270px, Site of the ''honjin''. was the forty-ninth of the sixty-nine stations of the

Nakasendō The , also called the ,Richard Lane, ''Images from the Floating World'' (1978) Chartwell, Secaucus ; pg. 285 was one of the five routes of the Edo period, and one of the two that connected Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to Kyoto in Japan. There were 6 ...

connecting Edo with

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

Japan. It is located in former

Mino Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today southern Gifu Prefecture. Mino was bordered by Ōmi to the west, Echizen and Hida to the north, and Shinano to the east, and Ise, Mikawa, and Owari to the south. Its abbreviat ...

in what is now part of the town of Mitake, Kani District,

Gifu Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Gifu Prefecture has a population of 1,991,390 () and has a geographic area of . Gifu Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture to the north; Ishikawa Prefecture to the northwest, F ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

.Nakasendo Mitake-juku
. Ibisoku Co., Ltd. Accessed July 11, 2007. Travelers often came straight to Mitake-juku to avoid the difficult paths near

Hosokute-juku was the forty-eighth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It is located in former Mino Province in what is now part of the city of Mizunami, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

History

The temple of Gankō-ji ( 願興寺) was founded by

Saichō was a Japanese Buddhist monk credited with founding the Tendai school of Buddhism based on the Chinese Tiantai school he was exposed to during his trip to Tang China beginning in 804. He founded the temple and headquarters of Tendai at Enryaku-j ...

, the founder of

Tendai , also known as the Tendai Lotus School (天台法華宗 ''Tendai hokke shū,'' sometimes just "''hokke shū''") is a Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition (with significant esoteric elements) officially established in Japan in 806 by the Japanese m ...

Buddhism in Japan Buddhism has been practiced in Japan since about the 6th century CE. Japanese Buddhism () created many new Buddhist schools, and some schools are original to Japan and some are derived from Chinese Buddhist schools. Japanese Buddhism has had a ...

in 815 AD, and Mitake-juku grew as a temple town in front of the gates of this temple. It was thus a station on the ancient

Tōsandō is a Japanese geographical term. It means both an ancient division of the country and the main road running through it. It is part of the ''Gokishichidō'' system. It was situated along the central mountains of northern Honshu, specifically th ...

highway long before the creation of the Nakasendō. The area was devastated by floods in 995 AD, but the temple and settlement were spared - a fact commemorated in a festival to this date. The temple was repeatedly destroyed by natural disasters and by wars, the last of which was during fighting between

Takeda Shingen , of Kai Province, was a pre-eminent ''daimyō'' in feudal Japan. Known as the "Tiger of Kai", he was one of the most powerful daimyō with exceptional military prestige in the late stage of the Sengoku period. Shingen was a warlord of great ...

and

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period. He is regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. Nobunaga was head of the very powerful Oda clan, and launched a war against other ''daimyō'' to unify ...

in 1572. Many of the structures of the temple date to the late

Sengoku period The was a period in History of Japan, Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the Feudalism, feudal system of Japan under the ...

or early Edo period. When the system of post stations on the Nakasendō was formalized by the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

in 1602, and Mitaka-juku became a stopping place for traveling merchants and for various western ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and n ...

'' on the ''

sankin-kōtai ''Sankin-kōtai'' ( ja, 参覲交代/参覲交替, now commonly written as ja, 参勤交代/参勤交替, lit=alternate attendance, label=none) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period of Japanese history.Jansen, M ...

'' to-and-from the Shogun's court in Edo. Sekigahara is 443 kilometers from Edo. Per the 1843 guidebook issued by the , the town had a population of 600 people in 66 houses, including one ''

honjin The ''honjin'' at Inaba Kaidō's Ōhara-shuku.">Ōhara-shuku.html" ;"title="Inaba Kaidō's Ōhara-shuku">Inaba Kaidō's Ōhara-shuku. is the Japanese word for an inn for government officials, generally located in post stations (''shukuba'') dur ...

'', one ''waki-honjin,'' and 28 ''

hatago were Edo period lodgings for travelers at '' shukuba'' (post stations) along the national highways, including the Edo Five Routes The , sometimes translated as "Five Highways", were the five centrally administered routes, or ''kaidō'', that ...

''. Mitake-juku is 376.4 kilometers from Edo. Modern Mitake-juku is fairly well-preserved. The ''honjin'' (built in 1742) and several ''

machiya are traditional wooden townhouses found throughout Japan and typified in the historical capital of Kyoto. (townhouses) and (farm dwellings) constitute the two categories of Japanese vernacular architecture known as (folk dwellings). orig ...

'', including the Tateya ''hatago'' (built in 1877) still survives, as does the teahouse which was the subject of Hirsohige's print. Mitake-juku has a local museum, the with documents and displays pertaining to the history of the post station.

Mitake-juku in ''The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō''

Utagawa Hiroshige Utagawa Hiroshige (, also ; ja, 歌川広重 ), born Andō Tokutarō (; 1797 – 12 October 1858), was a Japanese ''ukiyo-e'' artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format l ...

's ''

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

'' print of Mitake-juku dates from 1835 -1838. The print depicts travelers preparing to depart the station in the early morning. A notice on the front of the open-fronted teahouse proclaims "kichinyago", which was a restaurant with cheap lodgings. Inside are four travelers around a large cauldron, one of whom is talking with the mistress of the house, and on the porch is a man tying on his sandals. Outside, a woman, possibly a vendor, has two buckets suspended from a pole on her shoulder, while an old woman nearby is rubbing out a bucket by a stream. In the distance, a heavily laden man struggles up the hill, and

Mount Ontake , also referred to as , is the 14th highest mountain and second highest volcano in Japan (after Mount Fuji) at . It is included in ''100 Famous Japanese Mountains''. Description Mt. Ontake is located around northeast of Nagoya, and around 200& ...

can be seen as a shadow in the far distance.

Neighboring Post Towns

;Nakasendō :

References

* * * *

External links

Hiroshige Kiso-Kaido seriesMitake-juku on Kiso Kaido RoadGifu Nakasendo Guide

Notes

{{Nakasendō Stations of the Nakasendō Post stations in Gifu Prefecture Mitake, Gifu Mino Province