Around Kawamoto Higashi Ohashi Bridge

 

After leaving Kawanoto, heading upstream the river does an s-bend.

Not far out of town and the Higashi Ohashi Bridge comes into view.

It carries a road that heads up to Iwami Ginzan, Oda, and Mount Sanbe.

 

However, it doesnt get much traffic. Most traffic comes into Kawamoto from the downstream side.

The bridge dates to 1967 and is 165 meters long.

It replaced a suspension bridge built in 1923. At that time there were still few bridges across the Gonokawa River, with most crossings still done by ferry.

Consequently the suspension bridge was somewhat of a tourist attraction. It was destroyed by a flood in 1965.

The previous post in this series documenting my walk up the south bank of the Gonokawa River to its source was on the roadside Tatara Shrine at the edge of town.

Until the Meiji Period, the river marked the boundary between the Hamada Han and Iwami Ginzan, controlled directly by the Shogunate.

Usually in Japan, when a river marked a boundary, it ran down the middle of the river, but it is said that in this instance the Shogunate put the boundary on the opposite bank and took the whole of the river as its territory.

Not sure how that worked in practise, but the next section of the river was the route used by the Shogunate to transport the gold, first upriver to Miyoshi and then by land to Onomichi, then by ship up the Inland Sea.

When the Mori Clan controlled the mines the silver was shipped out along the Kitamaebune trade route along the Sea of Japan, the closest and easiest way. Once the Shogunate took over using that route would have meant sailing around the territory that the Mori had been confined to after their defeat by te Tokugawa, and so I guess they thought that not so smart and kind of inviting trouble...