Tofukuji Temple Engetsukyo Bridge

A Roofed Bridge at the Quiet End of Tofukuji

Engetsukyo Bridge (偃月橋, also written Engetsu-kyō) stands in the northeastern part of the Tofukuji Temple precinct in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, was built in 1603 during the Momoyama period, and was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan in June 1967. It carries the path from the temple's administrative hall toward two sub-temples, Ryogin-an and Sokushu-in, across the ravine known as Sengyokukan, where the upper reaches of the Sannohashi River run below.

The structure is a rōkyō, a covered corridor bridge: a timber walkway roofed along its whole length and carried on five piers. The corridor measures eleven bays long and one bay wide, with a single storey under a gabled roof of pantiles. Bays here are structural intervals between posts rather than fixed units of length, so the count gives a truer sense of the bridge than a figure in metres would.

The name repays a moment's thought. Engetsu refers to the bow-shaped moon, the thin crescent that hangs low rather than riding overhead, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs record attaches that gloss to the entry as a note. Look along the roofline from either bank and the reference makes sense.

Why This Bridge, and Not the Other Two

Three bridges cross the Sengyokukan ravine at Tofukuji, and visitors know them collectively as the Tofukuji Sanmeikyo, the temple's three celebrated bridges. Going downstream they are Engetsukyo, Tsutenkyo, and Gaunkyo. Only Engetsukyo carries national Important Cultural Property status. Tsutenkyo, by far the most photographed of the three, collapsed in a typhoon in 1959 and what visitors cross today is a later reconstruction. Gaunkyo is registered at the prefectural level by Kyoto.

The date of 1603 is not an estimate. A munafuda, a wooden ridge tablet recording the circumstances of construction, survives with the bridge and was included in the designation as an attached item, one sheet in total. Documentation of this kind is what separates a securely dated building from one assigned to a century by style alone.

Covered bridges built in timber rarely last. They sit over moving water, they take weather from both sides, and they are structurally awkward to repair without replacing wholesale. A corridor bridge of this length surviving from the opening years of the seventeenth century is uncommon enough that Engetsukyo also appears on the list of Japan's Hundred Famous Bridges.

Tofukuji itself was founded in 1236 under the patronage of the regent Kujo Michiie, and much of the complex escaped the fires of the Onin War. The bridge belongs to a rebuilding campaign that followed later damage, and its 1967 designation carries the record number 01663.

Crossing It

Walk east past the reception desk for the Hojo garden and the crowds thin almost immediately. Most people arriving at Tofukuji head west toward Tsutenkyo; the path to Engetsukyo runs the other way and is open without charge, so you can cross the bridge and come back at any hour the precinct is open.

Once you are on it, look down. The floor planks are laid with narrow gaps between them, and the ravine floor shows through in strips as you walk. The roof overhead cuts the light, so the interior of the corridor stays dim even at midday while the openings at either end frame the greenery outside.

Across the bridge lies Ryogin-an, the highest ranked of the Tofukuji sub-temples, whose abbot's hall is a National Treasure and the oldest surviving hojo of its kind. Its three dry gardens were laid out by the modern designer Shigemori Mirei. The sub-temple opens to the public in November in most years and occasionally during winter special-viewing programmes, so check the temple's announcements before counting on entry; the bridge itself needs no such planning.

Photography is allowed in the precinct, but tripods are not, and eating and drinking on the grounds are asked against. Autumn brings heavy crowds to the whole temple between mid-November and early December, and the parking areas close from late October. The new foliage of late spring gives the ravine a different colour and almost none of the queue.