01 : Shimizu Port in Japanese History

Shimizu Port lies roughly midway between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Osaka, and has long served as a strategic junction linking overland and maritime routes. The surrounding region was historically known as Suruga Province . The Nihon Shoki—traditionally compiled in 720 CE—records that Iohara no Kimi  led a fleet built in Suruga on an expedition to the Korean Peninsula. By the fourteenth century, shipping merchants from Ise and Kii (present-day Wakayama) were trading with the Kantō region. Before 1500, port activity in the area centered in the Ejiri district north of the Tomoe River . From the mid-sixteenth century, the warlords who ruled Suruga—beginning with the Imagawa and later the Takeda and Tokugawa—stationed naval forces at Shimizu. With the advent of the Meiji period, overseas commerce expanded, and today Shimizu has developed as a port that integrates both trade and tourism.