Day 5 - From Sakashita To Tsuchiyama, Over The Suzuka Mountain Pass, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
Day 5 - From Sakashita To Tsuchiyama, Over The Suzuka Mountain Pass, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
The distance between the last station we walked to and our hotel in Kameyama is nearly 40 kilometers, with a mountain pass to cross called Suzuka Toge. The plan was to divide the distance in half and to do it in two days.
First we would take a bus to the bottom of the Suzuka Toge (Pass), then visit the 49th Station of the Tokaido, called Tsuchiyama Post Town, and then walk back to the Hygge Cafe, where we stopped walking yesterday.
To get back to our hotel in Kameyama, we would take a taxi. Then the next day, we would walk down the pass into Seki post town. Both days are scheduled to be cold and rainy.
After breakfast, I asked the friendly lady at the front desk to check the bus schedule for us, and she told me that the bus didn’t run at all on Sundays. I was a bit surprised, because weekends would be when most people actually have the time to go hiking in the mountains.
Instead, we took a taxi to Sakashita, our starting point for crossing the Suzuka Pass. Sakashita-juku was the first post station on the Tokaido road from Omi Province (Shiga Prefecture) over the Suzuka Pass into Ise Province (Mie Prefecture). Sakashita-juku was destroyed by a major flood in September of the third year of Keian (1650).
After the flood, Sakashita-juku was moved about one kilometer east, and it prospered as a post town. It had a travelers inn, shops, temples and shrines, and an entire village with many stores and buildings. There were 111 houses in this post town.
Today, it is a sleepy village with no stores and almost no houses, just some old stone walls leading up to the Suzuka mountain pass. For the early part of our walk up the mountain, the road was paved with sidewalks, so it was a fairly easy walk despite the poor weather.
The actual ascent over the pass was through a beautiful forest path lined with fallen leaves, surrounded by tall trees. The trees were so tall and the forest so dense, it was magical.
The path was steep but fairly short. Too short for me, because I love spending time in the forests. As we were descending, the rain stopped, although it was still cold and breezy.
There is a lot of history connected with the Suzuka toge pass. The first official road to cross the Suzuka Pass (378m) was called the Asuwa Road, and it opened in the year 886, during the Heian period. It was a rugged mountain pass, with 27 steep bends, making it a big challenge for travelers and their animals.
There are many legends about bandits and robbers who were hiding in the woods here, robbing travelers carrying goods and money. One tale from the Konjaku Monogatarishu (Tales of the Heian Period) tells about a mercury merchant who was attacked by bandits attempting to rob him. He chanted a magical spell to summon a swarm of bees that he kept, and the bees attacked the bandits, who ran away into the woods.
It was a difficult section of the Tokaido, on a par with the famous Hakone Pass.
The Heian period poet Saigyo, who was a famous poet from Ise Province, wrote about the Suzuka Pass in this poem: “Suzuka Mountain, Leaving the floating world behind, What will become of me?”
Matsuo Basho, the most famous haiku poet of the Edo period, left behind the following haiku about his crossing the Suzuka Pass: “Crossing Mount Suzuka at the first sign of the winter solstice."
The Suzuka Pass is located at an altitude of 300m above sea level The Tokaido passes through the saddle between Mt. Mito and Mt. Takahata. In the second year of the Ninna era (886), the Asuwa road crossed the Suzuka Pass from Omi and entered Ise. In the same year, a procession of Saiou (female princesses) traveled along this new road to Ise Shrine.
The crossing of the Suzuka Pass became the main route of the Tokaido. In the first year of the Shotai era (898), shortly after the mountain pass was opened, an envoy was attacked by mountain bandits. Minamoto no Yoritomo ordered the Yamanaka clan, the local lord of the mountains in Omi Province, to suppress the bandits.
The Samurai clan did their best to capture the robbers, but it is clear that the mountain ranges were rampant with road robbers from the early to the Middle Ages.
As we were crossing the pass, I started thinking that even without the bandits, who in modern times are probably sitting home, robbing people online, the forest still felt like it had interesting stories to tell.
After the ascent, we walked downhill for a while. We reached the Tsuchiyama Post Town, where we sat to eat lunch in an old Soba restaurant. At first the place looked closed, but I slid open the wooden shoji door and entered the shop. It was cold and dark inside. A very bent old man with glasses welcomed me. I asked if it was possible to get a lunch for four people, and he invited us in, turned on the lights and turned on the heater. He called for his wife to come over to prepare our food.
We peeled off our wet raincoats and sat to enjoy a warm bowl of homemade soba noodles cooked with wild vegetables foraged from the nearby mountains. The owner brought over a magazine showing all the herbs and vegetables that could be foraged in the mountains. We drank lots of hot tea and after the meal, we ordered bowls of Zenzai, a traditional Japanese sweet red bean soup with toasted mochi rice cakes inside.
After our meal, we looked around their shop to see all the souvenirs related to the Tokaido they had, and bought a handkerchief with a print of the Tokaido on it. We thanked them for their hospitality and left to see Tsuchiyama Post Town and visit the local museum. I
t was raining when we left. Tsuchiyama Post Town had some attractive older houses and commercial buildings, and ample signs and markers recounting its past status as an important part of the Tokaido Road. There were several small stores and two more places to eat. We paid a visit to the local Tokaido museum. It displayed an excellent collection of paintings and models illustrating life during Edo times along the Tokaido Road.
The second floor displayed various foods that were the local specialties, including different kinds of rice cakes, sweets and candy. From the friendly museum lady, I bought a local candy made from barley malt, that was called a “Crab candy”.
The story is that during the Heian period, a giant crab measuring three meters in diameter appeared at the foot of Mt. Suzuka and attacked travelers. The high priest of Mount Hiei came to visit the mountain, and was also stopped by the giant crab. But fearlessly, he started to chant the Heart Sutra and pieces of the crab’s shell started falling off, one by one. After that, the villagers made a round candy resembling the shell of the crab to remember this tale.
Continuing to walk in the rain, we noticed that a few snow flurries had mixed in with the cold rain. In the afternoon, we stopped in the supermarket to buy food for dinner because we didn’t want to eat again at the truck stop by the hotel.
We finally reached the Hygge Cafe, where we had stopped walking yesterday. We were happy to warm up, eat their specialty of dream cake and drink two delicious varieties of local teas. We then took a taxi back to the hotel.
With love and laughter,
Tali
Today’s Stats: 23,382 steps
16 km
Total walked: 92.5 km
Old Post Towns Visited:
Sakashita Juku Station #48
Tsuchiyama-juku, Station #49 At the Suzuka Toge Mountain Pass
