Gion

Gion has been trying to manage visitor behaviour for years. A first attempt in 2019 posted no-photography notices on private lanes and introduced the ¥10,000 figure. It did not work. The 2024 measure went further and closed the lanes themselves to anyone who is not a resident or a customer of a business on them.

What this does not mean is that Gion is closed. Hanamikoji itself is a public street and you may walk it, as is the Shirakawa canal area to the north, Yasaka Shrine at the eastern end and Kenninji temple to the south. The closure applies specifically to the narrow private alleys that run off Hanamikoji between the ochaya teahouses.

The enforcement is social rather than legal in practice – there is no police cordon, and the ¥10,000 is a notice posted by the residents’ association rather than a municipal fine schedule. But the signs are unambiguous, they are in English, and walking past them is a choice you are making about somebody’s front door.

Kyoto has a large and profitable maiko-makeover industry. For a few thousand yen a visitor gets the white face, the wig, the hikizuri kimono and two hours to walk around in it, and Higashiyama in the afternoon is full of the results. They are usually easy to spot once you know: the walk is wrong, the group is wrong, and no working maiko is posing for photographs outside a souvenir shop at two in the afternoon.

Real geiko and maiko do appear, mainly between about 17:30 and 18:30, walking briskly between the teahouse where they are booked and the car that brought them. They are at work. Blocking one to photograph her is the behaviour the alley closures exist to stop.

If you want to actually see geiko perform, that is a ticket, not a street. The Miyako Odori at Gion Kobu Kaburenjo in April and the Gion Odori in November are public dances with seats, and there are afternoon performances aimed at visitors at Gion Corner. Those are the honest routes in.

The best part of Gion is not Hanamikoji. It is Shirakawa, north of Shijo – a short canal lined with willows and machiya, stone-flagged, with small bridges and restaurant frontages backing straight onto the water. At dusk it is as good as Kyoto gets, and it carries a fraction of Hanamikoji’s numbers.

Yasaka Shrine at the eastern end is open all hours and free, and its lanterns at night are worth the detour. It is also the shrine at the centre of Gion Matsuri in July. Kenninji, Kyoto’s oldest Zen temple, sits at the southern end of Hanamikoji and takes almost none of the passing traffic despite being fifty metres from it.

Realistically Gion is twenty minutes of walking plus whatever you stop for. The right way to use it is as the end of the walk down from Kiyomizu-dera, arriving at dusk, and then eating – Izuu is in the Gion backstreets and Kikunoi is a short walk up toward Maruyama Park.