日本京都的详细英文介绍!

Kyoto (京都市, Kyōto-shi?) listen (help·info) is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.

Although archaeological evidence places the first human settlement on the islands of Japan to approximately 10,000 BC, relatively little is known about human activity in the area before the 6th century AD. During the 8th century, when the powerful Buddhist clergy became involved in the affairs of the Imperial government, the Emperor chose to relocate the capital to a region far from the Buddhist influence. Emperor Kammu selected the village of Uda, at the time in the Kadono district of Yamashito Province, for this honor.[1]

The new city, Heian-kyō (平安京 "tranquility and peace capital"), became the seat of Japan's imperial court in 794, beginning the Heian period of Japanese history. Later, the city was renamed Kyoto ("capital city"). Kyoto remained Japan's capital until the transfer of the government to Edo in 1868 at the time of the Imperial Restoration. (Some believe that it is still a legal capital: see Capital of Japan.) After Edo was renamed Tokyo (meaning "Eastern Capital"), Kyoto was known for a short time as Saikyo (西京 Saikyō, meaning "Western Capital").

An obsolete spelling for the city's name is Kioto; it was formerly known to the West as Meaco or Miako (Japanese: 都; miyako "capital"). Another term commonly used to refer to the city in the pre-modern period was Keishi (京师), meaning "metropolis" or "capital".

The city suffered extensive destruction in the ?nin War of 1467-1477, and did not really recover until the mid-16th century. Battles between samurai factions spilled into the streets, and came to involve the court nobility (kuge) and religious factions as well. Nobles' mansions were transformed into fortresses, deep trenches dug throughout the city for defense and as firebreaks, and numerous buildings burned. The city has not seen such widespread destruction since. Although there was some consideration by the United States of targeting Kyoto with an atomic bomb at the end of World War II, in the end it was decided to remove the city from the list of targets due to the "beauty of the city" (See Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and the city was spared conventional bombing as well.

As a result, Kyoto is the only large Japanese city that still has an abundance of prewar buildings, such as the traditional townhouses known as machiya. However, modernization is continually breaking down the traditional Kyoto in favor of newer architecture, such as the Kyoto Station complex.

Kyoto became a city designated by government ordinance on September 1, 1956. In 1997, Kyoto hosted the conference that resulted in the protocol on greenhouse gas emissions that bears the city's name.

A common English pronunciation of Kyoto has three syllables as /key-oh-toe/ [k?i'ot?]; however, the Japanese pronunciation has only two: [k?o?to].

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Kyoto became the imperial capital in the late eighth century when Emperor Kammu relocated the court from Nara . His first choice was Nagaoka, southwest of today's Kyoto, but a few inauspicious events led the emperor to move again in 794 AD. This time he settled on what was to be known as Heian-kyo , "capital of peace and tranquillity", which he modelled on the Chinese Tang-dynasty capital Chang'an (today's Xi'an). The new city was built on a rectangular grid of streets, symmetrical about a north-south axis, with the Imperial Palace to the north and the main entrance in the south. By the late ninth century the city was already overflowing onto the eastern hills and soon had an estimated population of 500,000. For the aristocrats at least, it was a life of exquisite refinement, characterized by boating parties and poetry-writing competitions, while Japanese arts were evolving their own identity independent of earlier Chinese influences.

From then on the city had a rather roller-coaster ride. In the late twelfth century a fire practically destroyed the whole place, but two centuries later the Ashikaga shoguns were busily building some of the city's finest monuments, among them the Golden and Silver Pavilions (Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji). Many of the great Zen temples were established at this time and the arts reached new levels of sophistication. Once again, however, almost everything was lost during the Onin Wars (1467-78), which were waged largely within the city over an Ashikaga succession dispute.

Kyoto's knight in shining armour, however, was Toyotomi Hideyoshi , who came to power in 1582 and sponsored a vast rebuilding programme. The Momoyama period , as it's now known, was a golden era of artistic and architectural ostentation epitomized by Kyoto's famous Kano school of artists , who decorated the temples and palaces with their sumptuous, gilded screens. Even when Tokugawa Ieyasu moved the seat of government to Edo (now Tokyo) in 1603, Kyoto remained the imperial capital and stood its ground as the nation's foremost cultural centre. While the new military regime went in for extravagant displays of power, such as the Nijo-jo palace built for Ieyasu but rarely used, the emperor and his cohorts cocked a snook at such lack of taste by developing a talent for superb understatement in their architecture, gardens, arts and even everyday utensils; the rustic simplicity of the tea ceremony also evolved during this period. Undoubtedly, this sudden delight in simplicity was born partly from necessity, but it nevertheless spawned many of the crafts for which Kyoto is now famous.

In 1788 another huge conflagration swept through the city, but worse was to come; in 1868 the new Emperor Meijimoved the court to Tokyo. Kyoto went into shock and the economy foundered - but not for long. In the 1890s a canal was built from Biwa-ko to the city, and Kyoto, like the rest of Japan, embarked on a process of modernization . This has continued to this day - amidst growing controversy in recent years - as Kyoto attempts to catch up with Tokyo and Osaka. Though many traditional wooden houses have been lost to developers, the city narrowly escaped a worse fate. At the end of World War II Kyoto featured high on the list of potential targets for the Atom Bomb, but was famously spared by American Defence Secretary, Henry Stimson, who recognized the city's supreme architectural and historical importance.

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