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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Kanagawa / Shizuoka
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In 1729, a Vietnamese-born elephant presented to Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune crossed Hakone Pass from Mishima. Exhausted at Hakone-juku, it was nursed with manju and mandarins before continuing through the checkpoint to Edo.
At Koshimaki on the Mishima side, archaeologists found a moat from the 16th-century Yamanaka Castle beneath the Edo road. Builders had filled the fortress’s outer ditch to make way for the Tokaido.
Amazake Chaya, a stop on the old road, is now run by its 13th generation. Its signature amazake gets its sweetness from rice koji alone—no added sugar—a small taste of traveler-era hospitality.
Before the paving, rain turned the route into shin-deep mud, so bamboo was laid to help travelers keep their footing. In 1680, the shogunate replaced it with a stone road about 3.6 meters wide.
The song Hakone Hachiri is no Edo-era folk tune: composer Taki Rentarō set lyrics by Torii Makoto, and it first appeared in a school songbook in 1901—nearly 300 years after the route opened.
The familiar checkpoint rule was “guns in, women out,” but Hakone officials focused especially on women leaving Edo. Even local women needed a pass to cross; unauthorized passage was a capital offense.
Hatajuku, a settlement on the route, is the birthplace of Hakone yosegi-zaiku. In the late Edo period, local craftsperson Ishikawa Jinbei developed designs by combining woods with different natural colors; travelers bought the patterned work as souvenirs.
More than 1,000 roadside trees were cut and sold in 1904 to help fund a new road. Today, over 400 cedars remain along the lakeside stretch, many roughly 350–400 years old.
On Mishima’s western slope, a roughly 2.8-kilometer section runs straight along a ridge, dropping from about 610 to 380 meters. Modern Route 1 winds up the mountain in broad curves; the old shortcut was much steeper.
Excavations found a road about 3.6 meters wide, edged with large stones 30–70 centimeters across and filled with smaller ones. Most stones sat directly on natural soil; only especially steep or unstable spots had extra base material.
At Nishikida on the Mishima side, both earthen mounds of an old ichirizuka remain opposite each other across the road, each topped with an enoki tree. The site was designated a national historic site in 1922.
The name means eight ri—about 32 kilometers. Travelers climbed from near sea level to Hakone Pass at 846 meters, then descended toward Mishima; the East and West slopes each made up four ri.
Hakone Hachiri carried more than local traffic: Dutch East India Company officials, Korean diplomatic missions, daimyo processions, shogunate officials bound for Nagasaki, and ordinary pilgrims all crossed the same mountain route.
A story preserved at Amazake Chaya and retold in traditional storytelling and plays says that, while secretly searching for Kira in 1701, rōnin Kanazaki Yogorō endured a quarrel with a packhorse driver rather than risk his mission.
