Kyoto, before dawn

Kyoto was built in A.D. 794 on the model of the ancient Chinese capital, and it served as the imperial capital of Japan until the middle of the 19th century. A city that held that role for more than a thousand years does not need to be hurried through. The sensible response is a small base, an early start, and a short list: one district, one temple a day, and the rest left for another visit.

Make the base Gion. Kyoto City's official tourism site describes how the area developed as a town near the gate of Yasaka-jinja Shrine, and how it remains a district where geiko and maiko live. Its streets are lined with tea houses and Japanese restaurants, alongside bars, cafes and general stores. That mixture matters. Gion is not a set preserved behind glass; it is a working neighbourhood whose older buildings still do the work they were built for.

The street to learn first is Hanami-koji. Along it, the machiya, the wooden townhouses of the district, present a composed face to the street: timber, lattice and bamboo screens, with little announced and much withheld. It is a handsome arrangement, and a private one. The official guidance is plain on the practical point: Hanami-koji has a lot of traffic, so walk at its edges and keep out of the middle of the road.

For the one temple, choose Kennin-ji, at the quieter end of the district in Higashiyama. The Rinzai Zen head-temple records state that Kennin-ji was established in 1202, with the monk Myoan Yosai, also rendered Eisai, as its founding abbot, and that it was the first major temple associated with the Rinzai Zen school to be established in Kyoto. It began by combining Zen with Tendai and Shingon practice, and became a purely Zen institution under its eleventh abbot, Lanxi Daolong. A morning given to one precinct of that depth is better spent than an afternoon divided among five.

The wider frame explains the discipline. UNESCO's Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, inscribed in 1994, consist of seventeen component parts in Kyoto, Uji and Otsu, covering 1,056 hectares in total. Most of their 198 buildings and twelve gardens were built or designed between the 10th and the 17th centuries. No itinerary absorbs that in a few days, and none should try. One temple a day is not restraint for its own sake; it is the proportion the city itself suggests.

Walk before dawn, then, while the streets are still the residents' own, and walk quietly. Kyoto City asks visitors to keep their voices down in residential areas, to stay out of private property, and to respect the places where photography is prohibited, which in Gion are many. Above all, the geiko and maiko encountered on these streets are on their way to work and to lessons. The appreciation the district deserves is expressed by leaving it, and its people, in peace.