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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how Emperor Meiji's move from Kyoto sparked a movement to "reimagine" Japan's ancient capitals. Starting in Kyoto and spreading to Nara and Naha, the resulting historical reconstructions and festivals shaped local and national identity and modern heritage preservation policies.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores how the Meiji Emperor’s departure from Kyoto in the late 1860s triggered a surge of interest in Japan’s ancient capitals, prompting academics and the general public to create new physical and conceptual reinterpretations of history. As the urban center most profoundly affected by the Emperor's move, Kyoto served as the primary laboratory for these initiatives, which involved the placement of stone markers to identify sites of significant historical landmarks, the partial rebuilding of the Heian palace, and the inauguration of a festival designed to visually narrate Kyoto’s history. Moreover, the festival in particular would quickly become a means to unify old and new Kyoto citizens as the city rapidly expanded in the following decades. These re-imaginings also influenced other former capitals, resulting in a dedicated push to research those cities’ origins, local movements to recreate long-lost structures and establish new festivals. During the first half of the twentieth century the heritage of the former Ryukyu Kingdom was also integrated into this trend and presented as part of Japanese national identity. This paper argues that the survival of its palace architecture is largely due to reconstruction strategies pioneered in Kyoto thirty years prior. Furthermore, beyond the obvious parallels in palace (re)construction, these undertakings shared deeper ties, including an oscillation of the reconstructed buildings between sacred ritual sites and public monuments, a growing reliance on archaeological findings to support the reconstruction efforts, and their instrumental role in shaping broader Japanese policies regarding the protection and exhibition of its heritage.