▲The square stone-work on the right side are the remains of Masugata

  Masugata was the earthwork-bank fringed by stone-wall in square shape.
  Its purpose was to make enemy roundabout a way by letting them meet a bottom of the road twice in order to get into the town.Thus it would hinder enemy from coming in and through the town.
  The roundabout structure was also applied to the streets of castle towns in Japan in ordinary from the view point of the mirlitary defence.
  This fact means that the system of Kaido-roads and Stage-Towns was an important military apparatus.

◆Military Function◆

The mountain-path was beeing kept narrow not only because of the technological limit but also because of the military necessity. It was very difficult for armies to move quickly.

  The fact that the special inn-house of the Stage-Town was called Honjin or Jin-ya, i.e. Headquarter Camp, means that Kaido-system was originally the military-logistical system. The Stage-Town consisted a part of the logistical apparatus for transporting soldiers, weapons and other materials for warfare.
  Therefore since the War Age the great war-lords aiming to take the hegemony had been trying to gasp and control main Kaido-roads and the main towns along the roads.

  The official inn-house was starting from the field headqurter-camp of the war-lord for a campaign in the War Age. In the camp the lord, the Samurai generals and staffs had staied together and disicussed about operations, surrounded by the royal guards, for commanding battles.
  Based on the traditon, the official inn-house in the Stage Town was obliged to keep the warehouse for weapons, e.g. swords and lances, and the stable for horses untill the end of the Edo Period.

  Under the Tokugawa's Peace the clan-lords travelling for the courtesy visit to Edo continued to arm light, as well as to use the weapon-warehouse and the stable modelling after the military campaign of the past.

◆Dominating Kaido-roads meaned Taking Hegemony◆

  In usual the warfare needed by ten times more personnel than combatting soldiers, for the activities of logistic supply of foods, weapons or preparation for camp.
  Especially for the expeditionary campaign the war-lords had to keep the quite a big organization of war-management in order to mobilize personnel and materials along the far-long line of logistical replenishment.

  However, establishing the system of Kaido and the Stage-Towns, it became possible to transport some quantity of personnel and materials through the system. That gave the war-lord gripping Kaido-roads a large superior position from the strategic view point.
  Then the Toyotomis dynasty as well as the Tokugawas began to gasp and to arrange Nakasendo and Kisoji as the strategic mechanism, as soon as they got the position which made them capable to approach the hegemony.

  Because of the tradition that Kaido-roads functioned as some kind of military apparat, the Tokugawa Shogunate government forced every clan-lord to pay the courtesy visit, which would imitate a campaign-parade, for Shogun in Edo. The lords were marching, accompanied by their vassals with light equipments, from their home fief to Edo.
  There were always any lord parading along main Kaido-roads, as there were more clan-lords than two handreds in Japan, then around the roads the peace and the safety was to be kept.

◆Crisis of Kaido-system in the end of Edo Period◆

  But in the continuing peace, it became too heavy burden for the towns to maintain such a strict mlitary-logistical apparatus and to supply many transport services for the official travellers or the clan-lords.

  In the end of the Edo Period ( in 1850s ) the debt of the Stage-Towns was accumulated so heavily that they couldn't sustain the Kaido-system as military institution. Thus the crisis of the institution meaned immediately the crisis of the Shogunate regime.

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