was the name given to minor route

Thoroughfare

A thoroughfare is a place of transportation intended to connect one location to another. Highways, roads, and trails are examples of thoroughfares used by a variety of general traffic. On land a thoroughfare may refer to anything from a rough trail to multi-lane highway with grade separated...

s that created detours around the difficult crossings (or river crossings) of main routes during the Edo period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. These routes could be found on many of the Edo Five Routes

Edo Five Routes

The were the five major roads that started at Edo during the Edo period, the most important of which was the Tōkaidō, which linked Edo and Kyoto...

, as well as on other sub-routes that crossed the country.

Naming

When there were difficult passes or river crossings on the main routes, hime kaidō were established to avoid them. Because there were fewer travelers, less danger, a lower chance of being attacked by bandits (compared with the main route they were avoiding), it was said that people could relax while traveling the route. It was for these reasons that women often chose to travel these routes, giving rise to the routes being called hime kaidō or onna kaidō ("women's route").

There were different definitions of what made a hime kaidō, as some detours just went around one difficult area, while others were much longer and avoided most of the dangerous routes. Because of the various definitions, the Nakasendō

Nakasendo

The , also called the , was one of the five routes of the Edo period, and one of the two that connected Edo to Kyoto in Japan. There were 69 stations between Edo and Kyoto, crossing through Musashi, Kōzuke, Shinano, Mino and Ōmi provinces...

 was sometimes referred to as a hime kaidō, because the distance was much greater and the danger was much less than that of the Tōkaidō

Tokaido (road)

The ' was the most important of the Five Routes of the Edo period, connecting Edo to Kyoto in Japan. Unlike the inland and less heavily travelled Nakasendō, the Tōkaidō travelled along the sea coast of eastern Honshū, hence the route's name....

, which started and ended at the same location.

Other features employed the same naming conventions, including hills. Some hills in front of temples and shrines that had steep gradients were called "men's hills" (男坂 otoko no saka), while hills that were easier to climb were called "women's hills" (女坂 onna no saka)

Notable Hime Kaidō

Tōkaidō

Between Mitsuke-juku

Mitsuke-juku

was the twenty-eighth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in what is now the central part of the city of Iwata, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan...

 and Goyu-shuku

Goyu-shuku

was the thirty-fifth of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō. It is located in Goyu-chō in the city of Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. A pine tree colonnade, one of the few remnants from the Edo period post town, is a well-known tourist spot...

, which bypassed six other post stations

Shukuba

were post stations during the Edo period in Japan, generally located on one of the Edo Five Routes or one of its sub-routes. They were also called shukueki . These post stations were places where travelers could rest on their journey around the nation...

on the Tōkaidō.