was the thirty-third 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 ...

. It is located in the present-day city of Shiojiri,

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

Niekawa was originally written as 熱川 (''niekawa'', "warm river") because there were

onsen In Japan, are the country's hot springs and the bathing facilities and traditional inns around them. As a volcanically active country, Japan has many onsens scattered throughout all of its major islands. There are approximately 25,000 hot ...

in the area, which made the river warm. However, the

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...

were eventually changed to the ones used today. Originally built in the Tenbun period (1532-1555), it was the first of 11 resting spots along the

Kisoji The was an old trade route in the Kiso Valley that stretched from Niekawa-juku in Nagano Prefecture to Magome-juku in Gifu Prefecture. There were eleven resting spots along the route, all of which became part of the Nakasendō when it was establish ...

(木曽路),Kisoji Shukuba-machi Series: Niekawa-juku
. Higashi Nihon Denshin Denwa. Accessed July 24, 2007. which stretched to modern-day

Nakatsugawa Magome-juku on the Nakasendō is a city located in Gifu, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 78,930, and a population density of 120 persons per km2 in 30,788 households The total area of the city was . Geography Nakatsugawa is in ...

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 ...

. It also marked the dividing point between the lands of

Owari Han The was a feudal domain of Japan in the Edo period. Located in what is now the western part of Aichi Prefecture, it encompassed parts of Owari, Mino, and Shinano provinces. Its headquarters were at Nagoya Castle. At its peak, it was rated at ...

and Matsumoto han. It became part of the Nakasendō 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 ...

Neighboring post towns

;Nakasendō :

Motoyama-juku was the thirty-second of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō. It is located in the central part of the present-day city of Shiojiri, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. History Motoyama became a post town in 1614, when the Nakasendō's route was ...

- Niekawa-juku -

Narai-juku was the thirty-fourth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō, as well as the second of eleven stations along the Kisoji.Narai- ...

;Kisoji :Niekawa-juku ''(starting location)'' -

Narai-juku was the thirty-fourth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō, as well as the second of eleven stations along the Kisoji.Narai- ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Niekawa-Juku Stations of the Nakasendō Stations of the Nakasendo in Nagano Prefecture