Tea Houses
Throughout the length of the Nakasendo, or any other old highway, there are tea houses. Some achieved fame because they were featured in a wood block print; others because they were notorious gathering places for ruffians or prostitutes. Some were small, almost tiny, like the abandoned one between Magome and O-tsumago, but others were large and sumptuous, like the tea house at Surihari-toge.
The tea houses were established to provide refreshment to travelers between post-towns. Some of them sprang up when local peasants discovered they could make some money by providing food and drinks, but others were ordered to be established by the highway's authorities, particularly at isolated, distant points where travelers frequently came to grief because of exposure to the elements or sheer exhaustion. Passes were prime sites for tea houses to be established by administrative fiat; the need was clear and there often was no other form of hospitality for miles around. Surihari-toge is not particularly isolated although it does offer a hot climb in the summer, but other passes, like Wada-toge or Usui-toge, were harder climbs and very isolated, even desolate.
The tea houses were frequently lively places which offered a great deal more than a drink of tea. Food, sake, entertainment, and travelers' supplies (footwear and so on) were usually readily available. Some tea houses attracted so much trade that additional tea houses and other businesses also moved in. Before long a small village emerged, quite unofficially, to serve the needs of the travelers. Nowadays, few original tea houses survive. In most cases only the flattened site of the foundations remain, especially in places where the old highway has fallen into relative disuse and degenerated into little more than a footpath. In places where there is still a lot of traffic, on the other hand, such as Magome-toge or Kasatori-toge, between Nagakubo and Ashita post-towns, tea houses continue to this day to offer food, drink and shelter to travelers.
