Sanjō Ōhashi

Lay your hand on the railing. The wood is smooth and slightly warm, polished by countless palms. Below you, the Kamo River runs shallow and quick over its stones, and its sound fills the space between the city's two halves. Herons stand motionless in the current. Cyclists ring their bells behind you. This is Sanjō Ōhashi, the Great Bridge of Third Avenue. For centuries it was the place where travellers knew, at last, that they had arrived in Kyoto.

The bridge carries Sanjō Street across the river, from the dense old city on the west bank toward the temple districts and the green hills to the east. Kyoto was laid out long ago on a grid, with numbered avenues running east to west. Sanjō simply means Third Avenue. That plain name hides an outsized role. For a long stretch of Japanese history, this crossing was one of the most important thresholds in the country.

Here is why. During the Edo period, roughly the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the shogun ruled from Edo, the city we now call Tokyo. The emperor remained here in Kyoto. The great coastal highway that linked the two capitals was called the Tōkaidō, the Eastern Sea Road. It began at Nihonbashi bridge in Edo. And it ended — right here, at Sanjō Ōhashi.

Travellers walked that road for about two weeks, passing through fifty-three official post towns along the way. Merchants, pilgrims, messengers and great lords with their long processions all made the journey. When the woodblock artist Utagawa Hiroshige made his famous print series of the Tōkaidō stations in the nineteenth century, his final image showed this very bridge. Small figures cross it with umbrellas and loads, and the eastern hills rise behind them. It is the last frame of a very long story.

The bridge itself has been rebuilt many times. Floods on the Kamo were frequent, and wooden crossings did not last. Toyotomi Hideyoshi — the warlord who unified Japan in the late sixteenth century — ordered a sturdier bridge with stone pillars around 1590. The structure you stand on today is modern, rebuilt in the twentieth century. But its makers kept the old look, with wooden railings and a gentle, human scale, so that it still reads as a traditional bridge.

Now look at the tops of the railing posts. You will see rounded bronze caps shaped like an onion or a flame. These are called giboshi, and they are a classic ornament on important Japanese bridges. Some of the giboshi here are very old. They were carried over from earlier versions of the bridge, and a few carry inscriptions from Hideyoshi's era. Read them slowly, and you are touching metal that has watched this river for more than four hundred years.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. On one of the giboshi near the west end, you can find small nicks and gashes in the bronze. Locals say they are sword cuts from 1864, from the Ikedaya incident. That was a violent raid at a nearby inn, when a police force loyal to the shogun attacked a meeting of rebel samurai. Whether the marks really come from that night is hard to prove. But the story is widely told, and people still stop to trace the scars with a finger.

The riverbank below has its own darker history. In earlier centuries, the dry gravel beds of the Kamo near Sanjō were used for public punishment. The heads of executed criminals and defeated enemies were sometimes displayed here, where the crowds crossing the bridge would see them. According to popular tradition, the legendary outlaw Ishikawa Goemon met a grim end on these banks in the late sixteenth century. Today it is hard to picture. The same gravel now holds picnic blankets, joggers and students with guitars.

At the west end of the bridge, look for a bronze statue of two cheerful travellers. They are Yajirobei and Kitahachi, usually called Yaji and Kita. They are the heroes of a comic novel from the early nineteenth century by the writer Jippensha Ikku. In the story, the two friends walk the Tōkaidō from Edo, getting drunk, getting cheated and making fools of themselves at every stop. Their statue stands here because this is where their road, and their jokes, finally ran out.

Cross to the east end and you will find a very different figure. A man kneels on the ground, bowing deeply toward the west. He is Takayama Hikokurō, an eighteenth-century scholar who was famous for his devotion to the emperor. He is said to have bowed toward the Imperial Palace whenever he passed through Kyoto. Students and locals know the statue well. It is one of the city's favourite meeting places, and you may hear people arrange to meet at the kneeling man.

Now look down along the riverbank on a warm evening. You may notice something curious. Couples sitting on the embankment often space themselves at almost equal distances from one another, like beads on a string. Kyoto residents joke about this, and some people have even measured the gaps. Nobody planned it. It simply happens, as each new pair chooses the spot exactly halfway between the others. It is one of the quiet, unwritten rules of the river.

To the south along the west bank, the narrow lane of Pontochō runs parallel to the water. It is lined with old wooden teahouses and restaurants. In the warmer months, many of them build raised wooden platforms over a small channel beside the river, called kawayuka or yuka. Diners sit outside on these decks and catch the cooler air off the water. From the bridge, on a summer night, you can see their lanterns glowing in a long row.

Behind you, Sanjō Street runs west into covered shopping arcades and the heart of downtown. Ahead, to the east, it climbs toward Higashiyama, the Eastern Mountains, with their temples and shrines. This bridge sits right at the seam between commerce and contemplation. That position is part of its character. People rush across it to work. Others stop in the middle for no reason except to look at the water.

So take a moment before you move on. Notice the smooth wood under your hand, and the green hills in the east. Listen to the river over its stones — the same river every Tōkaidō traveller heard when they reached the end of their journey. They crossed this spot tired, dusty and relieved. As you walk away, in whichever direction, you are following one of the oldest paths into this city.