was the thirty-ninth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in the present-day city of Chiryū in

Aichi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Aichi Prefecture has a population of 7,552,873 () and a geographic area of with a population density of . Aichi Prefecture borders Mie Prefecture to the west, Gifu Prefecture ...

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 n ...

. It was the westernmost post town in Mikawa Province, and was from

Nihonbashi is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan which grew up around the bridge of the same name which has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603. The curre ...

, the start of the Tōkaidō, so it took approximately 10 days to for average travellers to reach.

History

Chiryū-juku was noted for a famed Shinto shrine, the Chiryū Daimyōjin, and also for its flourishing horse market, held in late April to early May of each year.

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fello ...

ordered that the post station plant pine trees along through route of the highway before and after the town. 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 of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk ta ...

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 to 1834 depicts horses, and also one of the pine trees. Hiroshige entitled the work . Despite the construction of railroads following the

Meiji restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

the horse market continued into the

Shōwa period Shōwa may refer to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufacturer, affiliated with the Honda keiretsu Japanese eras * Jōwa (Heian ...

, and most of the pine trees survived until the 1959 Isewan Typhoon.

Neighboring post towns

;Tōkaidō : Okazaki-shuku - Chiryū-juku -

Narumi-juku was the fortieth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in former Owari Province in what is now part of the Midori-ku section of the city of Nagoya, in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. History Narumi-juku had a population of 3 ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chiryu-juku Stations of the Tōkaidō Stations of the Tōkaidō in Aichi Prefecture

History

Neighboring post towns

Further reading

References