In front of you is the Sanjō Ōhashi, the great bridge of Third Avenue. In the Edo period, this was where the Tōkaidō ended: the road of 53 post stations linking Edo, the shogun’s city, with Kyoto, the emperor’s. Anyone who reached this bridge had crossed half of Japan.

1Hideyoshi’s stone pillars

There were bridges here from the Middle Ages, but the one that made the place famous was ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who in 1589 had Mashita Nagamori rebuild it on stone pillars, something exceptional at the time. Some of those pillars survive. The present bridge was finished in 1950, and although its structure is modern, it keeps the wooden railing and the bronze giboshi, some with old inscriptions.

2A place to set an example

The riverbed next to the bridge was also a stage for punishment. After the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the head of Ishida Mitsunari was displayed here. In 1868 it was the turn of Kondō Isami, leader of the Shinsengumi, the shogunate’s police force, executed at Itabashi on the edge of Edo.

It was the Shinsengumi who, in 1864, raided the Ikedaya inn a few steps from here to catch a group of conspirators. The cuts on one of the giboshi are said to be sword marks from that night, but there is no proof.

The statue at the west end shows Yajirobei and Kitahachi, the two rogues of the comic novel “Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige”, who travelled the whole road on foot.

3What to look for

  • The giboshi, bulb-shaped bronze finials.
  • The statue of Yajirobei and Kitahachi, put up in 1994.
  • The Kamo River and its banks, Kyoto’s great open-air living room.
A bronze giboshi finial on the Sanjō Ōhashi with a gash in the metal
The gash is said to come from a sword in the Ikedaya Incident, though nothing proves it.

Documented

Hideyoshi had the bridge rebuilt on stone pillars in 1589, the bridge was the western end of the Tōkaidō, and the present structure was completed in 1950.

Oral tradition

That the marks on a giboshi are sword cuts from the Ikedaya Incident (1864) is an unconfirmed tradition.

Sources and credits

City of Kyoto, information on the Sanjō Ōhashi and its restoration; Constantine Vaporis, “Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan” (1994); Jippensha Ikku, “Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige” (1802–1822).

Photos:

  • The Sanjō Ōhashi bridge over the Kamo River, with its wooden railing: そらみみ, CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • A bronze giboshi finial on the Sanjō Ōhashi with a gash in the metal: そらみみ, CC BY-SA 3.0.

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