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Paper short abstract:

While Kyoto is promoted to tourists as tranquil, ancient and premodern, modern war and conflict have transformed the city, leaving major war memorials. I will trace Kyoto’s modern development and several such memorials to explore how war and conflict have been utilized and excluded in tourism.

Paper long abstract:

Contemporary tourism promotion of Kyoto differs little from the city’s designation more than 1,200 years ago as the “Capital of Eternal Peace and Tranquility” (heiankyo). Clichéd images of serene shrines, graceful traditions and verdant nature place Kyoto in an eternally peaceful, premodern past dislocated from modern international turmoil. Tourism marketers have no shortage of assets to help perpetuate this portrait: a plethora of Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and gardens; symbols of Japanese culture such as flower arrangement and tea ceremony; and buildings that have seemingly remained unchanged from premodern times. Despite these images, and the hopes of its founders, Kyoto has been ravaged by fire, earthquakes and war, and transformed by the global forces of modernization. Among the symbols of ancient Kyoto, however, exist memorials to international and domestic wars. In this paper, I will draw on my research into a number of such places, including Ryozen Kannon, a Buddhist memorial to the dead of WWII, the Mimizuka mound for those slayed in Japan’s 16th century invasion of the Korean Peninsula, and Kyoto’s Gokoku Shrine, which is both a precursor to the national Yasukuni Shrine and encompasses a major cemetery for the dead of the bakumatsu civil war. Alongside the urban transformation of Kyoto, I will trace the modern histories of these sites and explore the ways war and conflict have been variously utilized and excluded from Kyoto tourism.