ABSTRACT
The history of Japan’s old capital at Kyoto, now a favorite venue for world tourism and recently listed as ninth by The Japan Times (6/25, 2016) among today’s most livable cities, needs more attention. Kyoto served as the center of the realm of the Heavenly Sovereign (tennō; most commonly rendered in English as emperor) from the turn of the ninth century through the late nineteenth century, when the monarch moved east to today’s Tokyo.
