Returning to Kyoto
Having lived in Kyoto twice during my career, I have a rather personal relationship with the city. I have experienced it not only as a researcher, but also as someone who has spent time walking its streets, alleyways, living in different neighbourhoods (in Demachiyanagi and Saiin) and getting to know some of its less obvious corners. I clearly remember the hot and humid summer months, when walking through the narrow streets could be quite exhausting, but also when the small alleys offered moments of shade, unexpected encounters and a different way of experiencing the city.
Returning now, I find that some places are almost unrecognisable, while others seem to have changed in much more subtle ways. Perhaps this is also why the changes are so noticeable to me. It is not simply a matter of buildings disappearing or new businesses appearing. There is a feeling that something about the everyday character of the city is shifting. I find myself wondering whether this is just my perception after having been away, or whether the conditions for living and spending time in these neighbourhoods are genuinely changing.
In this short reflection, I try to return to the question of how these small urban spaces are embedded in the everyday life of Kyoto (Jaeger, 2006). This time, however, I was particularly interested in what happens when the physical fabric remains partly recognisable but the activities, buildings and people associated with it gradually change. Walking through the central city, I was struck by the number of places where the traditional townscape seems to have become fragmented. Behind the main streets, where one might expect to find the smaller scale of Kyoto’s remaining neighbourhoods, there are increasingly parking lots, vacant plots, derelict buildings and rather awkward gaps in the urban fabric. Some of these spaces look temporary, but it is not always clear whether they will ever be built on again in a way that relates to the surrounding neighbourhood.
The parking lot has become a particularly familiar sight. It is a very simple intervention, but its effect is quite considerable. An old house disappears, sometimes several buildings, and suddenly there is an open space where there used to be a much more continuous relationship between buildings and alley. It is not necessarily a public space, of course. It is simply a place to park a car. Yet it changes the character of the street quite fundamentally.
Kawabe and Matsuda (2019) have already documented the disappearance of alleys in central Kyoto. In their study area, the number declined from 424 to 391 between 2006 and 2016, a reduction of 7.78%. They identified redevelopment, the construction of new detached houses and parking lots as important patterns of disappearance. Walking through Kyoto today, I could not help thinking about their findings. What they identified statistically is also something that becomes very visible at street level.
There are other changes, too. Alongside the empty plots and parking spaces, new buildings are appearing. Some are three-storey concrete constructions on relatively narrow plots, sometimes with a façade or roofline that refers loosely to the traditional machiya. I find these particularly interesting, although not always in a positive sense. They seem to reproduce certain visual characteristics of Kyoto’s traditional architecture without necessarily continuing its spatial logic. The relationship between the building, the entrance, the street and the neighbouring properties is often quite different. There are also increasingly tall, rather bamboo-like apartment buildings, rising behind the smaller traditional townscape and creating a very different scale. Of course, cities change and buildings cannot be expected to remain as they were. I am not arguing for a frozen historical city. But there is a difference between allowing a neighbourhood to develop and gradually replacing the particular spatial qualities that made it recognisable in the first place.
What is happening behind the traditional façades?
One of the things that I noticed most was the changing use of buildings. In the central areas, it is increasingly difficult to walk for any length of time without coming across small hotels, guesthouses, holiday rentals, cafés and restaurants. Some of these are beautifully renovated machiya. Others are newly constructed buildings that take up very different forms. Even the narrowest alleys are no longer necessarily residential spaces. There are cafés, eateries and, in some cases, convenience stores tucked into these small streets. There is clearly an economic logic behind this. Kyoto attracts visitors from all over the world, and the historic townscape itself has become an important part of the experience that is being sold.
I do not think that converting an old machiya into a guesthouse is automatically a problem. Some buildings are saved through new uses, and I have seen examples where the renovation is careful and the new use seems to fit reasonably well. But when I walk through some of these areas, I do wonder how many people are still actually living there permanently. There is a difference between a neighbourhood that accommodates visitors and one that increasingly exists for visitors. This is also where the property market needs to be considered. Kyoto’s traditional buildings have acquired a value that goes well beyond their residential use. They are attractive properties, but they are also investment opportunities, accommodation businesses and part of an international market for experiences of traditional Japan.
The involvement of international investors and operators in the machiya tourism market has been documented. Research presented by Modern Kyoto Research, for example, refers to the growing number of foreign investors and operators involved in the conversion of traditional dwellings for tourism. It also reports that non-Japanese licence holders account for more than 27% of its cited sample of simple accommodation operators, with concentrations in Shimogyo and Higashiyama. This should not be confused with the proportion of foreign-owned machiya, for which comprehensive data are not available. Nevertheless, it suggests that the transformation is not only a local property issue but also part of a wider international investment market.
Kato’s (2021) research on tourism gentrification in Kyoto’s Shutoku district is particularly relevant here. It shows how the expansion of simple accommodation can affect the urban fabric and the relationship between property owners, buildings and neighbourhoods. Yoshida and Kato (2024) also identify a statistical relationship between the increase in accommodation facilities and housing prices in Kyoto’s historical centre.
What interests me is what happens after a building has been converted. The façade might remain, the roof might be carefully reconstructed and the building might even look more traditional than it did before. But the people who use it are now different, and the rhythm of the building is different, too. Guests arrive and leave, cleaners come and go, and the building is managed according to the needs of an accommodation business. It is still occupied. But is it still part of the everyday neighbourhood in the same way?
A busy city, but where are the ordinary spaces?
One thing I found quite striking was the number of signs in and around the smaller streets. No sitting, no talking, no rubbish, no smoking, no entering, no photography in some places. I understand why some of these restrictions are necessary. Residents have to deal with noise, rubbish and people standing outside their homes, sometimes taking photographs or looking into private spaces. It would be unfair to dismiss these concerns.
Still, when walking through the city and seeing these signs repeatedly, I began to wonder where people are actually expected to spend time. Where can you sit down for a moment? Where can neighbours have a conversation? Where can children play, or older people meet someone without having to go into a café or restaurant? Where can someone simply be without having to buy something? This is perhaps a rather simple observation, but I think it is important. There seem to be plenty of places where people can spend money, eat, drink, sleep or participate in a tourist experience. But there are fewer obvious places where people can simply stay.
I am not suggesting that every roji should become a public gathering space. Many of them are residential passages, and the distinction between public and private needs to be respected. But the question of where everyday social interaction can take place is becoming increasingly relevant. William H. Whyte wrote in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980): “What attracts people most, it would appear, is other people.” It is a very simple observation, but perhaps this is exactly what is missing from some of the newly developed spaces. A building can be attractive, a street can be clean and a renovated machiya can be architecturally impressive. But none of this necessarily creates opportunities for people to meet. A café provides a place to sit, but usually on the condition that you consume something. A hotel provides accommodation, but not necessarily a relationship with the neighbourhood. A restaurant creates activity, but this is not the same as having a place where local people can meet as part of their ordinary daily lives. The distinction between commercial activity and common space seems to me increasingly important when looking at Kyoto.
Is the urban core slowly hollowing out?
There is something slightly contradictory about walking through central Kyoto. The streets are busy, there are visitors everywhere, and many buildings seem to have found a new economic purpose. At the same time, I have the impression that some of the ordinary residential life is becoming less visible.
I would call this a form of urban hollowing out, although perhaps not in the conventional sense of an empty city. The buildings are not necessarily empty. In fact, they may be occupied more intensively than before. But their relationship with the surrounding neighbourhood is changing. A small family-run shop, a workshop or a residential house contributes to the everyday life of a street in a different way from a hotel or a restaurant. It is not simply a question of what happens inside the building. It is also about the repeated encounters that take place around it, the familiarity with the people who work and live there, and the small exchanges that make a neighbourhood feel inhabited.
This is where I find Jane Jacobs particularly relevant. Her observation that there must be “eyes upon the street” (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961) is often discussed in relation to safety, but it also points to something broader: the importance of ordinary people being present in the city, not just passing through it. I am not sure that all of Kyoto’s central neighbourhoods are losing this quality. There are still local businesses, residents, community organisations and everyday activities. But I do think that the relationship between residential life and commercial activity deserves closer attention. A street can be very busy and still have relatively little neighbourhood life. This is perhaps one of the contradictions of the contemporary tourist city.
Is community life disappearing, or is it changing?
This is a question I cannot really answer just by walking through the streets, but it is something that stayed with me during the fieldwork. Community life in Kyoto has not simply disappeared. There are still neighbourhood associations, local festivals, seasonal events and various activities that bring people together. In some cases, these are very important for maintaining local identity and relationships. But I wonder whether community building is becoming more dependent on such organised occasions.
Historically, at least in the neighbourhoods I have been interested in studying, community was not necessarily something that had to be organised. It happened through everyday encounters. People met because they lived next to each other, because they used the same small streets, because they went to the same shops or because they happened to stop and talk.
These encounters were often quite unremarkable. They were not events, and perhaps nobody would have described them as community building. But they were part of what made everyday neighbourhood life work. Today, some of these conditions seem to be changing. If a house becomes accommodation, if a shop becomes a restaurant for visitors, if the alley becomes increasingly regulated, and if the small open spaces disappear, then the opportunities for these ordinary encounters may also become more limited.
Does this mean that community life is lost? I would be careful about making such a conclusion. Communities are not static, and new relationships can develop around new activities. There may also be new forms of neighbourhood organisation that I have not yet observed. But perhaps we should distinguish between community as something that happens through everyday life and community as something that is organised on particular occasions. A festival can bring people together, but what happens on the other days of the year?
What could be done? Thinking about common spaces
I do not think that the answer is necessarily to reconstruct the old neighbourhood or to bring back an idealised image of the traditional roji. This would be neither realistic nor particularly useful. The city has changed, and its residents have different needs.
But there are possibilities worth considering. Some of the vacant plots and former parking spaces could perhaps be used differently, even temporarily. A small garden, a few benches, a shared space for neighbourhood activities or simply somewhere to sit could make a difference. Not every space needs to be commercially developed or made attractive to visitors. There is also a question of what new buildings could contribute to the street. Could a ground floor include a small shared space? Could a renovated machiya provide a room for local activities rather than being entirely converted into accommodation? Could property owners, neighbourhood associations and the city work together to make some of the spaces between buildings more accessible?
I am particularly interested in the possibility of small, distributed spaces rather than large community facilities. In Kyoto, the scale of the roji and the small plots could offer opportunities for this. A few modest places, close to where people live, might be more useful for everyday encounters than a single larger facility that requires people to make a special journey. There is also a need to think about who manages such spaces. Simply providing benches or planting trees does not automatically create a sense of common ownership. There needs to be some form of local involvement, and the interests of existing residents must remain central.
Kyoto City’s work on the regeneration of roji is relevant in this respect. The challenge is to connect the preservation of the physical alley with the conditions that allow it to remain part of everyday neighbourhood life. Perhaps the question should not only be how to preserve the roji, but how to preserve the possibility of doing ordinary things there.
References
Brumann, C. (2025). From private to public and back? Kyoto’s cityscape councils and the urban commons. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 31(1), 240-263. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14198
Jacobs, J. (1961). The death and life of great American cities. Random House.
Jaeger, H. (2006) Roji Research – Diversity of Alleyways in Kyoto, Kyoto University.
Kato, H. (2021). 京都市中心部における簡易宿所型ジェントリフィケーションが都市組織に与えた影響: 2015年から2019年までの京都市下京区修徳学区を事例として [The impact on urban fabrics of “tourism-gentrification caused by simple accommodations” in the central area of Kyoto City: A case study of the Shutoku District in Kyoto City]. 日本建築学会計画系論文集, 86(783), 1443-1453. https://doi.org/10.3130/aija.86.1443
Kawabe, N., & Matsuda, N. (2019). A study on the disappearance of alleys in central Kyoto: From 2006 to 2016. Japan Architectural Review, 2(4), 545-553. https://doi.org/10.1002/2475-8876.12117
Kyoto City. (2025, April 1). 路地の再生の取組 [Initiatives for the regeneration of alleys]. https://www.city.kyoto.lg.jp/tokei/page/0000331976.html
Modern Kyoto Research. (n.d.). Machiya and the tourism market. https://www.modernkyotoresearch.org/machiya-as-cultural-crossroads/machiya-and-the-tourism-market
Whyte, W. H. (1980). The social life of small urban spaces. Conservation Foundation.
Yoshida, M., & Kato, H. (2024). Housing affordability risk and tourism gentrification in Kyoto City. Sustainability, 16(1), Article 309. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16010309