To the visitor who does not cross that threshold, who does not enter the temples, the gardens and the few areas which remained unchanged during the feverish economic growth of the post-war era, the ancient capital would appear as a “mediocre, pseudo-modern city like many others”, only moderately benefiting from the impressive but sporadic intervention of architects such as Arata Isozaki and Tadao Ando.

This urban exploration shows a side of Kyoto which results from the city’s transformation during the past few decades and stops on the threshold of a different Japan, where “beauty is an initiatory path, needs to be deserved, is the prize for a long, sometimes painful research, the final intuition, a jealously guarded possession”.