▲Torii Ridge-Pass rushing behind Narai town

  Kiso-kaido is interrupted by the steep ridge-line, i.e. Torii Ridge-Pass. To make ready for coming over the ridge, people needed a base for preparation and rest, thus the town was build once and was growing.

  The town-villages would be born and growing before and behind the mountains, the rivers or lakes as geographical hurdle hindering the traffic. For in the age when the technology of transformation was primitive, the course of the travel had to stop once there.

  The movement of the goods and people was interrupted once there, and it was need for preparation or rest ― for example staying or taking supply of food　― to come over the difficulties. For supplying the travel-supports or transport-services, the village where people taking such roles would live together had to be built. Thereafter some population and properties / goods would be being accumulated there.
  Thus by the early Middle Age the road, which would become Nakasendo, and its main key-villages had already appeared.
  The town-villages developping before and behind the mountain-ridge or the rivers were growing to become the terminal or relay points of transportaion. Inns or hotels and restaurants, as well as warehouses, other shop-houses or so, would be build, and the merchants or professional persons managing these sevices would come to live together.

  For the accumulation of goods / properties needed the logistic management, the replenishment-channel, i.e. some kind of complexity-unit controling the circulation. Then quite a some population would be allocated in the village and would make daily life depending on each other.
  The services corresponding to the demands of the people's life would assemle together there. The towns would be growing larger.

  Narai is one of the main town, having been born and growing in this way, along the Kaido-road.

  After the middle years of the Edo Period the institution of the postal service was being organaized besed on the system of the Stage-Town.
  Toiya in each Stage-Town had to manage relay transportation of the official letters and goods along Kaido-roads, and had to deliver the letters and goods his own district.
  In time Toiyas began to receive the order of the private business and to intermediate the commodity-circulation. On the other hand, the private enterprises take a part of transportation and the postal service, with development of the commercial trade, industries and cities.

The Post Service Museum
inTsumago town

  For example, in the case that a wholesaler of cloth in Owari wanted to send their commodity to the shop in Suwa in Shinano, he would order the transportation of his freight from Nakatsugawa to Shimo-suwa through the system of the Stage-Town.
  Then the wholesaler might estimate the transportation-fee as a whole and pay Toiya in Nakastugawa full amount by cash or the credit-letter. In the latter case he maight pay money in each term of settlement.

  Thereafter each Toiya relaied the freight from town to town.Toiyas managed the relay and received their own sharing-pay of the charged section, from which they pay the fee of transport-work to each personnel or horse-owner.
  Howevr, the price of transport-work fee was not a open-market price, neither official one. There were only the local price which depended on the local agreement fixed by power-relation between Toiya and workers in each area.
  As the business of Toiya was the monopolized business, i.e. the personal privilege, officially certified by autority, the interst of Toiya could intervene heavily into sharing fee. Then there occur some interst-struggles.

  Under the standing-status order of the Shogunete regime, the competence about the Stage-Town was given on the base of the family-status, the fee of freight-post service could be influenced by the personal character or desire of individual Toiyas.