S P O T ／ SPOT-066

Higashi-no-Oiwake and Nishi-no-Oiwake (East and West Forks of Seki)

東の追分・西の追分ひがしのおいわけ・にしのおいわけ

Seki was the forty-seventh post station on the Tōkaidō, the old highway connecting Edo and Kyoto, and at each end of its preserved Edo-period main street stands a 'fork' (oiwake) — the precise spot where the Tōkaidō branched off toward other routes, marked since at least the 17th century by stone lanterns, road markers, and (in the eastern case) a great wooden torii gate pointing toward Ise Grand Shrine. The Eastern Fork sends pilgrims south down the Ise Branch Road toward Ise Jingū, and its torii — replaced every twenty years to coincide with the Grand Shrine's ritual rebuilding — visibly marks the start of that sacred southern journey. The Western Fork sends travelers west along the Yamato Road into the Nara basin. Walking from one fork to the other through the preserved town is the most economical way to grasp how Japanese post stations actually worked: not as static villages but as junctions, with their identity defined as much by the roads leaving them as by the buildings inside.