The Arched Bridge That Locals Walk Past and Love
Follow the mountain road that shadows the Nagara River Power Station's waterway and you meet a bridge that has quietly become part of the neighbourhood's scenery. The Yunohoradani Aqueduct Bridge, built in 1910, sits right beside the mouth of the conduit's third tunnel, catching the water as it emerges and carrying it onward across a stream. It is a five-arch structure of brick and concrete, sixty-two metres long and eight metres wide, and among the station's water bridges it is the one people have taken to heart.
Part of the appeal is how it is built. Each pier is hollowed into an arch shape, and on top of every pier rests a block of granite, a voussoir shaped to spring the curve above. From those granite springers rise the brick arches themselves, laid six courses thick. The result is a bridge that looks solid and deliberate against the wooded slope, neither dwarfed by the mountain nor fighting it.
One Piece of a Landmark Engineering Feat
The bridge cannot be separated from the power station it serves. When the Nagara River Power Station opened in March 1910, it was among the largest hydroelectric plants in Japan, and its debut had a public flourish: the day after it started generating, its electricity lit the illuminations at a regional exposition held in Nagoya's Tsurumai Park. The current travelled some fifty kilometres to reach the city.
Getting the water to the turbines was the harder half of the job. The Nagoya Electric Light Company, building its first plant, laid a conduit of tunnels and channels through difficult hill country, and where the ground fell away it threw brick aqueducts across the gaps. Yunohoradani is one of those crossings. Registered as a Tangible Cultural Property in 2001, it shares its protection with the station's main building and its other waterway structures, and the whole complex was later listed as a Modernisation Industrial Heritage site. The plant, now run by Chubu Electric Power, is still generating after more than a century.
Seeing It in Its Setting
What makes Yunohoradani worth the detour is the way engineering and landscape sit together. The granite springers give the brickwork a firm visual base, and the six-course arches carry a weight and rhythm that a thinner span would lack. Cultural authorities note that the bridge lends charm to the mountain road and has long been familiar to residents, which is a rare thing to say of a piece of power infrastructure.
Come with the right expectations. The bridge still carries live water and stands along the conduit route rather than in a managed park, so there is no ticket booth and no fixed viewing platform. If your time is short, the surest introduction to this power station is its red-brick main building in Tachibana, where you can study the exterior and the outdoor display of the original German turbine before setting off to trace the waterway into the hills.
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Q&A
- Why is this bridge special among the station's aqueducts?
- It is the longest of the brick water bridges at sixty-two metres, and its granite springers and six-course-thick arches give it a presence that has made it a familiar local landmark.
- What are the granite blocks on the piers for?
- They are voussoirs, shaped stones set where each brick arch springs from its pier. They give the arches a firm base and distribute the load into the hollowed piers below.
- Where exactly does it sit along the waterway?
- It stands next to the exit of the conduit's third tunnel, taking the water as it leaves the tunnel and carrying it across a stream on its way to the station.
- Is there a visitor centre nearby?
- No. For a reliable, close look at the station, visit the main building in Tachibana; the aqueduct itself is working infrastructure along a mountain road.
Basic Information
| Name | Nagara River Power Station Yunohoradani Aqueduct Bridge |
|---|---|
| Location | Tachibana, Mino City, Gifu Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (registered 2001) |
| Built | 1910 (Meiji 43) |
| Structure | Brick and concrete five-arch bridge, length 62 m, width 8.0 m |
| Owner | Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc. |
| Access | Operational conduit structure beside a mountain road; no visitor facilities |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database — Nagara River Power Station Yunohoradani Aqueduct Bridge
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00002246
- Mino City — Nagara River Power Station Main Building and Eight Related Structures
- https://www.city.mino.gifu.jp/docs/1174.html
- Wikipedia — Nagara River Power Station
- https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/長良川発電所
Last verified: 2026.07.03