Travelers on the Nakasendo

The Nakasendo may have been a road through the mountains and half as wide as the Tokaido which followed the flatter coastal areas, but it was very heavily traveled in the Edo period. The primary reason for the highway system through Japan was to provide the Tokugawa shogunate with the communication network it required to… [Read more]

Princess Kazunomiya was the sister of Emperor Komei (reigned 1846-67) and was married to the 14th Tokugawa shogun, Iemochi, in 1862. The marriage was a political device intended to bring the imperial court and the Tokugawa shogunate into harmony, even though the princess, then aged 16, was already betrothed to someone else within the imperial… [Read more]