Ichirizuka

Comprising a pair of earthen mounds (tsuka or zuka) covered in trees and flanking the road, they denoted the distance in ri (3.927 kilometres (2.440 mi)) to Nihonbashi, the "Bridge of Japan", erected in Edo in 1603.

The Tokugawa shogunate established ichirizuka on the major roads in 1604, enabling calculation both of distance travelled and of the charge for transportation by kago or palanquin.

[6] However, the main aim was "official mobility, not recreational travelling": the movement of farmers and women was discouraged, and a system of passports and barriers (関所) maintained.

[6] By marking the distance from Edo rather than Kyoto, establishing a symbolic point of origin for all movements, the Tokugawa made of mile markers what they would later make of checkpoints: powerful reminders of the government's geopolitical ubiquity and efficacious tools in its appropriation of space.

[11] Of the two within Tokyo, that at Nishigahara was once threatened by a road-widening project; a movement to save it led by industrialist Shibusawa Eiichi, the "father of Japanese capitalism", is commemorated in a monument beside what is now Hongō-dōri (本郷通り).

Ichirizuka at Tarui-juku , one of the 69 Stations of the Nakasendō ; only one of the two mounds survives, to a height of 4.7 metres (15 ft); designated a national Historic Site [ 1 ]
Ichirizuka at Shōno-juku , one of the 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō ; woodblock print by Hiroshige , c. 1842, from an alternative series of The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (Kyōkairi Tōkaidō or Sanoki edition); [ 2 ] the mound is explicitly labelled ichirizuka in a later print by Hiroshige II ( [1] )