近代における奈良・山辺の道の形成とその背景

Abstract

"Yamanobe-no-michi" is known as the ancient road and a hiking route running along the east edge of the Nara Basin. This paper discusses the formation process of this route and its social background. Yamanobe-no-michi was clearly described for the first time on two guidebooks published in 1941 by Kansai Express Railway Co., Ltd. Till then this route was an obscure route to visit the Imperial mausoleums and to hike, and was barely known to the public. Since building up people’s physical strength and visiting historical sites were encouraged, tourists increased and this route became important for tourism. Osaka Electric Railway Co., Ltd, which is the origin of Kansai Express Railway, and its executives regarded Nara as a sacred place of an origin of the country of Japan and exhorted people to learn a primitive spirit of building the country by means of seeing the historical landscapes. Osaka Electric Railway and company’s editors encouraged tourism and identified this route as the ancient route called Yamanobe-no-michi and promoted it in their guidebooks. These guidebooks decided people’s recognition of regarding a hiking route as the ancient route of Yamanobe-no-michi. Moreover these guidebooks contributed to link landscapes to history and legend, and brought about new landscape representations.