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Nihonbashi (bridge)
Located in Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Nihonbashi was reportedly built in 1630, the year Tokugawa Ieyasu established the shogunate, and the year after it was built it became the designated starting point for five major land transportation routes (Tokaido, Nakasendo, Koshu Kaido, Oshu Kaido and Nikko Kaido routes) directly under the shogunate.
Because it was such an important transport hub, the distribution and sales centres gathered in Nihonbashi and it became the central urban area of Edo.” Ukiyo-e and new prints – the good old things in the world of art“, the ukiyo-e, which were genre paintings of the Edo period, show the bustle of the Nihonbashi area.
It is also currently in the form of the 1950s, when the upper part of the building was blocked off for the Tokyo Olympics.
The Metropolitan Highway is being converted to an underground structure, and it is hoped that the upper viaduct will be removed in the 2040s, bringing the old Nihonbashi back to its former glory.
Edo Shisuku (Senju, Itabashi, Naito Shinjuku, Shinagawa)
The first four inns to leave Nihonbashi, Senju on the Nikko/Oshu Kaido (top right in the diagram below), Itabashi on the Nakasendo (top left in the diagram below), Naito Shinjuku on the Koshu/Ome Kaido (centre left in the diagram below) and Shinagawa on the Tokaido (bottom below), were called Edo Shijuku. These were the entrances to the various highways from Edo.
During the Edo period, the aforementioned Nihonbashi was the formal starting point of each major road, but the actual starting and ending points of journeys were Shinagawa-juku, Senju-juku, Naito-Shinjuku and Itabashi-juku, known as the four Edo inns. These inns had many teahouses and drinking houses, as well as many meimori-hatago (inns with meals), which were very busy, attracting not only travellers but also those who came to see them off and those who came to see the inn’s women (inn girls) off. Comparing the population and number of houses in the inns around the same year, the largest inns were Senju (9,556 people, 2,370 houses), Shinagawa (7,000 people, 1,600 houses), Naito Shinjuku (2,377 people, over 698 houses) and Itabashi (2,448 people, 573 houses).
Each of these inns is described below.
<Senju>
Senju is a post town on the Nikko/Oshu Kaido road, and its name is said to derive from the fact that Arai Tobo Masatsugu picked up a statue of Senju Kannon in a net in the Arakawa River in 1327 and called the area Senju, or the birthplace of Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s favourite mistress Senju, and the residence of the Chiba clan.
The current name of the place is Senjumacho, Adachi-ku, Tokyo, and the former lodging town has become a downtown shopping area, a place that is attracting attention among families as an easy place to live in Tokyo with relatively low rents.
Senju was considered important as the northern entrance to Edo, and the first bridge built over the Sumida River by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 594 was the Senju Ohashi Bridge. Senju developed as an inn on the Nikko Kaido and Oshu Kaido roads. Senju-juku was also home to a brothel where the Shogunate-authorised Iimorijo (female entertainers) were located, and was also a busy okaba. In the ‘Senju-bushi’ sung by the boatmen of the ferry boats on the Sumida River at that time
Senju jorou wa ikari ka tsuna ka, kaminari yori no boats to stop.
This passage suggests that many boats were coming and going.
The Ou-no-Hosomichi route of Matsuo Basho, described in the article “Strolling in Akita, Matsuo Basho, Sugae Masumi and Ningyo Dosojin“, started from Basho’s hermitage in Fukagawa in 1689 and “was seen off by his pupils and parted from them at Senju”. The journey began with the poem, “Going Spring, Birds Cry, Fish Eyes are Incapacitating”, which was written as “Yatate-no-Hajime”.
<Itabashi>
Itabashijuku was built in the Edo period (1603-1867) and is the first of the 69 stops on the Nakasendo route, counting from Edo and Nihonbashi. It is also the starting point of the Kawagoe Highway (Kawagoe-Kodama Oukan). In the Edo period, it was named Shimo-Itabashi Village, Itabashi Township, Toshima County, Musashi-gun, Tokaido Highway.
The current address corresponds to Honmachi, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo, as well as Nakajuku, Itabashi 1-chome and 3-chome. Like the aforementioned Senju, the rent is cheap in Tokyo, and the area is also known for its many parks and greenery.
Senju is the boundary of Edo, and in the late Edo period, the area inside the Ookido at the entrance to Kami-juku was treated as the inside of the ‘Edo gofunai’ or ‘red-light district’, i.e. as ‘Edo’.
Although Itabashi-juku was the least prosperous of the four Edo inns, it was one of the most prosperous on the Nakasendo route. Itabashi-juku was allowed to have as many as 150 Iimori women, and Hirao-juku, closer to Nihonbashi, was lined with Iimori inns. During the Boshin War at the end of the Edo period, the government forces that were marching from the Nakasendo to attack Edo were stopped here after receiving a letter from Tenzhangin.
<Naito Shinjuku>
Naito-Shinjuku was one of the post stations established in the Edo period (1603-1867) and was the first post station on the Koshu Kaido (Koshu Road), counting from Nihonbashi in Edo, as described in “Kaido yuku – Koshu Kaido and the Edo Shogunate” . It was also the starting point of the Nariki Kaido (Ome Kaido), which branches off from the Koshu Kaido from the Shinjuku Oiwake in the inn.
The current address is the area from Shinjuku 1-chome to Shinjuku 2-chome and 3-chome, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, which is one of the busiest areas in Tokyo, comparable to Shibuya.
The first inn on the Koshu Kaido was Takaido inn, established in 1602 (Keicho 7), but it was about 4 ri (about 16 km) from Nihonbashi, while Shinagawa inn on the Tokaido, Itabashi inn on the Nakayama Road and Senju inn on the Nikko Kaido (Oshu Road) were all about 2 ri from Nihonbashi, leaving only Koshu kaido among the Five Routes with inns near Edo The Koshu Kaido was the only one of the Five Routes that did not have an inn in the suburbs of Edo (present-day Tokyo).
About 100 years after the Shogunate was established, the volume of traffic on the Koshu Kaido continued to increase with the development of Edo, and as it was inconvenient for the traffic of the time, which was mainly on foot, five Asakusa merchants, including Kihei Takamatsu, requested the establishment of a new inn between Nihonbashi and Takaidojuku on the Koshu Kaido, less than two li away from Nihonbashi. The new post was to be established near the junction with the Ome-kaido road, less than 2 km from Nihonbashi. The proposed site included part of the residence of the Naito family of the Takato domain in Shinano Province and the residence of a Hatamoto, but these lands were returned to the Shogunate to be used as the site for the new inn.
As 5,600 ryo was levied as a premium for the creation of a new lodging town, Asakusa merchants are said to have planned to develop the area as a new shopping and entertainment district and make a profit from their business.
Naito Shinjuku stretched approximately 1 km east to west from Yotsuya Okido, where the Tamagawa Josui water guard station was located, to Shinjuku Oiwake (near the current Shinjuku 3-chome intersection), and was divided from west to west into Kamimachi, Nakamachi (middle town) and Shitamachi.
<Shinagawa>
Shinagawa is the oldest and most prosperous of the four Edo inns. Shinagawa Minato was used as a sea route facility in the Heian period (794-1185), about 1,000 years ago, and with the establishment of the shogunate in Kamakura, as described in “Kaido yuku – Miura Peninsula Ki“, the whole Kanto area began to develop and Shinagawa, the sea entrance to Musashi Province, became a logistics hub in the Kanto area. The city was also known as Shinagawa.
The current location is in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, extending from Kita-Shinagawa Station on the Keikyu Line in the north to the area around Aomono-Yokocho Station in the south, all along the old Tokaido Highway, and the area around Shinagawa Station is a modern place with office buildings.
Shinagawa-juku was the first inn on the Tokaido Highway, one of the most important of the five highways, and was a busy gateway to Edo on both the land and sea routes to the western part of the country, with more inns than the other four Edo inns and more lords passing through on their way to the capital, as described in the Daimyo Gyoretsu.
Shinagawa was also prosperous as an okaba, and was a leisure base for both sea and mountain life and a gourmet town, where the common people of Edo could enjoy tiohigari and boating in the sea to the east and cherry blossoms and maple trees in the mountains to the west. The area was also home to temples and shrines such as Zojoji Temple, the head temple of the Jodo sect of Buddhism, Atago Shrine and Takanawa Shrine, as described in “The genealogy of thought“, and various events were held in the area.
Ukiyoe served as leaflets and posters for such leisure and fashion information, and pictures of Shinagawa-juku sold particularly well, with many painters depicting scenes of Shinagawa-juku.
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