The Nakasendo and Five Post Towns within Shiojiri City

Along the Nakasendo, there were 69 post towns stretching from Nihombashi in Edo to Sanjo Ohashi in Kyoto.
Although the Shiojiri area had more hills and slopes than the Tokaido, travelers could keep to their planned schedules because prolonged delays caused by river closures were rare.
Within Shiojiri, the Nakasendo included five post towns: Shiojiri-juku, Seba-juku, Motoyama-juku, Niekawa-juku, and Narai-juku.

1. Shiojiri-juku (the 30th station from Nihombashi)
Shiojiri-juku stood on the border between the Matsumoto and Suwa domains. A checkpoint called the kuchidome-bansho, which inspected rice and prohibited goods, was established there. Honjin and waki-honjin served officials on sankin-kotai, and by the late shogunate period the number of inns ranked second on the Nakasendo and first in Shinano.

2. Seba-juku (the 31st station from Nihombashi)
Seba-juku lies at the fork between the Nakasendo and the Zenkoji Kaido. It hosted one of the Nakasendo’s three kanmearisho, offices that measured grain. A great fire in the early Showa era destroyed much of the post town’s appearance, but a stone lantern marking the old fork remains.

3. Motoyama-juku (the 32nd station from Nihombashi)
Said to be the birthplace of soba-kiri noodles, Motoyama-juku prospered as the gateway to Kiso and the exit of the Matsumoto Basin. Its honjin accommodated Princess Kazunomiya when she married Tokugawa Iemochi, and later served as lodgings during Emperor Meiji’s imperial tour in Meiji 13 (1880).

4. Niekawa-juku (the 33rd station from Nihombashi)
Niekawa-juku marks the entrance to the eleven post towns of the Kiso Road. Niekawa Sekisho checkpoint guarded this key transport chokepoint on the Nakasendo, and the town developed through lodging services and long-distance trade.

5. Narai-juku (the 34th station from Nihombashi)
Famed as “Narai Senken” with a thousand bustling shops in its heyday, Narai-juku still preserves much of its historical atmosphere and today draws many visitors as a popular tourist destination.