Eitai Bridge

A steel tied-arch bridge completed in 1926, 184.7 metres long. Rebuilt in the reconstruction after the Great Kanto Earthquake and modelled on Germany's Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine, it is the oldest surviving tied-arch bridge in Japan and the first there to exceed a 100-metre span. Designated an Important Cultural Property in 2007.

Use

Bridge

Area

Chuo City

Completed

1926

Developer

Reconstruction Bureau, Home Ministry

Architect

Yutaka Tanaka (Reconstruction Bureau)

The Steel Arch Called the Gate of the Capital

Eitai Bridge is a steel tied-arch bridge where Eitai-dori crosses the Sumida River in Chuo City. The present bridge was completed in December 1926. It is 184.7 metres long, with a central span reaching 100.6 metres. It is one of the Sumida River reconstruction bridges rebuilt as part of the imperial capital’s recovery from the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and its imposing form near the river mouth earned it the name “the Gate of the Capital.”

In its design, Germany’s Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine (the Bridge at Remagen) served as the model. The powerfully curving tied arch has been called heavy and masculine, a fine counterpoint to the graceful suspension bridge of Kiyosu upstream. Eitai Bridge is the oldest surviving tied-arch bridge in Japan, and as the first there to exceed a 100-metre span it left a large mark on the history of bridge engineering.

The Ideas a Recovery Produced

In the imperial capital reconstruction that rebuilt an earthquake-devastated Tokyo, many of the Sumida’s bridges were rebuilt as modern steel structures. The Home Ministry’s Reconstruction Bureau gave each bridge a different form and character, composing along the river a landscape like a museum of bridges. The heavy arch of Eitai, the delicate suspension of Kiyosu, the movable bascule of Kachidoki — spanning the same river, no two share a shape.

In 2007 Eitai Bridge was designated an Important Cultural Property alongside the Kiyosu and Kachidoki bridges. It is proof that the demand of an age — recovery from catastrophe — brought to these bridges a pursuit of design beyond mere function. Still carrying people and vehicles after more than eighty years, the bridge embodies the long time-scale that civil structures hold.

Summary

Completed in 1926 and 184.7 metres long, Eitai Bridge — modelled on the Ludendorff Bridge — is the oldest surviving tied-arch bridge in Japan and the first there to exceed a 100-metre span, and as an Important Cultural Property it still shapes the scenery of the Sumida.

Stand on the bridge and the powerful steel arch curves overhead, with the towers of River City 21 rising beyond the water. To hold in one view a heavy bridge born in the recovery era and the residential towers of today is something only a Tokyo layered with eras can offer. Together with Kiyosu Bridge upstream and Kachidoki Bridge downstream, the great bridges of the Sumida reward a walk.

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