Nakasendō

[2] In addition to Tokyo and Kyoto, the Nakasendō runs through the modern-day prefectures of Saitama, Gunma, Nagano, Gifu and Shiga, with a total distance of about 534 km (332 mi).

Five roads were formally nominated as official routes for the use of the shōgun and the other daimyō and to provide the Tokugawa shogunate with the communications network that it needed to stabilize and rule the country.

[6] One of these five roads was the Nakasendō, which stretched from Edo, from where the shogun wielded the real power, through the central mountain ranges of Honshu and on to Kyoto.

The area was first made famous by the early 20th-century writer Shimazaki Tōson, who chronicled the effects of the Meiji Restoration on the valley in his landmark novel Before the Dawn.

This eight-kilometer section of the Nakasendō can still be travelled along comfortably by foot, and both Tsumago-juku and Magome-juku have preserved and restored the traditional architecture.