Chronicle No. 19 · History

Fifty-Three Stops: How Edo Japan Graded Its Inns by Rank

On the Tokaido, where you slept was decided by who you were. Money alone could not buy you through the right door.

The Tōkaidō ran along the coast from Nihonbashi in Edo to Sanjō Ōhashi in Kyoto. The Tokugawa shogunate designated 53 post stations along it, and the system was complete by around 1624. Under sankin-kōtai, the policy of alternate attendance, the great lords were obliged to process to Edo and back, and the road became the busiest in Japan.

What grew up at each station was a graded lodging system, and the grading was by status rather than purse.

• Honjin — reserved for daimyō, hatamoto and high clergy. These were not commercial hotels but the houses of village and town headmen, designated by the government and rewarded with privileges for hosting official parties. Ordinary travellers could not stay in one whatever their status or money.
• Waki-honjin — the overflow house, smaller, and open to a traveller of sufficient standing or means.
• Hatago — the inn of everyone else, working on the principle of one night and two meals.
• Cheaper still were the lodgings where a traveller cooked his own rice over the house fire.

The proportions tell the story. Ōtsu, the fifty-third station, had two honjin, one waki-honjin and around 71 hatago. Fujikawa, a smaller stop, had one honjin, one sub-honjin and 36 hatago.

These inns competed hard for commoner trade. Hatago employed meshimori onna, women who served the meals and much else; in 1718 the shogunate capped them at two per inn.

Hiroshige's print series of the fifty-three stations, published in the 1830s, sold the road to people who would never walk it. A good walker covered around 40 kilometres a day. Honjin buildings survive at Tsumago and Kusatsu.

The road worked because every rank of traveller had somewhere designed for them.

Lesson: Segmenting guests is nothing new; what matters is whether every tier is genuinely well served, not just the top one.