「木曾路(きそじ)はすべて山の中(やまのなか)である」

'Before the Dawn' (Yoakemae) is a monumental historical novel written by Toson Shimazaki in the Showa period, portraying the life of a man tossed by the turbulent history of the late Tokugawa shogunate and Meiji Restoration. The story begins with the highly famous line: 'All of Kisoji is in the mountains.' The protagonist, Hanzo Aoyama, as the head of the Magome honjin (an elite post-town inn) in Kiso, eagerly anticipated the arrival of a new era.