The is located in

Shiga Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Shiga Prefecture has a population of 1,412,916 (1 October 2015) and has a geographic area of . Shiga Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the north, Gifu Prefecture to the nort ...

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 ...

; it is the largest river to flow into

Lake Biwa is the largest freshwater lake in Japan, located entirely within Shiga Prefecture (west-central Honshu), northeast of the former capital city of Kyoto. Lake Biwa is an ancient lake, over 4 million years old. It is estimated to be the 13th ol ...

. It rises from

Mount Gozaisho {{nihongo, Mount Gozaisho, 御在所岳, Gozaisho-dake is a Japanese mountain located on the border of Komono, Mie Prefecture and Higashi-Ōmi, Shiga Prefecture. This mountain is the center of Suzuka Quasi-National Park. Outline Mount Gozaish ...

and flows through

Kōka was a after ''Tenpō'' and before ''Kaei.'' This period spanned the years from December 1844 through February 1848. The reigning emperors were and . Change of era * December 2, 1844 (): The new era name of ''Kōka'', meaning "Becoming Wide ...

, Konan, Rittō, Moriyama and Yasu. It forked at the lower reaches and made a delta region, but they were combined in 1979.

History

The Tōkaidō, one of the

Edo Five Routes The , sometimes translated as "Five Highways", were the five centrally administered routes, or ''kaidō'', that connected the ''de facto'' capital of Japan at Edo (now Tokyo) with the outer provinces during the Edo period (1603–1868). The mos ...

which connected east and west Japan 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 ...

, paralleled the river.

Post towns 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 ...

along the river included

Tsuchiyama-juku was the forty-ninth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō highway connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It was located in the Tsuchiyama neighborhood of the present-day city of Kōka, Shiga Prefecture, Japan. History Tsuch ...

Minakuchi-juku 260px, Modern Minakuchi-juku 260px, Minakuchi-juku in 1923 was the fiftieth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō highway connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It was located in the Minakuchi neighborhood of the present-day ...

and

Ishibe-juku file:Dengaku-tyaya01s3200.jpg, 260px, Reconstructed building based on Hiroshige's print was the fifty-first of the 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō (road), Tōkaidō highway connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo peri ...

. The Yasu River also crossed 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 ...

, another one of the Edo Five Routes, separating

Moriyama-juku 260px, Uno house museum in Moriyama-juku was the sixty-seventh of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō highway connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It was located in the present-day city of Moriyama, Shiga Prefecture, Japan. H ...

and

Musa-juku A marker giving the distance to Musa-juku was the sixty-sixth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō highway connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It was located in the present-day city of Ōmihachiman, Shiga Prefecture, Japan ...

References

Kinki Regional Development Bureau Biwako Office
(Japanese)

External links

(mouth) Rivers of Shiga Prefecture Rivers of Japan {{Japan-river-stub