Jiyūtei

Along with the Yaami, the Jiyūtei (自由亭, variously transcribed as Jeutei, Jiutei, Jintei, and the Jeutei Palace Hotel) was considered one of the two “best hotels” in Kyoto during the brief period it operated, from the late 1870s to 1890–91, when references to it in guidebooks come to an end (Keeling 1880, 79). 

Located close to the southern entrance to Yasaka shrine, just across from Nakamura-rō, the Jiyūtei was opened by Kusano Shōkichi (or Jōkichi, 草野丈吉) (1840–1886), a restauranteur from Nagasaki known for opening the first Western food restaurant in Japan. The Kyoto hotel was a branch of the popular restaurant/hotel that Kusano established in Osaka in 1871. As shown in the illustration above from Ishida Yūnen's Miyako no Kai (1883), the Kyoto Jiyūtei was a two-storey building, with twenty guest rooms.

In contrast to the Yaami, there are few reviews of the Kyoto Jiyūtei in English-language travelogues (and scant archives in Japanese), but the descriptions below of the Osaka branch may convey something of its atmosphere, at least as reported by two foreign travellers with very different perspectives.