"Everyone knew," the wartime narrator of Hisako Matsubara's Kyoto novel "Cranes at Dusk" relates, "there was not a single Japanese city of over a million people that hadn't already been bombed." But Kyoto was spared the destruction, and it is the treasures and accomplishments of this great city, much, though not all, surviving to this day, that form the focal core of John Dougill's new book.
Dougill details the founding of the city, its expansions in benevolent times, retractions in violent ones. Within the biography of the city are human biographies, the book illustrating the lives of its renowned artists, priests, gardeners and writers. Dougill has taken on the role of not merely guide but also art critic, historian, gourmand, collector of oddities. A discerning observer who picks out the choicest morsels from its cultural menu will be traveling in good company, albeit through a city mostly drawn along traditional rather than contemporary grids.
What appears to be free association, literary serendipity, turns out to be carefully crafted structure, the book's transitions effortless, the digressions always fruitful. Dougill is adept at localizing content into its social-temporal context. Writing of the literary preoccupations of the early court, he notes, "Like writers in modern times who turn neurosis into novels, Heian versifiers found release in the ritualistic expression of life's sad beauty."