Butokuden

The Butokuden (Hall of Martial Virtue, now part of the Kyoto City Budo Centre) was regularly featured in tourist guides to the city. 

A traditional timber construction, the Butokuden was added to Okazaki Park complex in 1899, as a demonstration hall for martial arts such as kendo, archery, jujitsu, and judo. Its location just to the west of Heian shrine, and close to the Miyako and other Higashiyama hostelries, meant it could easily be incorporated into tours of eastern Kyoto. 

Terry’s Japanese Empire (1914, 478) guided readers' attention to the “militant idea” symbolized in “the fierce demonlets [sic.] perched on the corner of the tiled roof” and the “cannons brought home from the Russian war” that were displayed outside.” 

Others guidebooks recommended the “amusing” exercises to be watched on Sunday and holidays and “truly exciting” national competitions held each year in May (Akiyama 1937, 177). The Miyako Hotel highlighted the fact that women — a key resource in the mobilisation of Kyoto as tourist resort — also practiced in the Butokuden: “visitors have the rare chance  of admiring the young ladies under quite different circumstances to those which generally connects the fair sex of Japan” (1906, 65).