La Neige is located in Fushimi Momoyama in the south end of Kyoto city. It is the castle town of Hideyoshi Toyotomi named Fushimi Castle, which was built during the late 16th century.
The form of tea ceremony was established in Japan at that time, and the room or hut for conducting tea ceremonies is called chashitsu.
Chashitsu of that era, I guess, was not only for doing the tea ceremony, but for showing the latest forms of art from all over the world, introducing people to people, and/or exchanging important and condensed information over a bowl of tea. It may sound like a salon of aristocrats in Europe, yet it might still be a little different. In my opinion, the most wonderful rule the chashitsu has is that people of different social classes are to act as equals once they enter. The entrance of the chashitsu is originally designed so low that even a king has to bow in order to enter. By that action, the hierarchy disappears.
Here is another story about the art environment in Japan in the 1980's (or even now). I love art and music because I grew up surrounded by those things, but I did not like to visit big art museums because they are always/mostly very crowded, and it was therefore difficult to see the art works - all I could see were the heads of a crowd of people. I also did not like art galleries where the behavior of the staff showed their only goal was to sell things, and not for showing the works. Nor do I like places that are only meant for the artist and his or her friends, whose owner has the ability to promote young artists, but the interior of the galleries are not beautiful or sophisticated at all, but just dirty.
. So I decided to make a space for the kind of art of which I wanted to be a visitor.
Thinking about the place, I remembered that I had a small space in my north garden, where my grandmother used to tell us to build an ordinary chashitsu in the future.
Then, I realized that what I wanted to have as the place for art is a chashitsu like the time, my home town, Fushimi Momoyama was the old de facto capital of Japan. It is not located in Tokyo nor the center of Kyoto, but in order to build this contemporary chashitsu, the location should be here!!
So I decided to make a chashitsu of our era in that place, which I had already inherited as a member of a family that produces the sake (Japanese rice wine) of Fushimi.
I knew the new chashitsu of mine would be an international one. I knew it from my experience of participating in an international camp, where kids from 11 different countries gathered. I learned then, I guess in order to be global, one should be local at the same time.
Our town Fushimi Momoyama is an important hub for traffic. It is connected to central Kyoto, Shiga, Nara, and Osaka. It takes only 10 minutes to take a train trip from Kyoto station to Momoyama station, and from there it is a 2-minute walk to La Neige. It only takes 10 minutes to walk from La Neige to Momoyamagoryomae station of the Kintetsu line, Fushimi Momoyama station of the Keihan line, and Kangetsukyo station of the Keihan Uji line, respectively. We are open to everybody, and the people here are open-minded.
By using La Neige as a place for awareness by meeting new people, new things, and especially contemporary music and art, I want to end the prejudice among people and make the world more beautiful and peaceful.
Yuki Yomo, the owner
