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, and ended at Miya-juku on the Tôkaidô, neither of which are counted among the seven stations of the Minoji. Each of the seven post-stations had, in 1843, an average of 13.7 hatagoya (commoner inns) and 2,836 residents.

Stations

-) Tarui-juku (a station of the Nakasendô) - the Mino Road branches off from the Nakasendô here. 1) Ôgaki-shuku - in the jôkamachi of Ôgaku castle; two and a half ri and six chô from Tarui. 2) Sunomata-shuku - across the Ibi River by boat from Ôgaki and then two ri, fifty ken to Sunomata. 3) Oki-juku - across the Nagara and Kiso Rivers by boat from Sunomata, and then two ri, 17 chô, and 25 ken to Oki. 4) Hagiwara-juku - one ri from Oki. 5) Inaba-juku - one and a half ri from Hagiwara. 6) Kiyosu-juku - one and a half ri from Inaba. 7) Nagoya-juku - in the jôkamachi of Nagoya castle; two ri from Kiyosu. -) Miya-juku (a station of the Tôkaidô) - one and a half ri from Nagoya-juku; the Mino Road connects into the Tôkaidô here, near Atsuta Shrine.

References

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