Post-towns of the Nakasendo
The following is a list of post-towns and other stops on the Nakasendo highway which a fictional group might visit while walking from Kyoto to Tokyo. Each place is associated with a particular topic and this provides one means of organizing the information contained at this site. Clicking on the topic will take you to a list of the articles, usually four or five, associated with that topic, usually including a description of the highway on to the next post-town.
When this Web site was a CD-ROM, five fictional characters travelled the Nakasendo, each of them reacting in conversation to particular topics from their own point of view. These conversations are now available as Quicktime movies which display photographs while the conversation takes place. The characters are fictional, but present stereotypic views on each topic according to the peculiarities of their era, gender, or class. The characters are:
- Nakamura-sensei
A retired high school teacher of Japanese history, Mr. Nakamura was born in 1925 and typical of the older generation, he is stiff, dry and old-fashioned. As befits his profession, he is a fountain of knowledge and always ready to deliver a lecture. He is puzzled and bemused by the interests and values of his youngest daughter, Chizuru.
- Chizuru
Chizuru is a child of Japan's economic miracle. Born in 1960, she has never known the hardships of previous generations and has opinions, values and ambitions which are entirely foreign to her parents' generation. Chizuru has much to discover about Japan on the journey along the Nakasendo.
- Kiku
Born in 1840, Kiku has a sharp tongue and many opinions. She was the daughter of a warrior, but married into the new elite, the industrialists of modern Japan in the Meiji period. Kiku witnessed the beginning of Japan's new era, but never imagined that so much could have changed since then.
- Torazaemon
Torazaemon or Tora, for short, was a shopkeeper's assistant. Like most merchants in Edo (modern Tokyo) in the 1840s, Tora was boisterous, bumptious and intent on enjoying a good time. Although amazed and impressed by modern Japan, he is dismayed that all that he was familiar with has disappeared.
- Kinbei
Born in 1560 and raised amid the turmoil of the Warring States period, Kinbei served in the armies of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. He eventually obtained a rank similar to a sergeant-major. Rough, austere and taciturn, Kinbei's blind allegiance to his superiors was unfailing. He finds the high tech industries and modern values of today's Japan more than a little baffling.
Seven of the conversations are not available because they originally came with animations which are not copyrighted by the present authors. The remaining conversations are approximately one minute in length and require that you have the Quicktime player, available here. Each of the movies on this site range from 0.9–2.3 megabytes in size: for those with slower internet connectionss, a certain amount of time will be required to download each movie.
