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Updated: May 12, 2025
The sun began to dip behind the distant hills; and then toward the east, in front of us, came out the long outline of the Tokaido bridge, three quarters of a mile in length, like a huge caterpillar crawling methodically across the river-bed.
I recall his selling his completed Tokaido, a labor which had extended over four years, for over a thousand dollars. Just before he died he was trading netsukes for inros and getting ready to sell all these latter to a man, who in turn was going to sell his collection to a museum.
After leaving the city the Tokaido leads over a low pass through the hills to Otsu, on the lovely sheet of water known as Biwa Lake. This lake is of about the same dimensions as Lake Geneva, and fairly rivals that Switzer gem in transcendental beauty. The Japs, with all their keen appreciation of the beauties of nature, go into raptures over Biwa Lake.
At Kioto begins the Tokaido, the most famous highway of Japan, a road that is said to have been the same great highway of travel, that it is to-day, for many centuries. It extends from Kioto to Tokio, a distance of three hundred and twenty-five miles.
A battery of field-artillery, the smartest seen since leaving Germany, is encountered in the streets of Kanagawa, at which point the road to Yokohama branches off from the Tokaido. The great Imperial highway, along which I have travelled from the old capital almost to the new, continues on to the latter, seventeen miles farther.
The long main street, forming part of the continuous imperial highway known as the Tokaido, was jammed with people; the sober, neutral tints of the majority in customary dress lighted up, here and there, by the brilliant, diversified colors of the performers, as showy uniforms do an assembly of civilians. The weather, too, was for the most part in keeping.
All through here the country is devoted chiefly to growing tea; very pretty the undulating ridges and rolling slopes of the broken foot-hills look, set out in thick, bushy, well-defined rows and clumps of dark, shiny tea-plants. Down a very steep declivity, by sharp zigzags, the Tokaido suddenly dips into the little valley of the Yasose-gawa.
One, under Yoshisada's direct orders, marched by the Tokaido, or eastern littoral road; the other, under Yoshisada's brother, Wakiya Yoshisuke, with Prince Takanaga for titular general, advanced along the Nakasen-do, or inland mountain-road. The littoral army, carrying everything before it, pushed on to the capital of Izu, and had it forced its attack home at once, might have captured Kamakura.
The Tokugawa battalions, following two routes the Tokaido and the Nakasendo made rapid progress westward, and on September 21st, the van of the division under Fukushima and Ikeda reached Kiyosu.
The one portion of the Tokaido impassable with a wheel commences at Mishima, the famous Hakone Pass, which for sixteen miles offers a steep surface of rough bowlder-paved paths. Obtaining a couple of men to carry the bicycle, the chilly weather proves an inducement for following them afoot, rather than occupy a kago myself.
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