Institut für Kunstgeschichte Ostasiens The Animals of Kyoto: Unearthing and Picturing the Forgotten Residents of Japan’s Imperial Capital

This lecture explores the vibrant and often overlooked role of animals in the cultural and environmental history of early modern Kyoto. Drawing on visual and material sources, including ceramics by Nonomura Ninsei and painted screens from temple and palace collections, it reconsiders the city’s seventeenth-century rebirth through a posthumanist lens. Animals were not merely background figures in urban life; they were laborers, resistors, symbols, and subjects of aesthetic fascination. From oxen and falcons to monkeys and mythical lions, nonhuman residents shaped Kyoto’s ecology, economy, and imagination. By blending environmental history, art history, and ecocriticism, this talk argues for a multispecies understanding of Japan’s imperial capital and reflects on the limits of anthropocentric narratives in urban historiography.