The Nakasendō: Two Edo Post Towns, One Afternoon's Walk Apart

The Highway Through the Mountains The Tōkaidō, the coastal road, is the famous one — the highway Hiroshige made into woodblock prints. The Nakasendō was its inland rival, longer and harder but free of the river crossings that could strand travelers for days. It ran sixty-nine post towns between Edo and Kyoto, where officials, merchants and pilgrims changed horses, ate, and slept under strictly regulated rules.

Why These Two Towns Survived When the railway arrived in the Meiji era it took a different line through the Kiso valley, and Magome and Tsumago were left economically stranded — which is exactly why they still exist. In the 1970s Tsumago's residents adopted a preservation charter with a memorable rule: the buildings must not be sold, rented out, or destroyed. Power lines were buried, vending machines hidden, and the street was left as a street rather than staged as a museum.

The Walk Itself The path between them is about eight kilometres over the Magome Pass, with a climb of roughly three hundred metres from the Magome side. Some of it is original stone paving through cedar forest, some of it is quiet paved lane past rice fields and waterwheels. It takes two and a half to three hours at an unhurried pace, and it is genuinely walkable in ordinary shoes.

The Bear Bells and the Tea House Along the route you'll pass brass bells mounted on posts, intended to be rung to warn bears of your presence — a detail that tells you how rural this is despite being a few hours from Nagoya. Roughly halfway there's a free rest house where volunteers often serve tea to walkers, a habit that has outlived the highway it belongs to.

What a Post Town Was For The Nakasendō was one of the five highways of the Edo period, running inland between Edo and Kyoto through the mountains — the alternative to the coastal Tōkaidō. Along it, at regular intervals, sat post towns: settlements licensed to provide lodging, horses, porters and official message relay to travellers on a road where nearly everyone walked.

The traffic was not casual. Under the sankin-kōtai system, feudal lords were required to alternate between their domains and the capital, moving with large retinues, and the highways and their post towns existed to service that. What you are walking through is the infrastructure of a political control mechanism.

Why These Two Survived Magome and Tsumago are unusually intact because the modern world went around them. When railways and then the main road were built through the Kiso valley, they took a different line, and the two towns were left behind and impoverished rather than redeveloped.

Tsumago in particular was the subject of a deliberate preservation movement from the 1960s, when residents agreed a charter not to sell, rent or destroy the buildings. Power lines are buried, vending machines and modern signage are hidden or absent, and cars are kept out during the day. The result is a street that reads convincingly as an Edo-period one — which is a choice the community made and continues to pay for rather than an accident.

The Walk Itself The stretch between them is around eight kilometres over a pass, on a mix of forest path, old stone paving and quiet lane, and it takes a comfortable two to three hours. It is well signposted in English and does not require hiking experience, though it does require shoes.

You will pass bear bells mounted on posts along the trail, which you are meant to ring. This is not a novelty for tourists; there are bears in these mountains and the noise is the standard precaution. There is a rest house partway with tea, and the descent into Tsumago through the trees is the best part of the day.