Artists have been meeting for thirty years at Villa Kujoyama, a narrow concrete fortress planted since 1992 on the side of Mount Higashiyama.
Despite the beauty of the site, its dense greenery and its Olympian calm, it remains, for the elders of Kyoto, synonymous with the historic site of executions and the ghosts that are attached to it.
The small winding road that comes from the center east of Kyoto seems to separate two worlds.
Below, that of the imperial and tourist city, with a grid plan and 2000 temples, shrines, palaces and Japanese gardens.
At the top, as if clinging to nature, this silent enclave where France, thanks to the ambassador and poet Paul Claudel, decided, in 1927, to seal the Franco-Japanese friendship with a first building which fell, fifty years later, into oblivion.
The neighborhood is glorious.
Just below stood, until recently, the residence of David Bowie.
On the other side of the path, hides a wooden house from the Meiji era with its moss garden and…
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