Earlier this year the Kyoto Shimbun published this book of painted photographs of Kyoto: “Bakumatsu Ishin: Saishoku no Kyoto” (colorful Kyoto in the period around the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and Meiji Restoration).

I happened to buy one on the second day after publication; there was a table set up outside the geisha dance theater during the spring dances. The book is page after page of great old hand-painted photos, and of course the real fun is in comparing then and now.

Here’s Nijo Castle and my picture from last year.

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