Chion-in

The first “Western-style hotel” in Kyoto was not, strictly speaking, a hotel. For the 770 foreign visitors who entered Kyoto for the 1872 exposition, the organizing committee arranged a range of different classes of accommodation, including nineteen inns in the Maruyama and Kawaramachi areas and five subtemples of Chion-in (Kudō 2008). British Minister Harry Parkes had been quartered at Chion-in on the occasion of his infamous 1868 audience with the Meiji Emperor at the Imperial Palace, when his party was attacked by anti-foreigner samurai. In 1872, organizers went to great efforts to provide guests with a very different kind of welcome: “first-class” European and American hospitality, including specially-made furniture, and food and drink imported from San Francisco. Chion-in continued as one of the most popular tourist attractions in Kyoto for the next seventy years and beyond but, as accommodation for foreigners, it was immediately eclipsed by newly redesigned and rebuilt hostelries in the area.