Japan Old Post Towns & Highway Inns Coloring Book

About this book

Sixty real post towns of Japan's old highways — and every one of them ready to color.

Before the railway, Japan traveled on foot, and the great highways were strung with post towns: stations with honjin inns for daimyo processions, hatago for common travelers, checkpoint barriers, ferry landings and river crossings. This book walks those roads as an Edo traveler walked them, and every stop is a real place in its real view: the barrier gate of Hakone above Lake Ashi and the surviving checkpoint building of Arai, the great inn Kashibaya at Okabe and the honjin of Futagawa and Kusatsu, the Oi River crossing at Shimada where porters carried travelers through the water, the stone-paved cedar road over Hakone pass, the pine avenue of Soka, the snow-country station of Imajo, and the white-walled street of Unno at the end of the northern road.

Every subject appears as a two-page spread: on one side, a full-color guide — a photograph of the place today, or the public-domain Edo-period print that made it famous — with a short, fascinating story of the station, its inns and its road, and exactly how to color it; on the other side, a detailed coloring page of the very same view, converted from the real image so the scene you color is the scene itself.

Inside you will find: • The Tokaido, Edo to Kyoto — Shinagawa, Hakone's checkpoint and old highway, the Oi River crossing, Shirasuka's inn street on the hill, Kuwana's ferry landing • The Nakasendo through the Kiso mountains — Ota's honjin gate, Ochiai at the foot of the pass, Fukushima's checkpoint town, Wada's long preserved street, Karuizawa's old Ginza • The Koshu Kaido — Fuchu's great zelkova avenue, the Hino honjin of the Shinsengumi's home town, the monkey bridge of Saruhashi • The Nikko and Oshu roads — Senju, Soka's pines, Koshigaya's merchant houses, the longest cedar avenue on Earth, the ancient barrier of Shirakawa • The northern roads — Imajo in the snow country and Unno's white-walled station street • 60 full-color guides with the story of each place (about 86–105 words each) • None of these sixty subjects appeared in our previous Japan coloring books

Sixty stations of the old highways, one long journey on foot from Edo's gate to the snows of the Hokuriku road — bring pencils, and take your time.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.