Japan: Kyoto

Kyoto (originally Heian-kyo, "capital of peace and tranquility") was the capital of Japan for the thousand years before the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and the accompanying shift of Japan's capital to Tokyo. Today, Kyoto is a city of a million and a half people, but its deep history is evident in its siting and layout, for like an ideal Chinese city Kyoto's streets are laid out in a cardinally oriented grid, protected by mountains on the west, north, and east. The city's pride is its many Buddhist temples, which rose to prominence during the city's long reign as the national capital. During this period, Buddhism subordinated (or swallowed) the indigenous Shinto religion, which regained its vitality only with the Meiji Restoration. Most of the folders here are of these Buddhist temples, as the suffix "-ji" indicates.

Kyoto was spared by World War II, but it suffered no end of conflagrations in earlier centuries, most recently in 1864. Apart from the pattern of gridded streets, with its echo of China, most streetscapes give little indication of the city's antiquity, and the city boasts at least one ultra-modern megastructure.