In Gion, putting up a new building is next to impossible. So this hotel did not put one up. It moved into a building that was already standing.
That building is the Yasaka Kaikan, the work of Tokusaburo Kimura, and it has stood here for close to a hundred years; it is a Registered Tangible Cultural Property of Japan, and one of the buildings Kyoto has designated as forming the historic character of the city. The Imperial Hotel did not flatten it and start again: the main block has been kept as it was and repaired, with a north wing added on the same piece of ground. So a building of nearly a century goes on living in Gion — only that from now on, guests are received in the Imperial Hotel's way.
Once you are staying, the layers of time are something you can touch. There are guest rooms inside the preserved part, so the place you sleep is the building itself; and in other rooms there is tatami underfoot. The house has never done that before, and Kyoto is finally written into the space itself.
The eating is not casual either. One French room brings the kitchen out in front of you: the cook is a step away, and you can hear what is happening in the pan. Another is open from morning until night, with wood burning in the hearth and the heat of the fire reaching you from several paces off. The bar carries on the manner of the old main building. The roof is open to residents only; go up in the early evening and Higashiyama darkens by degrees across from you, just as the lights of Gion below begin to come on.
The whole house has only fifty-odd rooms. The name does not work this way elsewhere, and for someone staying it means the attention has room to spare, rather than being the portion handed to you off a line.
By the following morning you may have a strange impression: that you are not staying in a hotel which happens to occupy a cultural property, but that you are one guest within this building's hundred years, with a great many before you.
On the day you check out, Gion is the same Gion. What has changed is that it is no longer a street you passed through looking about you. You have slept here, and you have seen it grow light.