Usuitoge Pass

One of Japan’s most difficult transportation routes where various stories were born from the age of myth.

Usuitoge Pass has been a very harsh route to traverse during its time as a pass road for the Nakasendo Route in the Edo Era, as the most difficult terrain for railroads since the Meiji Era, and as a vehicular road to the point that it has become the lore of popular manga.

Usuitoge Pass has long been known as one of the difficult points on the Nakasendo Route alongside Wada Pass and Ota-no-Watashi, and has been famous since ancient times as a strategic point of transportation with it being included in literature such as the Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan) where it appeared as Usuhi Slope which Prince Yamato Takeru climbed over and the Man’yōshū where the poetry of soldiers were composed. When processions of feudal lords passed through the area, large barrier stations were built in areas such as Hakone. The top of Usuitoge Pass is a treasure house of Mother Nature with plants like wasabi being cultivated, and it is also one of the more prominent areas for fog in Japan. Foggy Usuitoge Pass becomes one of the most mysterious areas along the Nakasendo Route. And Kumano Shrine is positioned across the Nagano and Gunma prefectural border to look over the safety of travelers coming and going along the Nakasendo.