Imagine a dark room, soft footsteps on the tatami, a pair of Japanese screens, each

ten feet wide and tall as a moon. Covered in gold clouds, the glitter in the candlelight.

The clouds part. Beneath them hundreds of tiny figures populate the surface, the inhabitants of Kyoto.

The imagery is miniaturist and minute. The kinds of details that you would expect to see in an

illuminated manuscript, for example. They're that scale.

What this allows is for the viewer to imagine himself or herself actually in the city and

walking around in it. And I think one of the main features of them is this feeling of being there,

of the illicit. Come closer. Closer. Closer.

Welcome to Moving Pictures. I'm Kathy Fitzgerald and this episode we're going to take a walk around

17th century Kyoto, as depicted in a pair of very fragile, very beautiful, Japanese screens.

The screens belong to a genre called Raku-chu Raku-Gaizu, which translates as scenes in and

around Kyoto. The real things are kept in the Shimani Museum, a few hundred miles to the west

of Kyoto, but they've been photographed by Google Arts and Culture at incredibly higher resolution.

And if you've got a computer, tablet or phone handy, you can zoom in and look at the details as

we explore. Just click on the link to the image from the Moving Pictures page of the BBC World

Service website. The screens swarm with people and places. It is easy to get lost in them as in

any new city. So here are two tips to help you get your bearings. First, the two screens were looking

a shown one above the other in the image. And second, they're each made from six panels.

You can see the lines where they hinge and fold.

Scene one. Shopping.

My favorite bit of arriving in any new city is always that first plunge out into the streets.

It's all noise, emotion and difference. So that's where we're going to start our wander around the screen.

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