Kusatsu-juku was the fifty-second of the fifty-three stations of the Tōkaidō as well as the sixty-eighth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendō. It is located in the downtown area of the present-day city of Kusatsu, Shiga Prefecture, Japan.
Hiroshige's print of Kusatsu-juku, in the Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō series
Hiroshige's print of Kusatsu-juku, part of the Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō series
Kusatsu-juku's honjin
53 Stations of the Tōkaidō
The 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō are the rest areas along the Tōkaidō, which was a coastal route that ran from Nihonbashi in Edo to Sanjō Ōhashi in Kyoto. There were originally 53 government post stations along the Tōkaidō, where travelers had to present traveling permits at each station if wanting to cross.
The Tōkaidō in 1865.
Nihonbashi's highway distance marker, from which modern highway distances are measured
Odawara-juku in the 1830s, as depicted by Hiroshige in The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō.
The countryside around Yui-shuku in the 1830s