The route that we know today as the Nakasendo was actually established long before the Edo period to facilitate travel between the ancient capital of Kyoto and the provinces to the east. At one time it was called the Tosando, or eastern mountain route (as opposed to the Tokaido, or eastern coastal route).
After defeating his rivals at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 (the scene of which we should pass on around day three or four of our walk) and becoming shogun of Japan, Ieyasu Tokugawa moved the capital to Tokyo, or Edo as it was then called. This heralded the beginning of the Edo period (also known as the Tokugawa period), which lasted over 250 years and was a time of great political and cultural change.
Soon after taking power, Tokugawa began work on developing the five major roads that would later become official routes for the use of himself and the other daimyo and to provide the Tokugawa shogunate with the communications network that it needed to stabilize and rule the country. These were the Tokaido and Nakasendo (both linking Kyoto and Edo), the Koshukaido (linking Edo and Kofu to the west), the Oshukaido (linking Edo and Shirakawa to the north), and the Nikkokaido (linking Edo and Nikko, also to the north).
One of the highlights of the Nakasendo was - and still is - the approximately 80km-long section that follows the Kiso Valley from near Magome in the south to near Niegawa in the north. Known in Japanese as Kisoji, this stretch of the Nakasendo was so famous that its name was often used as a synonym for the entire Nakasendo in the form of Kisokaido ("kaido" simply means highway). And so it was that when Hiroshige and Eisen produced their series of woodblock prints of the stations along the Nakasendo, they gave it the title The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido.
Partly in homage to Hiroshige, and partly because I think it just sounds nicer, I've decided that from now on I'll be referring to this project as the Kisokaido Project, dispensing with the rather unwieldy "Nakasendo walk/art project".
Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since blog began: 46.3km
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2 comments:
man-of-words, would you care to translate "Aruku aho ni miru aho! Onaji aho nara arukanya son son!" - think i get the gist but you'd say it so eloquently maybe? doumo
How observant of you, Mr Sanner. To answer your question, it's a bastardization of the famous line from the Awa Odori song: "Odoru aho ni miru aho! Onaji aho nara odoranya son son!" (It's a fool who dances and a fool who watches! If both are fools, you might as well dance!)
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