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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Kanagawa
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An Edo-era travel account joked that climbing Kashinoki-zaka made a traveler shed “tears the size of acorns.” The steep slope was remembered as one of the hardest stretches on the Hakone crossing.
In 1624, Korean envoys found Hakone’s bamboo-laid road dry underfoot. Bamboo rotted, so in 1680 the shogunate spent over 1,400 ryō to stone-pave about 10 km of the Mishima-facing slope.
Amazake Chaya’s current owner is its 13th generation, and its namesake drink gets its sweetness from rice koji, not sugar. It survived after most roadside teahouses closed when modern Route 1 drew traffic away.
The old mountain-road teahouses were little service hubs: besides tea and snacks, they served as starting points for relay couriers and kept stables for horses. Four opened near the Hakone crossing after 1619.
At Hatajuku, travelers could take home yosegi-zaiku: intricate geometric patterns made by joining naturally different-colored woods. The craft grew into a famous Hakone souvenir, drawing on the variety of trees in the surrounding mountains.
Hakone’s cedar avenue once stretched much farther. In 1904, over 1,000 pines and cedars were reportedly felled and sold to help fund a new road; about 500 m of the old lakeside avenue remains.
This mountain crossing carried more than local traffic: feudal lords, Dutch East India Company directors, Korean diplomatic missions and ordinary pilgrims traveling to Ise all passed along the Hakone Hachiri.
“Hakone Hachiri” means “eight ri”: four ri from Odawara to Hakone-juku, then four more down to Mishima—about 32 km across the mountain. Even the name remembers the crossing as two halves.
At Hatajuku, the 23rd ri marker from Nihonbashi was a pair of earth mounds flanking the road, not a lone post. Archaeological findings guided its reconstruction in 1998.
