Hakone Sekisho: A Checkpoint Along the Tokaido

Hakone Sekisho was a key checkpoint along the Tokaido—the main route which connected Edo and Kyoto—and officials were placed there to check travelers for incoming guns and outgoing women (the latter because the system of “alternate attendance” required the daimyo to leave their wives behind in the capital as “hostages”). With the ending of this system in 1862 such procedures became obsolete and the checkpoint in Hakone was dismantled. Fortunately, restoration work began in 1999 and it re-opened to the public in 2007.