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Imperial capital for more than a millennium, Kyoto has been the birthplace of most of what is now considered to be quintessential Japanese culture. For all the damage that has occurred over the centuries, for all the relentless and destructive modernization still taking place today, Kyoto remains a rich, inexhaustible archive of Japanese cultural history. Houses and Gardens of Kyoto introduces a broad array of KyotoÆs traditional houses from every period of the cityÆs history. They range from summer villas for the aristocracy to townhouses for ordinary citizens, from monumental Buddhist temples to insubstantial garden pavilions, from personal homes to traditional inns. All have their associated outdoor spaces, whether condensed courtyard gardens, picturesque stroll gardens, dry landscape stone gardens, or the borrowed scenery of distant landscapes. Both exquisite photo album and fascinating historical study, Houses and Gardens of Kyoto is sure to be the standard reference work on this topic for many decades to come.