Fushimi

• Japanese: 伏見宿 (Fushimi juku)

Fushimi-juku was the 54th post-station of the Tôkaidô highway, the first on an extension linking Kyoto with Osaka. The post-town was home to some 24,000 people at its Edo period peak, and boasted over 6200 buildings, of which four were honjin, two waki-honjin, and 39 hatagoya inns. The chief river port near Kyoto proper, Fushimi was a major hub of trade and travel, with numerous gozabune and 10- & 30-koku ships regularly coming and going, loading and unloading cargoes of rice, firewood, charcoal, and other materials. Smaller canal boats carried people and goods up the Takase canal from Fushimi into Kyoto proper. For many western daimyô, as well as for Ryukyuan and Korean embassies to Edo, Fushimi was their "gateway" to Kyoto - the final stop along a maritime and river journey before changing to travel overland into Kyoto proper, or onwards along the Tôkaidô to Ôtsu and then to Edo.

The town of Fushimi was under direct Tokugawa shogunate control for the duration of the Edo period. The shogunate formally declared the post-station established in 1604, and established a number of denma toiyaba (establishments overseeing the provision of porters and post-horses) there at that time.

For a number of years after the Meiji Restoration, Fushimi continued to be a major hub, with steamboats taking over from earlier paddled or rope-pulled vessels. However, with the opening of the Tokaido Line train line connecting Kyoto and Kobe in 1877, and then the advent of the Keihan railroad in 1910, the curtain closed on the rivers as the chief avenues for trade and travel.

Preceded by: Kyoto

Stations of the Tôkaidô

Succeeded by: Yodo-juku

References

• Kusaba Kayoko 草葉加代子, Kyôkaidô to Yodogawa shûun 京街道と淀川舟運. Osaka: Daikoro (2019), 50-51.