Kusatsu

Kusatsu is a city in southern Shiga Prefecture, Japan, on the southeastern shore of Lake Biwa, the largest freshwater lake in the country. It was part of ancient Ōmi Province and has been a transportation hub for east-west travel on the ancient Tōsandō and Tōkaidō highways from the end of the Nara period onwards, and in 1422 Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi built a palace called the Kusatsu Goshō here on a pilgrimage to Ise. In the early Edo period Kusatsu-juku developed at the junction of the Nakasendō and the Tōkaidō as a post town. The town of Kusatsu was established in 1889, and on 15 October 1954 it merged with the neighbouring villages of Shizu, Oikami, Yamada, Kasanei and Tokiwa to form the present city. Today it is a regional commercial centre and an important traffic junction of southern Shiga, about 30 minutes from Kyoto, and increasingly a commuter town. The estimated population was 139,913 and the area is 67.82 square kilometres.