History
Shizuoka runs along a long stretch of Pacific coastline directly on the old Tokaido — the road connecting Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto during the Edo period — which made it one of the most-depicted and most-traveled parts of the country for centuries before the railway existed.
Shizuoka and the wider world
That road produced one of Japan’s most globally influential art series: Utagawa Hiroshige’s “The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido,” a set of woodblock prints depicting stops along the route, includes numerous stations located in Shizuoka. Ukiyo-e prints like Hiroshige’s and Hokusai’s — flat perspective, bold outlines, unusual cropping — reached Europe in large numbers in the mid-to-late 1800s and became a documented, significant influence on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters, including Van Gogh and Monet, a movement art historians now call Japonisme. Shizuoka’s stretch of the Tokaido, and its views of Mount Fuji from the coast, were part of the raw material for that whole tradition.
Shizuoka’s other major historical figure needs no introduction within Japan: Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the roughly 250-year Edo shogunate, retired to Sunpu Castle here after handing formal power to his son, and died in the city in 1616. He was first enshrined at nearby Kunozan Toshogu before a second shrine was built in his honor the following year at Nikko, in Tochigi — making Shizuoka, not Tochigi, the site of his original mausoleum.
Neighbors: Shizuoka, Yamanashi, and Aichi
Shizuoka shares Mount Fuji, and a long-running good-natured rivalry over it, with Yamanashi to the north. Internally, the prefecture also splits somewhat between its Shizuoka City-centered east and Hamamatsu-centered west, with Hamamatsu’s economy and culture leaning noticeably toward neighboring Aichi and the Nagoya region.
Getting there and getting around
Shizuoka Station and Hamamatsu Station are both Tokaido Shinkansen stops, roughly 1-1.5 hours from Tokyo. Kunozan Toshogu and Nihondaira are reached from Shizuoka City by bus, taxi, or the Nihondaira Ropeway.
