primary sources.
CH. 2The 1780 Miyako Meisho-zue by haikai poet Akisato Ritō and Osaka artist Takehara Shunchōsai. Six volumes in eleven fascicles. The teahouses along the Ginkaku-ji approach, the view from the Daimonji bonfire site, and the cherry trees of today’s Philosopher’s Path — bird’s-eye views overlaid on present coordinates.
CH. 3In 1482 the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa began an eight-year construction at the foot of Higashiyama. A 2007 scientific survey confirmed no silver leaf was ever applied. The dōbōshū attendants, Zen’ami’s pond garden modelled on Saihō-ji, the four-and-a-half-mat Dōjinsai inside Tōgudō, the Ocha-no-i spring.
CH. 4Kurokawa Suizan (1882–1944), born in a Nishijin kimono shop in Kyoto, captured Taishō-era Ginkaku-ji on Agfa glass plates. Benrido (founded 1887) and its 1935 Hōryū-ji Kondō mural photography, and the 2025 relaunch of the Rekisaikan “Historical Materials Archive”.
CH. 5In 1916 the Kobe-born Nihonga painter Hashimoto Kansetsu built Hakusasonsō in front of Ginkaku-ji. In 1921, at the suggestion of his wife Yone, he donated about 300 cherry saplings to the city — the “Kansetsu cherries” of the Philosopher’s Path. Nishida Kitarō and the Kyoto School walked the same canal-side path.
CH. 6Food and craft on the alluvial fan at the foot of Mount Hiei. The Jōmon-era Oiwakechō site, the white Shirakawa sand that became Ginkaku-ji’s Ginshadan, the 1888 statistic that 66 of 305 village households were stoneworkers, the Heian-rooted Shirakawa-me flower sellers, and the Bunka-era Shishigatani pumpkin.
CH. 7A 2026 night-walk guide to Ginkaku-ji and the Philosopher’s Path after the tourists leave. A 20-minute back-alley loop, a 40-minute canal walk, 60 minutes of Genji fireflies at Ōtoyo Shrine, dawn walks, and rainy nights along the canal. The August 16 Daimonji bonfire is lit on the mountain due east of Kitashirakawa.
CH. 824,014 medieval documents from Tōji Temple, inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2015. The Konjaku Monogatari Suzuka-bon held by Kyoto University (donated 1991, designated National Treasure 1996). A closing chapter that introduces Kyoto University’s Rare Materials Digital Archive and the Kyoto University Museum.