Honjin

• Japanese: 本陣 (honjin)

Honjin were a special type of elite inn maintained in post-towns and port towns of Edo period Japan. They were most typically used by daimyô traveling on sankin kôtai journeys, but also occasionally housed figures of similar status, such as the lead ambassadors of Ryukyuan embassies to Edo.

Honjin were often accompanied by secondary establishments known as waki-honjin, where additional members of an elite group might stay; for example, when the lead ambassador (seishi) of a Ryukyuan embassy stayed at a honjin, his vice- or deputy envoy (fukushi) typically stayed at the town's waki-honjin, along with other members of the embassy above a certain rank. Honjin and waki-honjin sprang up quickly after sankin kôtai was made obligatory for all daimyô in 1642, and soon became standard fixtures in major ports and post-towns across the realm. While some towns had only one honjin (and perhaps not even a waki-honjin), larger towns often had several of each.

Daimyô typically established regular reservations with honjin along their sankin kôtai routes, such that the honjin would know to expect them on particular dates each year, and to have a reception prepared for them in a particular manner, with the daimyô paying a pre-arranged amount as a show of gratitude. Such arrangements helped avoid difficulties which might otherwise emerge from negotiating and re-negotiating the schedule, and the terms, each time. Still, there were times when a daimyô arrived in a town to find that another daimyô (or Imperial envoy, or another guest of similar elite status) had booked the inn for the night; most of the time, this resulted in the newcomer taking up lodging in the town's waki-honjin, or another similar establishment, when available. Daimyô also quite regularly passed through post-towns, not staying the night, but merely using the honjin as a place to rest for a bit, and to perhaps enjoy a meal. Such meals and rest-stops were also often pre-arranged, but daimyô could also simply arrive and have their men make an arrangement on the spot.

Honjin were often the largest building in a given town. The chief honjin at Futagawa-juku, along the Tôkaidô highway in Mikawa province, survives today as a local history museum; the building is 17 1/2 ken wide, and covers a space of roughly 525 tsubo.

The largest honjin on the Tôkaidô highway were at Odawara-juku. This was in large part because of its location. The castle-town is both close to Edo, meaning that most daimyô and other travelers from western Japan would come that way, and it is located between a difficult mountain pass & a river crossing; as a result, Odawara was a place that few travelers merely passed through, and where most instead stayed the night.

References

• Watanabe Kazutoshi 渡辺和敏, "Sankin kôtai to honjin" 参勤交代と本陣, Honjin ni tomatta daimyô tachi 本陣に泊まった大名たち, Toyohashi, Aichi: Futagawa-juku honjin shiryôkan (1996), 53.