From earliest times there existed “seki” (guard gates or barriers) between the various provinces at mountain passes or strategic points. As feudalism developed, they grew more numerous. A fence of palisades, stretched across the road, guarded the path through which, according to time, or orders of the keepers, none could pass with arms, or without the pass-word or pass-port.
Anciently they were erected at the Hakone and other mountain passes, to keep up the distinction between the Ainos and the pure Japanese. The possession of these barriers was ever an important object of rival military commanders, and the shifts, devices, and extraordinary artifices resorted to by refugees, disguised worthies, and forbidden characters, furnish the historian, the novelist, and dramatist with some of their most thrilling episodes.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
