From the perspective of the capital in the Kinai, Tōtōmi is more distant than the other famous lake, Chikatsu-afumi or Ōmi (now Lake Biwa), the "nearby fresh-water lake."
During the Ritsuryō period, roads from Kinai to the Tagajō were divided into two: the Tōkaidō eastern sea road (via Nagoya, Hamamatsu, Tokyo and Mito) and the Tōsandō eastern mountain road (via Gifu, Shiojiri, Takasaki and Utsunomiya).
This process was much the same as the one which would catapult Japan into the modern era in the Edo period, but on a smaller scale, more localized around the Kinai area, and centered at Kyoto instead of Osaka, which would become the commercial center of a nationwide trade system three hundred years later.
Emperor Go-Daigo in the 14th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 16th century, and many others used it to flee from conflict, to return to the core of the country (kinai), or to move troops.