was the thirty-first of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in the city of Kosai,

Shizuoka Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshu. Shizuoka Prefecture has a population of 3,637,998 and has a geographic area of . Shizuoka Prefecture borders Kanagawa Prefecture to the east, Yamanashi Prefecture to the northea ...

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 ...

. 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 ...

, it was located in

Tōtōmi Province was a province of Japan in the area of Japan that is today western Shizuoka Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tōtōmi''" in . Tōtōmi bordered on Mikawa, Suruga and Shinano Provinces. Its abbreviated form name was . The or ...

. The ''

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

'' for the post station were originally also written as 荒江 and 荒井 (''Arai'').

History

Arai-juku was located on the western shores of . Travelers crossed the lake to reach

Maisaka-juku was the thirtieth of the 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō (road), Tōkaidō. It is located in the western portion of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. During the Edo period, the area ...

, the previous post station on the Tōkaidō. Though there were many checkpoints along the Tōkaidō, the Arai Checkpoint is the only one that existed both on land and on the water. Both the checkpoint and post station were often damaged from earthquakes and

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...

, which led to them both being moved to different locations. The current location was established after the earthquake of 1707. The existing checkpoint building was used as a school after the checkpoint was abolished at the start of 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 ...

. It is now preserved as a museum dedicated to the history and culture of the post stations. The , a preserved still remaining today, served as a rest spot for official travelers coming from

Kii Province , or , was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is today Wakayama Prefecture, as well as the southern part of Mie Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kii''" in . Kii bordered Ise, Izumi, Kawachi, Shima, and Yamato Pro ...

further south. It is now a local history museum.Arai-juku Hatagao Kii-no-kuni-ya Shiryokan
. Town of Arai. Accessed March 7, 2008. 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 Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

'' 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 ...

(''Hoeido'' edition) from 1831–1834 depicts a ''

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 n ...

'' procession on ''

sankin-kōtai ''Sankin-kōtai'' ( ja, 参覲交代/参覲交替, now commonly written as ja, 参勤交代/参勤交替, lit=alternate attendance, label=none) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period of Japanese history.Jansen, M ...

'' crossing between Maisaka-juku and Arai-juku by boat. The ''daimyō'' is in a large vessel with his family crest, while his retainers follow in a smaller boat with the baggage.

Neighboring post towns

;Tōkaidō :

- Arai-juku -

Shirasuka-juku was the thirty-second of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in Kosai, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. During the Edo period, it was the westernmost post station of Tōtōmi Province. History Originally, Shirasuka-juku was ...

References

{{coord, 34.694726, 137.561338, display=title, region:JP_type:landmark Stations of the Tōkaidō Stations of the Tōkaidō in Shizuoka Prefecture

History

Neighboring post towns

Further reading

References