The is a mountain pass on the old Tōkaidō highway connecting eastern Japan with imperial capital of

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 ...

. Located between former

Mariko-juku was the twentieth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in what is now part of Suruga Ward in Shizuoka City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It can also be written as 丸子宿 (''Mariko-juku''). History Mariko-juku was one ...

in what is now

Suruga-ku, Shizuoka is one of three wards of Shizuoka, Shizuoka, Japan, located in the southern part of the city. The north east of Suruga-ku faces Aoi-ku; the north west faces Shimizu-ku; the south west faces Yaizu city and south east faces Suruga Bay. Suruga- ...

, and

Okabe-juku was the twenty-first of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in what is now the city of Fujieda, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Between Okabe-juku and the preceding post station of Mariko-juku runs Route 1, which was part of ...

in what is now

Fujieda is a city located in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 145,032 in 59,480 households, and a population density of 750 persons per km². The total area of the city was . Fujieda is a member of the World Health O ...

, it is the only portion of the original

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...

road known to have survived to the present day, and a one kilometer stretch of the road was proclaimed a National Historic Site on February 22, 2010.

Overview

The route of the ancient Tōkaidō highway skirted the coast of

Suruga Bay Suruga Bay (駿河湾, ''Suruga-wan'') is a bay on the Pacific coast of Honshū in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. It is situated north of a straight line from Omaezaki Point to Irōzaki Point at the tip of the Izu Peninsula and surrounded by Honshū ...

during the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...

. However, due to the rugged coastline in the area, the route was shifted inland to the Utsunoya-tōge during the

. This pass crossed a saddle of a ridge extending from the

Akaishi Mountains The are a mountain range in central Honshū, Japan, bordering Nagano, Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures. It is also called the , as it joins with the Hida Mountains ("Northern Alps") and the Kiso Mountains ("Central Alps") to form the Japa ...

to Suruga Bay at an elevation of about 170 meters. Mention of the pass is made frequently in Heian-period ''waka'' poetry, with references to the narrow road and the sound of

Japanese bush warbler The Japanese bush warbler (''Horornis diphone''), known in Japanese as ''uguisu'' (鶯), is an Asian passerine bird more often heard than seen. Its distinctive breeding song can be heard throughout much of Japan from the start of spring. Descri ...

s in the area. It was known as the “Tsuta no hosomichi” . The route was still in use in 1560, when

Imagawa Yoshimoto was a pre-eminent ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) in the Sengoku period Japan. Based in Suruga Province, he was known as . he was one of the three ''daimyōs'' that dominated the Tōkaidō region. He died in 1560 while marching to Kyoto to become ...

marched his armies to the disasters

Battle of Okehazama The took place in June 1560 in Owari Province, located in today's Aichi Prefecture. In this battle, the heavily outnumbered Oda clan troops commanded by Oda Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto and established himself as one of the front-running ...

. During the 1590 Battle of Odawara,

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: Military Innovations that Changed the Cour ...

ordered the route of the Tōkaidō to be shifted slightly, avoiding the pass, to its present course, which offered less of a bottleneck to his armies. 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 ...

Tōkaidō followed this new route, and the Heian period pathway was forgotten until rediscovered in 1965. During the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

, a modern brick tunnel was dug under the Utsunoya-tōge. Completed in 1876, it was the first tunnel in Japan to charge a toll for passage. The tunnel was in use until closed by a fire 1896 but was reopened from 1904 to 1930. Made obsolete by automobiles, the original tunnel was replaced in 1930 by a larger tunnel, and a second tunnel was added in 1959. The 1930 tunnel is used by Shizuoka Prefectural Road 208, and the 1959 tunnel by

Japan National Route 1 is a major highway on the island of Honshū in Japan. It connects Chūō, Tokyo in the Kantō region with the city of Osaka, Osaka Prefecture in the Kansai region, passing through the Chūbu region en route. It follows the old Tōkaidō west ...

. The original Meiji period tunnel was designated a National Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 1997. Due to ever increasing traffic, the Heisei Utsunoya-tōge Tunnel was completed in 1990 on the Okabe Bypass of Japan National Route 1.

Gallery

Mount Takakusa & Mount Mankanho & Utsunoya Pass & Nihonzaka Pass Relief Map, SRTM-1.jpg, Relief map showing passes in Suruga Tsuta no Hosomichi (Southern entrance).JPG, Southern entrance to the pass Hiroshige22 okabe.jpg, Hiroshige's depiction of the pass Meiji-Utsunoya-tunnel,Fujieda-city,Japan.JPG, Meiji period Utsunoya-tōge tunnel

References

* Traganou, Jilly. ''The Tokaido Road: Travelling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan''. Routledge (2003).

External links

Pamphlet by Shizuoka city
{{in lang, ja Mountain passes of Japan Historic Sites of Japan Landforms of Shizuoka Prefecture Fujieda, Shizuoka Shizuoka (city) Suruga Province

Overview

Gallery

See also

References

External links