Tsumago-juku, Nagiso

Tsumago-juku in Nagiso is a post town that prospered as one of the eleven Kiso post stations on the Nakasendo. The preservation district covers 1,245.4 hectares, roughly 30 percent of the total area of all Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings in Japan, and it was selected in 1976. Its preservation takes in not only the buildings of the post town but also the surrounding natural scenery, centered on the views from the Nakasendo.

The district is understood as four parts. At the center is the post-town landscape zone, where houses with dashibari-zukuri (projecting upper floors) and udatsu (firewalls) stand in a row, retaining the look of the late Edo to Meiji periods. Around it are the road landscape zone and the rural landscape zone, with the natural landscape zone of mountains seen from the road as a backdrop. The town explains that the preservation takes the view from the Nakasendo as its center and treats the surrounding nature as a background, which incorporates the idea of borrowed scenery.

Preservation in Tsumago began at a time when the post town's function had declined with the changes in transport after the Meiji era, and when young people moving to cities during the rapid economic growth that began in the 1950s had left the community weakened. A preservation plan was made in 1968, and preservation and repair work got under way in earnest as a Nagano Prefecture project commemorating 100 years of Meiji. In the same year the "Society for Loving Tsumago" was founded and the Bunka-Bunsei Fuzoku Emaki procession, which continues today, began. In 1971 the "Residents' Charter for Protecting Tsumago" was established.

The town recalls that at the time, adopting the policy that "preservation is development" was unusual and was viewed with half-doubt. As preservation advanced, visitors increased sharply, and the town provided parking, walking paths, signs and public toilets. In the preservation projects since selection in 1976, 197 repairs and 8 landscape improvements have been carried out. When looking at the buildings, it is worth overlaying the long process through which the whole town has been kept, not just the age of each house.

Within the post town, the Waki-honjin Okuya (Hayashi family) opened as the Okuya Local History Museum in 1967, and in 1995 the restoration of the Tsumago-juku Honjin and the History Museum were completed. The road was designated a national historic site as the Nakasendo (Historic Road) in 1987, and in 2016 the Kiso region was certified as a Japan Heritage site. Residents take part in turning over stone-weighted board roofs, and at the Isshi-tochi Tateba Chaya, a vacant house used as a free rest area, they offer rest while counting travelers on the Nakasendo.