Mino Road

• Japanese: 美濃路 (Minoji)

The Mino Road was a secondary road connecting the Tôkaidô and Nakasendô highways, overseen by the dôchû bugyô (Highways Magistrate). As such, despite being a secondary road, it saw much traffic from prominent travelers and famous events, including daimyô on their sankin kôtai missions to the capital, Ryukyuan and Korean embassies to Edo, and the chatsubo dôchû caravan carrying Uji tea to the shogunate, as well as, on one occasion, an elephant being brought up to Edo from the Dutch settlement in Nagasaki. The shogun himself traveled this road as well a number of times early in the Edo period, when journeying between Edo and Kyoto.

The road had seven "stations" along its route, around which inns and other facilities cropped up. The road began at Tarui-shuku on the Nakasendô, then split in two, leading two and a half ri and six chô to Ôgaki-shuku (1). Travelers then crossed the Ibi River by boat, and two ri, fifty ken later arrived at Sunomata-shuku (2). Crossing the Nagara and Kiso Rivers by boat, the road went another two ri, 17 chô, and 25 ken before arriving at Okoshi-juku (3). Hagiwara-juku (4) was one ri later, and Inaba-juku (5) one and a half ri after that. One and a half ri beyond Inaba was Kiyosu-juku (6), followed by Nagoya-juku (7) two ri further down the road. Travelers could then walk one and a half ri from Nagoya to the Tôkaidô's Miya-juku, located near Atsuta Shrine.

References

• "Minoji." Sekai daihyakka jiten 世界大百科事典. Hitachi Solutions, 2012.