Usami Nakoyama To-no-iri Stone Quarry

Background

The area around Usami has countless stone quarries. The Nakoyama and To-no-iri quarry area is the most well-preserved and has the most to see of any site that is generally open to the public. At one time more than 10 different quarries existed on this one mountain. The site was designated a National Historic Site in 2016.

The town has created some trails through the site and attempted to make it into a tourist attraction, but due to typhoon damage some of the trails have already been closed. See this map for details and avoid trails marked with red X's. There aren't many kokuin along those anyway, so stick to the trails with lots of yellow dot's indicating areas of many kokuin.

Around the beginning of the hiking trail at the base of the mountain you see many of the arrow feather kokuin, called yahazu. This is the mark of the Mouri clan of Saiki. Beyond that you'll see a diamond shape with three lines through the middle. This is the mark of the Inaba of Usuki, both from Kyushu. It is very interesting that before you enter the Inaba's quarry territory there is a row of large, roughly cut stones, with the Inaba's mark at the upper edge. This series likely marked the boundary between the two quarries.

The highlight around this set of quarries is the quarry marker stone at the top of Mt. Nakoyama which claims the quarry for Hosokawa Tadaoki. It's fortunate that this is so well preserved because much of what we know about the activities and work around quarrying stone for Edo Castle actually comes from the records of Hosokawa.

Gallery

Likely to be a boundary marker stone

羽柴越中守石場 Hashiba Etchu-no-kami Stone Quarry

row of border stones of the Inaba Clan

possibly a blacksmith's fire pit

Loading map...

Usami Nakoyama To-no-iri Stone Quarry Profile
English Name	Usami Nakoyama To-no-iri Stone Quarry
Japanese Name	宇佐美　ナコウ山・洞の入石丁場
Location	Ito, Shizuoka Prefecture
Castle	Edo Castle
Coordinates	35° 1' 0.16" N, 139° 5' 3.44" E
Loading map... {"type":"TERRAIN","minzoom":false,"maxzoom":false,"types":["ROADMAP","SATELLITE","HYBRID","TERRAIN"],"mappingservice":"googlemaps","width":"auto","height":"200px","centre":false,"title":"","label":"","icon":"","lines":[],"polygons":[],"circles":[],"rectangles":[],"copycoords":false,"static":false,"visitedicon":"","wmsoverlay":false,"zoom":9,"layers":[],"controls":[""],"zoomstyle":"DEFAULT","typestyle":"DEFAULT","autoinfowindows":false,"resizable":false,"kmlrezoom":false,"poi":true,"cluster":false,"clustergridsize":60,"clustermaxzoom":20,"clusterzoomonclick":true,"clusteraveragecenter":true,"clusterminsize":2,"imageoverlays":[],"kml":[],"gkml":[],"searchmarkers":"","fullscreen":false,"scrollwheelzoom":false,"locations":[{"text":"","title":"","link":"","lat":35.016711111111,"lon":139.08428888889,"icon":""}]}
Edo Castle Stone Quarries
Atami Coast Quarries Banbaura Stone Quarry Futo Stone Quarry Hayakawa Stone Quarry Heda Stone Quarry Ito Kawaguchi Park Maruyama Stone Quarry Ohkawa Yato-no-iri Stone Quarry Usami Hanareyama Stone Quarry Usami Harbor & Town Usami Nakoyama To-no-iri Stone Quarry Yugawa Stone Quarry

5.00

(one vote)

Enable comment auto-refresher

ARTShogun

36 months ago

Score 0

oh there's actually a castle site at this one...

Permalink | Reply