Ouchi-juku

▶Formation of a Post Town
Ōuchi prospered as one of the post stations along the Shimotsuke Kaidō during the Edo period, and after the Meiji era it was spared development because of changes in transportation routes, preserving the atmosphere of the old days to this day. This road had already seen considerable traffic since the Kamakura period, as a route connecting Aizu and Kanto.

However, road maintenance does not seem to have been thorough. Efforts to improve roads across the country began in earnest in the Sengoku period and were carried out as part of the unification of Japan.

The Tokugawa shogunate inherited this policy and maintained the main arteries of the Five Routes and their associated roads. These subsidiary routes were also called branch roads or side roads. The Shimotsuke Kaidō was one such branch road, smaller in scale than the main highways, and both the road and its post stations appear to have been underdeveloped. Ōuchi was about four and a half ri (16.5 km) from Wakamatsu and five ri (20 km) from Tajima. Since the average distance a traveler covered in a day at the time was about eight to ten ri, Ōuchi-juku served as a midway post town, a stop along the main road where travelers could rest for lunch.

Ōuchi-juku is thought to have been formed around the same time as Kawashima-juku on the same road, which was established in Kan’ei 3 (1654). The development of roads in the Edo period was closely tied to the Tokugawa shogunate’s consolidation of its rule, and by this time the Five Routes and other branch roads had already been improved.

▶The Legend of Takakura-no-miya Prince Mochihito
In May of Jishō 4 (1180), Prince Mochihito, the second son of Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who rose in revolt with Minamoto no Yorimasa to overthrow the Taira clan, was defeated in the Battle of Uji and died after being struck by a stray arrow while fleeing to Nara. However, a legend remains in the Ōuchi settlement that Prince Mochihito safely escaped the capital, arrived in Ōuchi, stayed there for several days, and then set out again in the direction of Echigo Province.

Ōuchi settlement, then called Yamamoto Village, is said to have been named “Ōuchi” after the Ōuchi-dairi of the imperial court, and the following poem has also been handed down: “In spring, flowers; in autumn, brocade-covered mountains; the eastern capital, the village of Ōuchi.”

The prince was enshrined as Takakura Daimyōjin, and on May 18, Meiji 3 (1870), the shrine was renamed Takakura Shrine, where he is still worshipped today as the village guardian deity.

In the past, people honored Prince Mochihito and held a festival in May, but because it coincided with the busy rice-planting season, the festival was moved to “hangashō,” the middle of the year’s second half, and became the present-day Hangasa Festival.

In this area, because there is much snow, the rice-planting season is late, and people made sure to finish planting by the time of the Hangasa Festival.

▶Ōuchi-juku Today
In 1981, Ōuchi-juku was designated as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings, and it has become one of the prefecture’s leading tourist destinations, attracting more than 800,000 visitors annually. Even today, local residents continue to uphold the three principles of the Ōuchi-juku conservation charter—“Do not sell, do not rent, do not destroy”—and are carrying on efforts to preserve Ōuchi’s landscape and traditional thatching techniques for the future.