was the twenty-seventh 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 ...

highway connecting

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

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 ...

during the

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 ...

. It is located in the present-day town of Nagawa, in the Chiisagata District of

Nagano Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...

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 ...

History

Located between the Wada Pass and the Kasadori Pass, two difficult parts along the Nakasendō, Nagakubo flourished as a

post town A post town is a required part of all postal addresses in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a basic unit of the postal delivery system.Royal Mail, ''Address Management Guide'', (2004) Including the correct post town in the address increases ...

under 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 ...

. Much of the original town was destroyed by a flood in 1631, and relocated a slight distance to higher ground. As the town developed, its row houses eventually spread to side streets, giving it the rare shape of a key.Nagakubo-juku
. Hokutoh Shoboh. Accessed August 1, 2007. It is located approximately six kilometers from

Ashida-shuku was the twenty-sixth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō. It is located in the present-day town of Tateshina, in the Kitasaku District of Nagano Prefecture, Japan. History Ashida-shuku was formed in 1601, during the Edo period, when the ...

. Per an 1843 guidebook issued by the , there were over 187 inns in which travelers could rest, 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 43 ''

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 ...

'', with a total resident population of 721 people. Many of the buildings of Nagakubo-shuku have been preserved, and the area is a tourist attraction within the town of Nagawa.

Nagakubo-shuku in ''The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō''

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 ...

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 Nagakubo-shuku dates from 1835–1838. The scene depicts the Wada bridge, located just past the post station. In the front of the picture, two children are playing and a traveler is leading his packhorse towards an inn. As was common in the series of prints, the publisher's name appears on the saddlecloth on the horse. The roof of the inn is shown with stones on the tiles to help secure the roof against strong winds - this was a typical method of construction for the region.

Neighboring post towns

;Nakasendō :

- Nagakubo-shuku -

Wada-shuku Hiroshige's print of Wada-shuku, part of the series '' The_Sixty-nine_Stations_of_the_Kiso_Kaidō">Hiroshige's_print_of_Wada-shuku,_part_of_the_series_''The_Sixty-nine_Stations_of_the_Kiso_Kaidō'' _was_the_twenty-eighth_of_the_69_Stations_of_the_ ...

References

External links

Hiroshige Kiso-Kaido serieson Kiso Kaido Road
Stations of the Nakasendō Stations of the Nakasendo in Nagano Prefecture Shinano Province {{Nagano-geo-stub