What is it?
Around 1993/94 the CD-ROM really hit the computing population—at that time still a minority. And for a while, it was not just a medium in the technical sense, it was a medium like movies, books, or records are media. These early CD-ROMs often could not be clearly categorized as "games" or "infotainment" or "reference". They were CD-ROMs.
One of the weirder and most interesting CD-ROMs of the time was The Cosmology of Kyoto. It is quite definitely a game, an adventure game, though it could be used in reference mode as a database of over 400 screens of text and pictures that gives background information for the time and place where you are in the game. I did not get very far so I'll leave talking mostly to those that have.
Like most CD-ROMs of the time, The Cosmology of Kyoto was available for The Mac and for Windows, not for DOS. Mac and Windows versions came on seperate CDs. The Windows version will run on a modern computer.
Other games that incorporate Japanese culture, though of course none of them as thorough, Sword of the Samurai and Throne of Darkness (both of which are very well researched), The Last Ninja, and, though to a lesser extent, Geisha and Karateka.
What makes Cosmology of Kyoto truly remarkable is that as you enter the town and interact with its inhabitants, you have only two choices. You can, in your arrogance, remain as you are, a contemporary Japanese or American, for example. And you won't get very far. The structure of relations that are the real art of the work won't let you. It does not allow this nonchalance with meaning. A more interesting choice is to try and understand the world as it would have appeared to a person of the time. Then you start to make your decisions, when you meet the guard, or the priest, or the gambler, according to someone else's meaning making map of Kyoto, and indeed of the world. You work within the constraints the artists have placed in the matrix of relations that are the art of this work. The look and feel of it are just window dressing. They are not art, they are design. The art is the in the relations. Follow along the line of those relations, and you learn what it means to be in the world as the world appears from the point of view of Pure Land Buddhism.
The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side with the divine.
Cosmology of Kyoto, Yano Electric's unique CD-ROM title that is a cultural adventure set in the ancient capital of Heian-kyo (now Kyoto) some 1000 years ago, has sold only 4,000 units in Japan. While not a cash cow, it has made the company a respected content creator. The CD-ROM's relatively poor showing in Japan has been blamed on its depiction of the city as a desolate Middle-Ages slum infested with demons, thieves, and throat-slitting wayward samurai. The average Japanese, nurtured from the cradle with an idyllic image of the imperial capital as a paragon of art, beauty, peace, and harmony, may suffer from culture shock on viewing the CD-ROM. The gloomy setting of Cosmology of Kyoto, however, is asserted to be closer to the historical reality of those times, and it ushers the user through a mind-bending trip into Japanese culture, traditions, and beliefs that are still relevant today.
