In the 1960s, the image of "Kyoto's Katsura-rikyu Imperial Villa as shibui'' was spreading around the world. When and how did the word "shibui", which was circulated overseas as a word that expresses "richness in simplicity", become associated with the Katsura-rikyu Imperial Villa? An article by Hiroshi Emoto, a lecturer at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, who pursued the mystery, was published in the authoritative American magazine "Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH)."