City transportation map advertising postcard, Kyoto, c. 1920.

City transportation map advertising postcard, Kyoto, c. 1920. Japan’s first streetcar line opened in the old imperial capital in 1895. The solid red lines represent the extent to which Kyoden had expanded streetcar service in the city; red dashes represent planned municipal streetcar expansion. The black lines represent heavy rail connections including the government railroad and interurban private lines. At right-center is Shichijō Teishajō-mae fronting Kyoto Station. The map is framed by one of the city’s iconic five-story pagodas (Yasaka?) and a pair of stylized peace doves. Naniwa-bashi bridge along the bottom of the postcard is a nod to the neighboring commercial center of the region, Osaka.

Kyoto holds the distinction within the country of having opened Japan’s first electric tramway. Following the completion of the Lake Biwa Canal in 1891 and the country’s first hydroelectric power plant, the city utilized the power it produced to initiate a new era of urban mobility.

At a time when Tokyo was still largely reliant on horse-drawn omnibuses, Kyoto’s “chiming” trams became a symbol of the old capital’s rapid late Meiji era modernization during the late Meiji era.

Trams became the backbone of Kyoto daily life, later to be complemented by a growing bus fleet and rapid interurban trains that allowed residents to live in the greener outskirts while working or studying in the historic city center.

Founded in 1895, the Kyoto Electric Railway (“Kyoden”) initially ran a line between Shichijō (near the current Kyoto Station) and Fushimi. As the city grew, the need for an integrated system became apparent.

After the city government established the wide-gauge Kyoto Municipal Electric Railway in 1912 to compete with the narrow-gauge Kyoden lines, much consideration to standardization had to be given when the city line absorbed its privately-owned former competitor in 1918.

Fast forward a decade, by 1930 Kyoto possessed a sophisticated multi-modal network running on more than 30 miles of unified track throughout the city.