From the window of my room at the hotel, the Gion Kaburenjo Theater rises in dark timber, crowned by a traditional tiled roof. Along the stone-paved lane that runs between the two buildings, a young woman passes by in jeans and a cardigan with a canvas bag over her shoulder. Only her distinctive, rounded coiffure ¡ª sculpted from her own hair and worn unchanged for a full year ¡ª gives her away as a maiko (apprentice geisha) on her way home from practice.
Kyoto¡¯s Miyagawacho is one of just five remaining kagai, or geisha districts, in a city that has spent centuries perfecting the art of preservation. For all its mystique, it is a working neighborhood and newly home to Capella Kyoto, which occupies the site of Shinmichi Elementary School between the Kaburenjo theatre and Kenninji, Kyoto¡¯s oldest Zen Buddhist temple.
Acclaimed architect Kengo Kuma was commissioned with a major three-part development along Shinmichi Street: the hotel itself, the restored Kaburenjo ¡ª the training ground of Kyoto¡¯s geiko (a regional term for geisha) and maiko, and still a working theater ¡ª and a new community center. The three buildings share a coherent vocabulary of carved timber and slatted screens; the theater¡¯s gable, with its characteristic concave-convex curve, is echoed in the awning above the hotel¡¯s inner courtyard. The paved walkway between hotel and theater, where I first glimpsed the off-duty maiko, was laid under the direction of NTT Urban Development ¡ª the owner of Capella Kyoto ¡ª and opened as a public thoroughfare to encourage foot traffic between the buildings.
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