was the forty-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 centrally administered Edo Five Routes, five routes of the Edo period, and one of the two that connected the ''de facto'' ...

connecting

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

with

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

Japan. It is located in former

Mino Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today southern Gifu Prefecture. Mino was bordered by Ōmi to the west, Echizen and Hida to the north, Shinano to the east, and Ise, Mikawa, and Owari to the south. Its abbreviated fo ...

in what is now part of the city of Mizunami,

Gifu Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Gifu Prefecture has a population of 1,910,511 () and has a geographic area of . Gifu Prefecture borders Toyama Prefecture to the north; Ishikawa Prefecture ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Alternative ''

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, 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 and are ...

'' for the post town are 大久手.Nakasendo Ōkute-juku
Ibisoku Co., Ltd. Accessed July 11, 2007.

History

Ōkute was a settlement on the ancient

Tōsandō is a Japanese geographical term. It means both an ancient division of the country and the main road running through it. It is part of the ''Gokishichidō'' system. It was situated along the central mountains of northern Honshu, specifically th ...

highway from the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from 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 capita ...

, which preceded the construction of the Nakasendō. Between Ōi and Ōkute, the road was very narrow and mountainous and goes through 13 passes (Jusan-toge), with irregular stone steps in places. In the early

, the system of post stations on the Nakasendō was formalized by the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

in 1602, and Ōkute-juku was constructed in 1604, became a stopping place for traveling merchants and was also on the ''

sankin-kōtai ''Sankin-kōtai'' (, now commonly written as ) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period, created to control the daimyo, the feudal lords of Japan, politically, and to keep them from attempting to overthrow the regi ...

'' route used by various western ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

'' to-and-from the Shogun's court in

. The station itself was located with the territory of

Owari Domain The Owari-Han, also known as the Owari Domain, was a significant feudal domain in Tokugawa shogunate, Japan during the Edo period. Situated in the western region of what is now Aichi Prefecture, it covered portions of Owari Province, Owari, Mino ...

. The station is located at the foot of the , which has a monument with a poem by Princess Kazu-no-miya, who stayed overnight at Ōkute-juku en-route to her marriage to

Shogun , officially , was the title of the military aristocracy, rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor of Japan, Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, exc ...

Tokugawa Iemochi (17 July 1846 – 29 August 1866) was the 14th '' shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, who held office from 1858 to 1866. During his reign there was much internal turmoil as a result of the "re-opening" of Japan to western nations. I ...

in Edo. Per the 1843 guidebook issued by the , the town had a population of 338 people in 66 houses, including one '' honjin'', one ''waki-honjin,'' and 30 '' hatago''. At an elevation of 512 meters above sea level, Ōkute-juku is the highest station in the Mino section of the highway. It is 358.7 kilometers from Edo. Today, only remains of the station are part of the ''waki-honjin'', the ''kosatsuba'' or official notice board and a few ''

machiya are traditional wooden townhouses found throughout Japan and typified in the historical capital of Kyoto. ('townhouses') and ('farm dwellings') constitute the two categories of Japanese vernacular architecture known as ('folk dwellings'). ...

''. The ''honjin'' was on the hill above the city, but it has been destroyed and a school has been built at its former location.

Ōkute-juku in ''The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō''

Utagawa Hiroshige's ''

ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock printing, woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga, paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes ...

'' print of Ōkute-juku dates from 1835 -1838. The print is a bizarre composition showing surrealistically shaped boulders which make the work an almost abstract landscape. Two woodcutters with tall stacks of firewood on their backs are depicted climbing a steep slope and gazing at a hillside with blocks of exposed rock and weirdly-shaped pine trees and featureless hills. There is no sign of the post station.

Neighboring post towns

;Nakasendō :

Ōi-juku was the forty-sixth of the 69 Stations of the Nakasendō, sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō connecting Edo with Kyoto in Edo period Japan. It is located in former Mino Province in what is now part of the city of Ena, Gifu, Ena, Gifu Prefec ...

- Ōkute-juku - Hosokute-juku

Notes

References

* * * *

External links

Hiroshige Kiso-Kaido seriesOkute-juku on Kiso Kaido RoadGifu Nakasendo Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Okute-juku Stations of the Nakasendō Post stations in Gifu Prefecture Mizunami, Gifu Mino Province