Pontocho Alley

This guide to Pontocho Alley in Kyoto begins around 1603, when a shrine maiden named Okuni gathered a troupe of outcast women on a bare riverbed here and started a rule-breaking dance that gave kabuki its name. It follows the river itself as it vanished underfoot in the 1670s, squeezed into the narrow lane you walk today, and traces how teahouses, boatmen and a hanamachi of geiko and maiko grew up along it over the following two centuries. Look up at the red lattice fronting the buildings, dyed the deep red locals call bengara.