On a flat suburban street in Shiga, where convenience stores hum and bicycles rule the crosswalks, two rounded mounds rise from a narrow strip of green. They look accidental—lawn bumps that escaped the bulldozer—until you notice the old hackberry trees anchoring each one, and a tidy sign explaining that this is an ichirizuka, a relic of the Edo road system. Trucks sigh past. Cicadas press their constant chorus into the air. Beneath the trees, the ground is cool and beaded with last night’s rain. The place doesn’t demand attention; it simply holds it.
An ichirizuka is easy to miss. That’s the point. These “one-ri mounds” were never grand. They were functional. But stop here, and the modern city thins. You can feel the old Nakasendō—a highway of footfall and hoofbeat—running like a second current beneath the asphalt. Distances once counted by the step are now measured by the minute. Even so, the mounds refuse to forget.
What Exactly Is an Ichirizuka?
An ichirizuka is a pair of earthen mounds marking each ri along Edo-period highways. A ri is an old unit of distance, about 3.9 kilometers (roughly 2.4 miles). The count started at Nihonbashi, the “zero mile” bridge in Edo (now Tokyo), which the shogunate used as the center of a standardized road network. The mounds were typically planted with enoki (hackberry) trees that cast shade and announced the marker from afar. Carriers noted loads here. Travelers gauged progress. Local authorities used them to maintain a shared calendar of the road: how far to the next post town, how long before dusk, whether to push on or rest.
They weren’t milestones as much as pace keepers for a society alive to the rhythm of foot travel. Pilgrims to Ise and sellers of fish from the coast both used them, and the mounds stitched the realm together in a way that was both practical and quietly civic.
Why the Trees Matter
The enoki trees are more than ornament. They’re durable, deep-rooted, and tolerant of pruning—ideal companions for mounds that doubled as windbreaks and waypoints. Over time, the trees became the most visible sign of the ichirizuka themselves. Even after a mound eroded, an old hackberry could whisper what used to be here. Not sacred, exactly, but noticed. A place where you’d share water, knot a sandal, adjust the straps of a pack.
How Japan Lost Its Mile Markers
Modernization unspooled the old roads. In the late 19th century, as Japan widened arteries for carriages and, later, motor traffic, ichirizuka were seen as obstacles to progress—physical clutter that didn’t fit the new map. Many were flattened by policy, others by simple neglect. A few survived because the trees were loved, because a community hesitated with the shovel, or because the road jogged around them by accident.
What remains today are patchworks: rare pairs on old alignments, solitary mounds displaced into pocket parks, and, sometimes, only the memory of the trees. When you find a pair intact, like the one I stood between in Moriyama, Shiga, it feels like stumbling on a working instrument—a delicate device that still tells you something useful if you know how to read it.
Where to See Ichirizuka Today
Your best chances are along the traces of the Nakasendō and Tōkaidō, the two famous routes linking Edo and Kyoto. In Saitama, the Okegawa ichirizuka are well signposted and designated for protection. In Shiga, near the former post town of Moriyama-juku, a preserved pair still faces each other across the line of the old highway. Both sites sit inside everyday neighborhoods: bus stops, hair salons, a delivery truck reversing into a lane. That ordinariness is part of their strength.
If you’re already traveling around Lake Biwa, consider weaving an ichirizuka stop into a day of slower exploration. Shiga rewards that pace; the prefecture’s backroads carry older patterns of life that are easy to miss from a train window. For a broader sense of that landscape, see Shiga Beyond Lake Biwa: Following Water Through an Older Japan.
Elsewhere, look for small brown or green signs at eye level, sometimes with a stylized mound or tree icon, and watch for twin rises that seem too deliberate to be natural. Local history museums often have maps marking former and current ichirizuka. Tourist information counters in post town areas know which ones are still standing. If you can read a little Japanese, the term “一里塚” in search results will lead you to municipal pages with coordinates.
Walking to the Past: A Small Itinerary in Shiga
The pair in Moriyama sits along the line of the old Nakasendō, a short bus ride or about a 15–20 minute walk from JR Moriyama Station on the Biwako Line. The walk is intuitive if you follow the quieter street paralleling the main road; you’ll pass traditional plaster storehouses now used as garages and a tofu shop with a sweet-soy aroma that hangs in the air before lunch.
As you approach, the scene changes from commercial to residential, and then the mounds appear beneath their trees like two hands cupped around a breath. There’s a signboard with a simple diagram and a short explanation. The space between the mounds becomes the unit—what used to be “from here to there,” multiplied by every ri until Edo. If the sun is high, stand in the shade and listen. You’ll hear tires on wet pavement and, underneath, something lighter. Footsteps, maybe yours.
Etiquette is straightforward: these are historic sites. Don’t climb the mounds, don’t break branches, and keep your voice low. If a neighbor watches you lingering, nod; they’re used to people stopping, but it’s good manners to show that you understand this place is part of their street, not a museum sealed behind glass.
Reading the Old Measure
If a ri is about 3.9 kilometers, the next mound would have stood nearly an hour’s walk down the road for someone moving at an unhurried pace. That’s the tempo ichirizuka teach—distance as time lived, not simply covered. Try it: mark 3.9 kilometers on your phone map and see how many everyday interruptions—conversations, tea breaks, a sudden rain shower—fold into that stretch.
What These Mounds Reveal About Japan
Ichirizuka aren’t grand monuments to power. They’re the infrastructure of attention. Standardizing distance tied the shogunate’s far corners to a visible center at Nihonbashi, but it also made difficult journeys legible to ordinary travelers. The mounds are the physical residue of that promise: that a country could be intelligible to its walkers, one ri at a time.
They also speak to a cultural habit that persists: the way everyday objects carry civic weight. A stone basin outside a shop tells you it rains often. A roadside statue of Jizō signals care for travelers and children. If you’re curious about those statues, this piece offers a deeper look: Japan’s Roadside Jizō: The Small Statues That Mark Old Fears. Ichirizuka belong to this family of quiet guides. They’re not decorative; they’re social, practical, and public.
Practical Tips for Finding and Visiting Ichirizuka
Getting There
- Moriyama, Shiga: From JR Moriyama Station, exit toward the city center and follow signs or a map app toward the old Nakasendō line through the former Moriyama-juku. It’s a level walk on sidewalks with frequent crossings. Local buses also make short hops toward residential stops near the site.
- Okegawa, Saitama: Take JR Takasaki Line to Okegawa Station. The preserved mounds are within walking distance on local streets that trace the old highway alignment; follow municipal signboards.
Best Time and Light
- Morning or late afternoon brings softer light filtering through hackberry leaves, and fewer cars on neighborhood streets.
- Summer soundscapes—cicadas, afternoon thunderstorms—make the shade feel purposeful. In winter, the bare trees emphasize the mounds’ shape.
How Much Time
- Allow 15–30 minutes at a site. These are small places, but patience reveals details: an angled curb where the old road once veered, a shrine gate aligning with the highway, the way residents curve their bicycles around the trees without looking up.
Etiquette and Access
- Stay off the mounds. Some are fragile, and roots are easily damaged.
- Keep voices low in residential areas. Pack out any trash.
- Accessibility varies. Many sites sit by flat sidewalks, but some require crossing busy streets without signals. Watch for narrow shoulders.
Photography Notes
- Step back to include both mounds in frame; their relationship is the point.
- Shoot low across the road surface to show the old line of travel.
- A 35–50mm lens captures both context and texture without distorting scale.
The Modern Traveler and the Old Pace
Japan’s trains belong to the story, too. They compress distance so effectively that we often treat a day as a series of pins on a map. It’s tempting to plan every transfer weeks in advance. There’s a place for that; this country rewards preparedness. But sites like ichirizuka argue for a little slack in the rope. Leave an hour without an agenda. Let an ordinary street turn into an old highway because a pair of trees convince you to slow down. If you’re wondering how much structure to commit to before your flight, this guide is a sensible starting point: How Much of Japan Should You Book Before You Arrive?.
Walking between mounds also reframes the idea of “distance” in a country where trains make kilometers disappear. A ri is long enough to feel, short enough to hold. In that span, the road becomes a set of neighbors: the tatami shop with its sweet straw scent, the clinic where patients line up neatly before opening, the ramen place that still pulls a noren at 3 p.m. Whether it’s Shiga’s soft lakeside air or Saitama’s quiet residential blocks, the walk ties you to the present while keeping the past within hearing distance.
History Hiding in Plain Sight
In English-language travel writing, ichirizuka rarely get more than a footnote. They lack the drama of castles and the polish of big shrines. But their modesty is instructional. They reveal how an early-modern state imagined movement: coordinated but local, measured yet humane. They also show how Japan tends to fold the past into the fabric of today, not as spectacle but as habit. A hackberry tree grows. Neighbors sweep the curb. Someone pauses in the shade without knowing that this is a place made for pausing.
On the day I visited Moriyama’s mounds, a woman in a sun hat clipped herbs in a planter behind the left mound and glanced up once, amused to see a stranger photographing a patch of dirt. A boy coasted down the street, feet off the pedals, and swerved gently around the trunks. A deliveryman checked his route under the branches, then nudged his scooter forward. The trees didn’t bless them. They simply offered a small, cool certainty: you are here, between two points that once told all of Japan how far it had come, and how far was left to go.
