I Walked Japan’s Kiso Valley and It Felt Like Stepping Right into a Woodblock Print

Within the 1830s, on the tail finish of Japan’s flourishing Edo Interval, two artists got down to doc one of many nation’s nice roads. Crossing seven modern-day prefectures and the snowy crags of the Japanese Alps, this thoroughfare, the Nakasendō, linked the imperial capital of Kyoto with the cultural capital of Edo (now Tokyo). 

The Nakasendō had been in use for hundreds of years by the point the printmaker Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create woodblocks of the 69 relaxation stations alongside the route—a activity later taken over by Utagawa Hiroshige, the acknowledged grasp of the shape. The Nakasendō’s busy cities supplied ample materials for his or her work within the ukiyo-e style, which documented leisurely pursuits and landscapes over the last centuries of Japan’s isolation from worldwide affairs. (Ukiyo-e means, roughly, “photos of a floating world.”) Inside a long time of the publication of the Sixty-9 Stations of the Nakasendō, the Edo Interval would come to an finish, Japan would start to industrialize and Westernize, and the highway would by no means see as many vacationers once more.

Nonetheless, elements of the Nakasendō stay intact. Final spring, three school mates and I made a decision to take our annual meetup a bit of farther afield, reserving a self-guided itinerary with Stroll Japan that will observe one of many extra full sections of the previous highway—a string of Seventeenth-century cities within the Kiso Valley, which straddles the Gifu and Nagano prefectures. The Nakasendō at its full extent stretched 330 miles and would have taken the common traveler two or three weeks of intense legwork; our three days of strolling can be simpler, and far more luxurious, with our baggage transported individually by automobile. However I hoped I might be capable to pause occasionally and maintain up my cellphone to line up one among Eisen’s or Hiroshige’s prints with the actual factor. 

In Hiroshige’s rendering of Nakatsugawa, now a metropolis of round 80,000, white egrets disguise in tall river grasses, and hikers are shielded from the rain by extensive straw hats that mirror the pointed thatched roofs of the village behind them. The river views are completely different now: descending from Naegi Fort, the Sixteenth-century fortress the place our route started, we wound via a bamboo forest earlier than coming throughout a building crew engaged on a brand new bridge. However we’d seen related thatched roofs at Nagataki, our inn the earlier evening, a set of conventional homes set among the many timber.

We continued out of the town heart, first on quiet streets after which tree-lined paths the place suburbs and farmland intermingled. Immediately’s Nakasendō is usually extra of an concept than a bodily route, at instances indistinguishable from trendy roads. However the stone lanterns on the wayside had been reminders that walkers handed via lengthy earlier than these paths had been paved with asphalt.

Finally, we arrived at Visitor Home Motomiya, the place the proprietor, Keiko, waved to us from a small plot the place she was harvesting bamboo shoots. We ate this spring delicacy for dinner, together with maitake tempura and salt-crusted river fish, then took a Polaroid selfie and pinned it to a corkboard overflowing with photos of previous guests. 

We met Keiko’s son Daisuke the following morning at Hillbilly Espresso Co., his tiny café within the village of Magome. Sipping my chilly brew, I studied the woodblock model of the city. Nothing I may see seemed something prefer it, however I did see a spot as soon as once more alive with vacationers passing via. 

From Magome we ascended up and up, glancing again on the mountain valley panorama behind us. On occasion, a bend within the path would reveal a burst of pink from the final of the cherry blossoms, or a solitary bell—an old style technique of heading off bears. Did Eisen and Hiroshige have bear bells? I guessed they didn’t have Pocari Sweat, Japan’s fashionable electrolyte drink, or the usually spaced merchandising machines the place we might chug two bottles every. 

Merchandising machines and lots of different markers of modernity are nonetheless banned in historic Tsumago, among the finest preserved of all of the Edo Interval cities. At a tiny bakery referred to as Wachinoya we purchased oyaki (skillet-fried buckwheat buns) stuffed with bitter wild mugwort. Sitting down for soba at Yamagiri Shokudou, we had been excited to identify goheimochi: white rice wrapped round a stick, brushed with soy sauce, and grilled over a fireplace. The flat, rectangular mochi form frequent within the Kiso Valley is styled after waraji, the straw sandals unmistakable on the toes of Hiroshige’s and Eisen’s woodblock hikers.

Sweaty and content material after one other hour of strolling, we caught a brief native practice to our subsequent guesthouse, Urara Tsutaya, the place we had been ingesting plum wine and consuming trout sashimi when a small earthquake rumbled the eating room. We soaked off the seismic tremors within the quiet onsen, which is fed by alkaline springs and warmed by warmth from beneath the ever-shifting mountains.

One of many highest factors on the Nakasendō is Ontake Yohaijo, a shrine devoted to Mount Ontake. However once we reached the shrine on our final day, the mountain was small within the distance, greater than 30 miles west. It was traditionally off-limits to lots of its acolytes, who needed to worship it from afar, from perches like this. I questioned how they may derive any non secular sustenance at such a distance. 

Eisen’s model reveals not the shrine however a close-by clearing, a nonetheless pool of water, and a stone slab displaying a verse by the Edo poet Matsuo Bashō. Solely later did I keep in mind the close by clearing the place we’d stopped to relaxation. It hadn’t seemed like a lot. In a approach, I’d identified for the reason that second we’d set out that I, too, was seeing one thing from afar with out fairly being there myself. However upon descending into the picturesque city of Narai, we noticed an enormous crimson comb marking the doorway of Matsuzakaya; Eisen’s print of Narai reveals a comb workshop, too. 

The ukiyo-e Nakasendō exists solely on paper. However there have been many moments alongside the best way the place I felt a portal open: a waterwheel turning; white streamers blowing from the doorway to a Shinto shrine; my buddy bending right down to tie her shoe, mirroring a bald, blue-clad man in one of many prints doing simply the identical. Now, after I look via the Sixty-9 Stations of the Nakasendō, what stands out most to me is the individuals—consuming noodles, asking instructions, strolling uphill with their backpacks and excessive socks, not so completely different from us in spite of everything. 

Self-guided four-night Kiso Wayfarer itinerary with Stroll Japan from $1,250 per individual, together with lodging, breakfasts, dinners, and baggage transfers.

A model of this story first appeared within the April 2025 challenge of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “The Artist’s Method.”