was the forty-seventh of the sixty-nine stations

69 Stations of the Nakasendo

The are the rest areas along the Nakasendō, which ran from Nihonbashi in Edo to Sanjō Ōhashi in Kyoto. The route stretched approximately and was an alternate trade route to the Tōkaidō.-Stations of the Nakasendō:...

 of 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...

 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....

. This is the first station along the Nakasendō to be in the domain of the Owari Clan, one of the most powerful regional clans. It is located in the present-day city of Mizunami

Mizunami, Gifu

is a city located in the Tōnō region of Gifu, Japan.As of July 2011, the city has an estimated population of 40,030. The total area is 175.00 km².The city was founded on April 1, 1954....

, Gifu Prefecture

Gifu Prefecture

is a prefecture located in the Chūbu region of central Japan. Its capital is the city of Gifu.Located in the center of Japan, it has long played an important part as the crossroads of Japan, connecting the east to the west through such routes as the Nakasendō...

, 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...

. Alternative kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

for the post town are 大久手.

History

Ōkute-juku was first established in 1604, and came to serve as a post town between Ōi-juku

Oi-juku

was the forty-sixth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō. It is located in the present-day city of Ena, Gifu Prefecture, Japan. From Ōi-juku to the next post town, Ōkute-juku, there are 13 hills to pass over...

 and Hosokute-juku

Hosokute-juku

was the forty-eighth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō during the Edo period and it is located in the present-day city of Mizunami, Gifu Prefecture, Japan.-History:...

 (which come before and after Ōkute-juku, respectively). Biwa Pass (琵琶峠 Biwa-tōge) crossed a small mountain between those two post towns and is near where Ōkute-juku was established. Princess Chikako

Kazu-no-Miya Chikako

was the wife of 14th shogun Tokugawa Iemochi. She was renamed Lady Seikan'in no miya after she took the tonsure as a widow.She was the eighth and youngest daughter of Emperor Ninkō and his concubine, Hashimoto Tsuneko - renamed Kangyouin after she took the tonsure. She was the younger half-sister...

 stayed at this town during her travels along the Nakasendō. At the top of Biwa Pass, there is a stone inscribed with a poem that Chikaku wrote, feeling that she had finally left her home, Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

, on her journey to Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 to meet and marry the shogun

Shogun

A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...

. Also, Shinmei Shrine has a Japanese cedar tree that is over 1,300 years old.