about kyoto

During the Edo Period (1615-1868), the traditional imperial capital of Kyoto remained a cultural center, turning its artistic attention inward to the highly refined aesthetics of the Way of Tea. The Tea Event synthesized the related arts of poetry, conversation, painting, ceramics, cooking, clothing and architecture under the unifying spiritual sensibility of Zen Buddhism, and became a focus of attention for the Machi-shu, the economically and politically powerful merchant families who for centuries had discreetly counseled the Emperor and strongly influenced Japan's course.

The contrast in patronage between the authoritarian but unsophisticated Shogunate in Edo (the political capital, later called Tokyo) and the mercantile families in Kyoto was reflected in parallel developments in artistic styles. While Edo artists worked within a rigid hierarchy and conformed to conservative stylistic formulae, Kyoto artists and craftsmen were free to find their own way, supported by the sophisticated patronage of the Machi-shu.

As a result, Kyoto developed a new style that combined directly observed realism with a highly refined brush technique, known as Kyo-ha in painting, and expressions of simple, elegant, yet quietly charged beauty in other forms of art developed around the way of tea.