The Nakasendō

1 · POSITION

The Nakasendō is the inland road between Edo and Kyoto, about 534 kilometres through the mountains, with sixty-nine post stations between Nihonbashi and the Sanjō bridge. It was the alternative to the coastal Tōkaidō. The register enters it for the two post towns on it that kept their Edo form — and for the way they kept it. [1, 2]

2 · THE KISO ROAD

Part of it follows the Kisoji, the older road through the Kiso valley. Magome, the forty-third station, was the last of the Kisoji’s eleven. In 1843 it had one honjin, one waki-honjin and eighteen hatago for 69 houses and 717 people. Fires in 1895 and 1915 destroyed much of it; it has been restored to its Edo appearance, and the novelist Shimazaki Tōson, born there, is buried in its cemetery. [2]

3 · TSUMAGO’S PROMISE

In 1968 the people of Tsumago, the forty-second station, began restoring their town, and by 1971 they had agreed a charter that no place in Tsumago should be sold, hired out or destroyed. It was designated a national architectural preservation site in 1976. Its waki-honjin survives and became an Important Cultural Property in 2001; the honjin, lost, was rebuilt in 1995. [3]

4 · THE WALK BETWEEN

A quiet stretch of the original road survives between Magome and Tsumago, through forest and past waterfalls, over a pass of about eight hundred metres. It is the stretch of the road now walked for its own sake. [2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The common reason given for choosing the Nakasendō over the Tōkaidō — fewer river crossings — is not stated by the sources read and is not repeated. The length of the Magome–Tsumago walk is not given by the source; the eight hundred metres is the height of the pass. [1–3]