The are the rest areas along the Tōkaidō, which was a coastal route that ran 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 ...
in
Edo
Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.
Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...
(modern-day
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
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 ...
.. There were originally 53 government post stations along the Tōkaidō, where travelers had to present traveling permits at each station if wanting to cross.
In 1619, the Ōsaka Kaidō (大阪街道) was developed to extend the Tōkaidō so that it would reach
Kōraibashi
is a bridge located in Chūō-ku in the city of Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. It crosses over the Higashi Yokobori River and shares its name with the surrounding area.
Naming
The area received the name of " Kōrai" during the Asuka or Nara pe ...
in modern-day
Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...
. Instead of going to Sanjō Ōhashi, travelers would leave from Ōtsu-juku and travel towards Fushimi-juku. Because of the addition of these four post towns, the Tōkaidō is occasionally referred to as having 57 stations. Another name for this extension was Kyōkaidō (京街道).
The inland
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 69 ...
also started at Nihonbashi, and converged with the Tōkaidō at
Kusatsu-juku
260px, The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō">Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō'' series
was the fifty-second of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō as well as the sixty-eighth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō. ...
.
Shio no Michi
was an old ''kaidō'', or road, in ancient Japan and was used to transport salt from the ocean to the inland central Honshū. In the Middle Ages, salt was brought both from the Sea of Japan and the Pacific Ocean to Shinano Province for processing ...