Nishinomiya Shrine Kaei Bridge

One Stone Bridge, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 2013

Nishinomiya Shrine Kaei Bridge (西宮神社嘉永橋, Nishinomiya Jinja Kaeibashi) stands at 11 Shake-cho, Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, an Edo-period structure entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 29 March 2013. It is a registered property rather than a designated one.

The quantity is one bridge. The owner is the shrine as a religious corporation.

The structure is a stone girder bridge, 6.0 metres long and 1.8 metres wide, with low parapets at its ends. The date field reads Edo and the year field 1848.

Only 6.0 Metres from End to End

As bridges go, this one is very short.

The structural field gives a length of 6.0 metres and a width of 1.8.

The Wakato Bridge spans 627.3 metres and the Chikugo lift bridge 507.2 metres. Both carry traffic across a bay or a river.

At 6.0 metres this comes to roughly a hundredth of that. Within one class of structure the range runs that wide.

The Kasuga Shrine moshiden, at twelve square metres, is the smallest building met here. This is the shortest bridge.

What it crosses differs too. The Wakato Bridge crosses a bay and the Chikugo bridge a river; this one crosses the sacred pond within a shrine precinct.

The Source of the Stone Is Recorded

Where the stone came from is written down.

The Agency records that granite from Mount Rokko was used, adding in brackets the name that stone goes by.

A mountain is named, and a common name for the material follows.

With the Kadoya trade materials, a chart was recorded as painted on parchment, a material from outside Japan. That concerns the kind of material.

Here the kind is given and the source as well. The nine-storied pagoda is recorded simply as a stone pagoda lacking its finial, with nothing about where the stone came from.

The former Shuseikan machinery factory is of stone too, and no source is given. Recording the source is unusual.

Valued as the Oldest Bridge in the Precinct

The reason given rests on being oldest within a small compass.

The Agency closes that it is the oldest bridge remaining in the precinct and contributes to the historic setting of the shrine.

Not the oldest in Japan, but the oldest within this shrine's grounds.

At Otonashi Shrine, the assessment was qualified by region, in an area where cultural properties are few. That is a prefecture or a district.

Here the compass is one shrine precinct, narrower still. At the Ikinariya storehouse, the reason was that it is well loved.

The second half, contributing to the historic setting of the shrine, follows the registration criterion about contributing to the historic landscape. Another bridge in the same precinct is registered as well, so two registered bridges stand there.

Visiting

The bridge stands at 11 Shake-cho, Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, owned by the shrine.

Its position is recorded closely: it crosses at the middle of the western side of the sacred pond, on the approach to a subsidiary shrine.

It carries the path towards that smaller shrine within the grounds.

Of its making, the record notes a girder bridge built for passage, with stone parapets set above the paving. A girder bridge lays horizontal beams across; the parapets at its ends are low.

Related entries name a series of other bridges: drum bridges, shrine approach bridges and others across the country. Bridges alone fill the list. This is a shrine precinct, and visiting follows the shrine's own arrangements. Check before travelling.