Hakone Old Tōkaidō Cedar Avenue

photo by そらみみ · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by Quercus acuta · CC BY-SA 4.0

Planted in 1618 by order of the shogunate: some of the cedars are now over 350 years old.

For about 500 metres, between Moto-Hakone and the Onshi Hakone imperial park, the old Tōkaidō runs beneath a tunnel of more than four hundred cedars, planted in 1618 by order of the shogunate when the Hakone post station was established: they protected travellers from the sun in summer and from the icy wind in winter. The oldest are now more than 350 years old, with trunks up to four metres in circumference. The Hakone stretch was the hardest of the ‘eight ri’ (32 km) of the Tōkaidō between Odawara and Mishima, called ‘Hakone hachiri’ precisely because of its reputation for hardship.

A tree-lined stretch of the old Tōkaidō, the road of the fifty-three stations between Edo and Kyoto established at the start of the Edo period; this section runs along Lake Ashi.

ℹ️ Public path, always accessible and free.

🚉 Hakonemachi-ko · 11 min walk

Sources: kanagawa-kankou.or.jp · tabi-mag.jp · kodo.jac1.or.jp

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