Cities Hakone Old Tokaido cedar avenue
Old Tokaido cedar avenue
- Heritage/Temple/Shrine
- Garden/Green Space/Nature
The why: A surviving stretch of the Edo-period highway between Edo and Kyoto, paved in original ishidatami stone and lined with 400-year-old cedars planted by the shogunate to shade travelers and protect the road from snow. Walking it is the closest thing in the region to time travel.
Gotcha / logistics: The Moto-Hakone-to-Hatajuku descent (60-90 minutes) is the most popular segment. Wear shoes with grip — wet stone is genuinely slippery, and the trail is steeper than the topo map suggests.
This was the Hakone Hachiri — the highest and most feared stretch of the Tokaido highway, where the Sekisho checkpoint enforced the shogunate’s “no incoming guns, no outgoing women” policy. The cobblestones underfoot are mostly original; the cedars are the same trees that shaded samurai, daimyo processions, and Basho.
The full historic stretch is long; the typical visitor segment is the short cedar-lined section near Moto-Hakone (about 500 meters, flat, accessible to anyone) or the longer Moto-Hakone-to-Hatajuku descent for hikers. The Hatajuku end is also the historic home of yosegi-zaiku marquetry, where workshops are still active.
Atmosphere is the whole point — the tree canopy turns the trail dim and quiet even on bright afternoons. Early morning or late afternoon for the best light through the cedars; midday flattens it.
The Hakone Checkpoint (Hakone Sekisho) was located just below the lake shore at Hakone-machi, and a reconstructed version is open as a museum (admission around 500 yen). The checkpoint controlled all traffic on the Tokaido from 1619 until 1869 — 250 years of enforcement. Reading about the Sekisho before walking the road makes the cedar avenue substantially more interesting.
The Moto-Hakone to Hakone-machi waterfront section of the old highway is easy, flat, and walkable in 15 minutes; it’s the section most day-trippers cover after getting off the cruise boat. The upper section from Moto-Hakone to Amazaka (with its steep stone steps used as a reference in woodblock prints) and beyond to Hatajuku adds significant elevation and requires proper footwear. The descent from Moto-Hakone toward Hatajuku passes the most photogenic section of large cedars roughly 20 minutes from the Moto-Hakone trailhead.
Seasonal note: the cedar canopy means this trail is one of the few in Hakone that reads well even in overcast weather — light filters through regardless. In autumn the contrast between the dark stone, the cedar trunks, and any deciduous color nearby is particularly strong.
More in Hakone
Hakone Ropeway (Sounzan to Togendai)
The aerial gondola from Sounzan over the Owakudani vent field down to Togendai on Lake Ashi — the segment of the loop where Mt. Fuji, the active volcano, and the lake all show up in the same frame. About 30 minutes end-to-end with a stop at Owakudani.
Hakone Shrine & Heiwa no Torii
The forest shrine on Lake Ashi's southern shore, with its red Heiwa no Torii standing in the water — one of the most photographed gates in Japan. The shrine itself dates to the 8th century and was a stop for travelers on the old Tokaido road praying for safe passage over the mountains.
Lake Ashi sightseeing cruise
The pirate-ship ferry across the caldera lake created by the same eruption that built Owakudani. It's a working leg of the Hakone loop, not a sightseeing add-on, and the deck angle on the southbound run gives the cleanest Fuji-over-Ashinoko shot of the trip.
Hakone Open-Air Museum
Japan's first open-air sculpture museum, opened 1969, with monumental works by Henry Moore, Rodin, and Niki de Saint Phalle set against the Hakone mountain backdrop. The Picasso Pavilion holds one of the world's largest collections of his ceramics.
Owakudani volcanic vents
The active steam-vent field that gave Hakone its hot springs in the first place — a treeless, sulfur-yellow caldera floor where the geology stops being theoretical. On clear days Mt. Fuji sits directly behind the vents.
Pola Museum of Art
A largely subterranean museum in the Sengokuhara beech forest, designed by Nikken Sekkei to disappear into the national park. The collection is world-class Impressionism — Monet, Renoir, Picasso — plus a major glass-art holding, all lit by a glass atrium that filters light the way the surrounding canopy does.