Tradition, Democracy and the Townscape of Kyoto

Kyoto is both a popular destination for tourists and home to one and a half million inhabitants. There is lively debate about how best to develop the city, involving a variety of stakeholders, forming a particlar social arena that has no match elsewhere in Japan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the book analyses the social tensions and conflicts about the built environment and the public cultural heritage in Kyoto.

Christoph Brumann is Head of Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He is the co-editor of Making Japanese Heritage and the forthcoming Urban Spaces in Japan, both also published by Routledge.

Introduction Part 1: Case Studies 1. The Pont des Arts Controversy 2. A Place with a Past 3. The Manshon Conflicts 4. The revival of the kyô-machiya 5. The Yamaboko Junkô of the Gion Matsuri Part 2: Cross-Cutting Aspects 6. Aesthetics 7. Tradition and Heritage 8. Civil Society and the Power of Institutions 9. Public and Private Space 10. Wider Skies over Kyoto Conclusion: Healing a Wounded City