Bridges

Kintai Bridge (錦帯橋)

Kintai Bridge is a tourist attraction in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. Iwakuni City is the closest city to Hiroshima in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and it takes about 45 minutes from JR Hiroshima Station to JR Iwakuni Station. The Kintai Bridge is a massive 20-meter long wooden bridge built in 1674, consisting of five arches and four pillars. It is a wooden bridge with five arches and four pillars. The beauty of the Kintai Bridge has been well known since its construction, and was even depicted by ukiyoe artist Katsushika Hokusai. Today, the area around Kintai Bridge is a tourist attraction, where you can enjoy various sightseeing experiences such as a sightseeing boat ride where you can admire Kintai Bridge from the river, or a cormorant fishing trip where you can watch traditional sweetfish fishing using cormorants from a boat.

[Bridge entrance fee (round trip)]
Adults (junior high school students and older) 310 yen
Elementary school students 150 yen
Infants – Free
For discounts, please present an official ID (passport, etc.) at the reception desk when entering the bridge to verify your age.

Moment of Joy

The attraction of the Kintai Bridge is the beautiful wooden bridge that has been welcoming tourists for about 350 years. The bridge was built using the most advanced construction techniques available at the time, and it remained intact for 280 years until it was washed away by a typhoon in 1950 (the current Kintai Bridge was replaced in 2001 due to aging). The Nishiki-tai Bridge was built using a traditional Japanese construction technique called “Kumiki,” which means “assembled wood” in Japanese, without using a single nail. The bridge was built without the use of a single nail. If you look up at the back of the bridge from below, you can see the beautiful geometric patterns of the wood used to support the bridge.