For the rest of the world all roads might lead to Rome, but in Japan all roads lead to Nihonbashi. Just as the Milliarium Aureum (Golden Milestone) delineated the point from which all distances were measured in the Roman Empire, there is a monument to one side of Nihonbashi Bridge that marks the "zero kilometer" equivalent for Japan. Beginning in the Edo Period (1603-1868) the famously well-maintained and extensive highway system, the Gokaido, spread out from Nihonbashi to facilitate travel across Japan. As a result, Edo (now Tokyo) became a cultural — and culinary — melting pot, and Nihonbashi, as a mixed-use district of entertainment, finance and trade, was quite literally at its center. For good reason, it was known as the "kitchen of Edo."

There were additional practical and political reasons why the Tokugawa Shogunate put so much effort into maintaining these five great highways. Every other year, daimyo were required to travel in great style (and great expense) from their home provinces to Edo, in a system known as sankin kōtai. The daimyo had to maintain households befitting their station within the capital city and their families and retainers were required to live there when the daimyo was not present, effectively acting as hostages to protect the capital from provincial rebellion. With the daimyo came goods from across the country, imported to support the voracious appetites of the megacity's 1.2 million people.

Today's Tokyo-bound tourist is likely to pass over Nihonbashi for the glitz of Ginza or the more readily apparent history of Asakusa. Nihonbashi can't boast of massive temples, and its namesake — the last remaining pre-Edo stone bridge — now lives in the shadow of the Shuto Expressway. Despite the passage of time, everything that made Nihonbashi a truly significant cultural conglomerate is still in force today and there are few places this more apparent than Coredo Muromachi.