was the twenty-eighth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in what is now the central part of the city of Iwata,

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

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 ...

. The post station received its name, which means "with a view," because it was the first place from which

Mount Fuji , or Fugaku, located on the island of Honshū, is the highest mountain in Japan, with a summit elevation of . It is the second-highest volcano located on an island in Asia (after Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra), and seventh-highest p ...

could be seen by travelers coming from

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 ...

History

Mitsuke-juku is located on the left bank of the

Tenryū River The is a river in central Honshū, Japan. With a length of , it is Japan's ninth longest river. Its source is Lake Suwa in the Kiso Mountains near Okaya, Nagano, Okaya in Nagano Prefecture. It then flows through Aichi Prefecture and western Shi ...

, but boats generally used the nearby

Ōi River The is a river in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Geography The Ōi River flows from the Akaishi Mountains, the branch of the Japanese Southern Alps which form the border between Shizuoka, Nagano and Yamanashi prefectures. These mountains, with p ...

, as it had a deeper channel and fewer difficult places to navigate. However, much like

Shimada-juku was the twenty-third of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō highway, which connected Edo with Kyoto in premodern Japan. It is located in what is now part of Shimada, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. History Shimada-juku was located on the le ...

, whenever the Ōi River overflowed, travel through the town became impossible. In addition to being a post station, Mitsuke-juku also flourished as the entry to

Tōtōmi Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today western Shizuoka Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tōtōmi''" in . Tōtōmi bordered on Mikawa, Suruga and Shinano Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . The or ...

's and as the point at which the Tōkaidō separated with a ''

hime kaidō was the name given to minor routes that created detours around the difficult crossings (or river crossings) of main routes during the Edo period in Japan. These routes could be found on many of the Edo Five Routes, as well as on other sub-routes t ...

''.Tokaido o Aruku
Takayoshi Nagano. Accessed March 7, 2008. When the

Tōkaidō Main Line The is a major Japanese railway line of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) network, connecting and stations. It is long, not counting its many freight feeder lines around the major cities. The high-speed Tōkaidō Shinkansen largely parallel ...

railway was established, the train station was built to the south of Mitsuke in the village of Nakaizumi. In 1940, Mitsuke and Nakaizumi merged, forming the town of Iwata, which became a city in 1948. The classic

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 by

Andō 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 ...

(Hōeidō edition) from 1831–1834 depicts travelers changing boats on a sandbank while crossing the Tenryū River by ferry.

Neighboring post towns

;Tōkaidō :

Fukuroi-juku was the twenty-seventh of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō, making it the center of the route. It is located in what is now the center of the city of Fukuroi, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. History Fukuroi-juku was developed later than ...

- Mitsuke-juku -

Hamamatsu-juku was the twenty-ninth of the fifty-three stations (''shukuba'') of the Tōkaidō. It is located in what is now Hamamatsu's Naka-ku in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. History During the Tenpō era (1830–1844), Hamamatsu-juku was located in Hamam ...

References

{{coord missing, Shizuoka Prefecture Stations of the Tōkaidō Stations of the Tōkaidō in Shizuoka Prefecture

History

Neighboring post towns

Further reading

References