is a bridge in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

Kyoto Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Kyoto Prefecture has a population of 2,561,358 () and has a geographic area of . Kyoto Prefecture borders Fukui Prefecture to the northeast, Shiga Prefecture ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. It spans the

Kamo River The is located in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. The riverbanks are popular walking spots for residents and tourists. In summer, restaurants open balconies looking out to the river. There are walkways running alongside the river, and some stepping s ...

as part of Sanjō-dōri (三条通り ''Third Avenue''). It is well known because it served as the ending location for journeying on both the

Nakasendō The , also called the ,Richard Lane, ''Images from the Floating World'' (1978) Chartwell, Secaucus ; pg. 285 was one of the centrally administered Edo Five Routes, five routes of the Edo period, and one of the two that connected the ''de facto'' ...

and the Tōkaidō; these were two of the famous "Five Routes" for long-distance travelers during the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

in Japan's past.

History

It is unclear when this bridge was first built, but there are records of

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

orders for it to be repaired in 1590,Sanjō Ōhashi: Spot Jōhō
. Central Japan Railway Company. Accessed July 17, 2007. as well as one of the original ''giboshi'' (擬宝珠) (onion-shaped posts that are located on bridges, shrines and temples in Japan). A historical marker on the southwest side draws attention to a cut on one of the giboshi, speculating that it was made by a sword during the Ikedaya incident (the inn was located close by). The current concrete bridge, which includes two lanes for driving and a walking path on either side, was built in 1950.

Neighboring post towns

;Nakasendō & Tōkaidō : Ōtsu-juku - Sanjō Ōhashi ''(ending location)''

References

Stations of the Nakasendō Stations of the Tōkaidō Bridges in Kyoto {{Japan-bridge-struct-stub