Uji Bridge was added to Your Favorites!
Ise-Shima NP, Mie
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
When Uji Bridge was completed in 1580, more than 1,500 Buddhist monks took part in a dedication rite, reciting 20,000 volumes of the Lotus Sutra. Ise City’s memorial tower for the ceremony now stands at Imakita cemetery.
The torii at Uji Bridge are made from ridge-support pillars salvaged from the Inner and Outer Shrine halls. After 20 years here, they are reused as torii at Seki and Kuwana, giving the timber a remarkable 60-year service life.
Near the winter solstice, the rising sun appears in the center of Uji Bridge’s torii. This special alignment can be seen from late November to late January, around 7:30 a.m.; the shrine confirms the sun rises directly in front of the torii at the solstice.
One of Uji Bridge’s 16 decorative finials bears an inscription dated March 1619. It has been kept through successive bridge renewals for about 400 years—a small piece of the bridge’s long history still in use.
More than 350 pieces in 9 shapes fit together to form Uji Bridge without a single nail; its deck uses about 616 boards. The traditional design even draws on shipwrights’ techniques to keep water from reaching the piers.
After World War II, the shrine’s rebuilding was postponed from 1949 to 1953, but worshippers pressed to renew Uji Bridge on its original 1949 schedule. Since then, the bridge has been replaced 4 years before the shrine’s main transfer.
Upstream of the bridge, wooden stakes stand in the river like stray bridge supports. These kiyoke-gui are flood guards: they help stop drifting logs from smashing into Uji Bridge’s piers when the river rises.
Across from Uji Bridge, Aedohashihime Shrine enshrines the bridge’s guardian kami. A protective talisman prayed over at the shrine is sealed inside one of the bridge’s finials, where it remains for the bridge’s 20-year service cycle.
At the 2009 opening ceremony, the first to cross the renewed bridge were a local woman called the watarime and her family, with three generations of couples. They were followed by 58 three-generation family groups from across Japan—348 people in all.
