Yakage Post Town

What Yakage Post Town looked like originally and what it looks like now are two different stories — both worth knowing before you arrive.

Yakage was the eighteenth station on the Sanyodo highway, and unusually both of its principal inns survive: the honjin, where daimyo on their journeys to Edo stayed, and the wakihonjin that took the overflow. Both the Ishii and the Takakusa houses are Important Cultural Properties, and no other post town in Japan has kept the pair intact. The Ishii family also brewed sake, so the honjin comes with its storehouses and brewing rooms attached rather than as a bare reception hall.

The street between them was selected as an Important Preservation District in 2020, which is recent enough that the town is still quiet. Princess Atsuhime is recorded as having stopped here on her way to marry into the Tokugawa house, and the town runs a daimyo procession re-enactment in November.