Kyoto At Midnight By Diane Durston

Kyoto at midnight is an astonishing sight, like Paris. The streets are filled with people on their way to and from cultural events. Some are wearing kimono, others are in Armani or Yamamoto.

Kyoto's is a very different sensibility from that of fast-paced, ultra-modern, development-minded" Tokyo. Indeed it was the capital for a thousand years before a cluster of small villages on Tokyo Bay became a city. Kyoto is changing rapidly, however. Diane Durston is the author of Old Kyoto and Kyoto: Seven Paths to the Heart of the City ($11.95 and 9.95 respectively from Putnam Publisbing, P 0. Box 506, East Rutherford, Nj 07073; 8001631-8571). She is an expert on the traditional arts, architecture, and culture of Kyoto, and one of the leaders in the
now, and still in his pajamas, the old man sputters down the canal to make his morning call on the local Shinto kamisama (who apparently sleeps later than the Buddha). With a resolute clang of the shrine bell and two claps of old-soldier hands, he has now succeeded in awakening not only the gods, but the entire neighborhood for good. Ducks squawk. A delivery boy on a motorbike cuts the corner too close, incurring the old man's innocuous wrath. No one sleeps late in Horiike-cho. There is much to be shared in old Kyoto neighborhoods. From morning yawns to evening squabbles, the thin walls of the traditional wood-frame houses hold no secrets. Beneath their tiled rooftops, everyone knows everyone and everything: whose kid has colic, who had what for dinner, who left home at what hour. The popular local greeting is "Good morning.

Where are you going? "

It's a communal thing. You take turns sweeping up after the garbage trucks pass. Shopkeepers and housewives dust the street in front of their doorsteps, dousing the pavement each day with water. Keeping things tidy, keeping life tidy. We're still "family" in Kyoto - the streets are safe, and people belong. Many folks still work within five blocks of home. Not much crime in neighborhoods like these. Hell hath no wrath like your next-door neighbor's scorn.

Today, however, the Age of High-rise and Hamburger Stand has arrived in the ancient
Founded in 794, it has withstood flood, famine, and fire, springing back each time to rebuild itself, fostering a culture unparalleled in history. Civil wars raged through its streets throughout the middle ages. In 1864, a revolt restored the Emperor Meiji to power and caused the last of many Great Fires, leaving 80 percent of its homes in ashes. The people rebuilt.

In 1945, the Enola Gay skipped Kyoto, originally intended as Target A for the A-bomb that struck Hiroshima. A last-minute decision on the part of U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson spared the city out of respect for its history and art. Because of this, it's the only city in which the traditional urban landscape of pre-war Japan can still be found. Stimson had seen it once, before the war, on a trip with his wife - and had not forgotten.

Unfortunately, it is in the process of being forgotten now. While it is true that dozens of monumental structures in the form of temples and shrines have been preserved in Kyoto, it is the fabric of the city itself that is being lost. There is Big Money to be had in dealing land in Japan. One plot of land (15 by 30 feet) on a sidestreet in midtown sold for $800,000 last year, and the prices this year have quadrupled. A square meter of land in downtown Kyoto is now worth five times that of the same square meter in Manhattan, making land prices in Kyoto among the highest in the