Chinka Bashi Bridge-The bridge which sink under water during flood

沈下橋(Chinka Bashi, meaning Sinking Bridge ) are unique bridges.They sink into the water during the rising of a river flooding, so people can’t cross them at the time.

Why were these type of bridges built?
Please look at this photo.
Because the height of Chinka Bashi is very low, construction cost is cheaper. It doesn’t need long distance bridge girder and bridge pier. In addition, it doesn’t need much construction technology compared to usual type of bridge. In old time, this thing was the good point.

The bad side is that it is useless during flood. But it usually doesn’t have bridge railing so there is low possibility to get washed away by flood because of low resistance.

There are 410 Chinka Bashi in the First-class river( a type of river, called a grade-one river) including a tributary of the river all over Japan.

The number of the bridges in Kochi Prefecture is biggest (69 bridges).
You can also see Chinka Bashi in Ooita, Tokushima, Miyazaki etc.

Iwama Chinka Bashi is one of the most beautiful Sinking Bridges in Kochi. It spans the clean Shimanto River and a landscape around the river is beautiful, too.

But the place is inconvinience to get to. If you like to go there, you had better rent a car or join packaged tour or it takes about 30 minutes by taxi from Tosa Kuroshio Railway Station.(English site URL:tosakuro.com/global).

There is a local bus from Nakamura Station but it runs limited period : 2017 rescently →JAN./6~MAR. /20 only Fri, Sat, Sun, public holiday and 3/24~3/31(during spring vacation).(This information was introduced by this Japanese site's new topic URL: shimanto-kankou.com/)

Sada Chinka Bashi is also over Shimanto River and a little closer to Nakamura Station. It takes about 15 minutes by taxi. A lot of tourists go there. It was shown the opening of TV drama.
In the Shimanto basin, people try to preserve Chinka Bashi as life cultural heritage.
It is selected for important cultural landscape by Agency for Cultural Affairs.

There was even Chinka Bashi photo book, but I don’t know why, we can’t buy it in Amazon now (maybe it is old book?).

I like Chinka Bashi . If you are interested, you should visit it!

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