is a park in Hama-machi,

Kagoshima , abbreviated to , is the capital city of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. Located at the southwestern tip of the island of Kyushu, Kagoshima is the largest city in the prefecture by some margin. It has been nicknamed the "Naples of the Eastern wor ...

, Japan. At the end of the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characte ...

(late 19th century), local lord Shimazu Shigehide had five bridges, collectively called the ''Gosekkyō'' ("five stone bridges"), built across the Kōtsuki River. Two of them collapsed in floods in 1993. The remaining three were moved to a new location and restored. Ishibashi Park consists of these three bridges and a museum.

History

On August 6, 1993, torrential rain in Kagoshima Prefecture led to flooding that caused two of the five bridges, Takeno-bashi Bridge and Shinkan-bashi Bridge, to collapse. The other three bridges, Tamae-bashi Bridge, Nishida-bashi Bridge, and Kōrai-bashi Bridge, also suffered enormous damage. After the flooding, the three bridges that withstood it were moved to a new location where they could be repaired, restored and better protected. In 2000, this place was opened as Ishibashi Park.

Outline

The park is at the mouth of the Inari River, next to

Japan National Route 10 240px, Route 10, Ōita 240px, Route 10, Fukuoka, Kanda is a Japanese highway on the island of Kyushu. It originates at the intersection with Route 2 in Kitakyushu, Furoka and passes through the prefectural capitals of Ōita and Miyazaki, ...

, and was originally a location for the Gion-no-su gun battery used during the Anglo-Satsuma War in 1863. Nishida-bashi Bridge is the nearest bridge to the memorial hall. A large amount of money was spent on it, because the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominal ...

s'' (territorial lords) used it when travelling on ''

sankin-kōtai ''Sankin-kōtai'' ( ja, 参覲交代/参覲交替, now commonly written as ja, 参勤交代/参勤交替, lit=alternate attendance, label=none) was a policy of the Tokugawa shogunate during most of the Edo period of Japanese history.Jansen, M ...

'', which obligated lords to live for a year alternately in Edo (Tokyo) and in their own feudal domains, to show their loyalty to the shogunate. Kōrai-bashi Bridge connected Kajiya-chō and Kōrai-chō