Old Ibigawa Bridge

An 1886 Wrought-Iron Bridge Still Carrying Traffic

The Former Ibigawa Railway Bridge (旧揖斐川橋梁, Kyū-Ibigawa Kyōryō, read locally as Ibigawa-kyōryō) crosses the Ibi River between Shingai-chō in Ōgaki City and Nishimusubi in Anpachi Town, Gifu Prefecture, was completed in December 1886, and was designated an Important Cultural Property on 2 December 2008.

It is 325.1 metres long and rests on two abutments and four piers. Five wrought-iron truss spans sit end to end, each one 63.6 metres between supports, which in the imperial units the builders actually used comes to 200 feet. At a time when 100-foot spans were the working standard on Japanese railways, doubling that figure five times over was an act of some ambition.

The bridge was built as part of the trunk line linking Tokyo and Kyoto, the route that became the Tōkaidō main line. Construction fell under the Railway Bureau of the Cabinet, with Hasegawa Kinsuke, a fourth-grade engineer, and Yoshida Keitarō, a sixth-grade technician, running the work on the ground. The superstructure was another matter entirely: it was designed by Charles Assheton Whately Pownall, the British engineer then employed by the bureau, and fabricated in England by The Patent Shaft and Axletree Company before being shipped to Japan and assembled on site.

Trains began running in January 1887. The bridge stayed in railway service for about two decades.

Why This Bridge and Not Another

Japan built a great many iron railway bridges in the Meiji period, and most of them are gone. The case made for this one rests on a narrow and specific claim: of the large truss bridges erected on the Tōkaidō line using the most advanced techniques then available, this is the only one still standing where it was built. The Agency for Cultural Affairs designated it under criterion three, high historical value.

The trusses are what specialists call a 200-foot double Warren type. The upper and lower chords carry web members of equal depth, and those chords are made continuous with the inclined end posts to form a trapezoidal frame; diagonals and verticals are then pinned into that frame rather than riveted, and the whole assembly sits on flat bearings. The floor beams follow an arrangement rarely seen later: instead of being tied into the chords at the panel points, they are laid two to a panel directly on top of the lower chord.

Those details are the signature of the first generation of British railway engineering imported into Japan, and Pownall's 200-foot girders went on to serve as a working model for large railway bridges built across the country through the rest of the Meiji era. The value claimed is therefore not aesthetic but genealogical, a point of origin that can still be inspected.

The substructure answered a different problem. The riverbed here is soft, and the original plan for cast-iron columns was abandoned. What was built instead are cylindrical caisson foundations twelve feet in diameter, in brick and concrete, with each pair of caissons tied together by a brick arch and an iron beam. Two abutments and four piers were formed this way. In October 1891 the Nōbi earthquake struck, tilting one abutment and cracking piers; repairs followed, including additional brick lining inside the piers.

Walking Across

The bridge left railway service in 1908, when the Tōkaidō line was doubled and a new double-track bridge went up alongside. Rather than being scrapped, it was kept. In 1960 the deck was surfaced with asphalt and the structure became a prefectural road bridge; in 1988 it passed to Ōgaki City; and since 2000 it has carried pedestrians and two-wheeled vehicles only.

This is the unusual part. A designated Important Cultural Property that ordinary people cross on foot and by bicycle every day, with no ticket, no opening hours, and no barrier. You can walk out over the water at any hour, lean on the railing, and look straight up into a piece of 1880s British ironwork.

Once you are on it, the pin connections are the thing to find. Where the diagonals meet the chords you can see the pins themselves, large and blunt, holding the members together in a way that allows slight rotation. Riveted and welded joints replaced this method within a generation, so a pinned truss of this scale is now a rare object to stand inside.

The east span carries a maker's mark dated 1886. Look also at the difference in texture between the original wrought iron and the modern steel used in later repairs; the older material has a fibrous, slightly streaked surface where the newer is uniform. Guard rails and fencing have been added over the years, and the deck is asphalt, but the trusses and the piers are substantially as built.

Vegetation along the banks obscures the full five-span profile from close range. For the view that shows all five arches of truss in sequence, walk out along the riverbank downstream, or look across from the modern Tōkaidō line bridge just to the south, painted green where the old bridge is white.

Getting There

The nearest station is Higashi-Ōgaki on the Tarumi Railway, from which the bridge is a walk of a little over ten minutes along a lane between the JR tracks and rice fields. Ōgaki Station on the JR Tōkaidō line is the larger interchange and a short ride away.

There is no admission fee, no attendant, and no restriction on photography. The crossing is open at all times, though the deck has no lighting designed for sightseeing and the river wind is strong in winter. Cars cannot use the bridge; motorcycles and bicycles can.

Ōgaki City's cultural properties section handles enquiries. If you are combining the visit with other sites, Ōgaki Castle and the Ōgaki terminus of the Oku-no-Hosomichi literary trail sit within the city, and the Sekigahara battlefield is a short train ride west.