Official

When thinking about the entrance and exit of the bridge, what you should keep in mind is the starting and end points of the road.
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's definition of roads, the starting point of the national highway is the "start point", the end point is the "end point", the "up point" goes to the starting point, and the "down" is the opposite end point Means going.

Nihonbashi-Nishi-zume "Otohara Square"

During the Edo period, Nihonbashi became the starting point of the Gokaido.
Even in the Taisho era, the starting point of all national roads was set in Tokyo (the road marker established in Nihonbashi), but the current national roads have the starting point and end point along with the route name and important progress points.
I put this in one corner of my head and went around the bridge with a nameplate name.

It was a field survey that started with a light feeling, "If you could find the rules of the bridge nameplate common to the bridge in Chuo-ku," but it was unexpectedly difficult.
In the case of a bridge tour, you only need to cross the bridge, but this time the bridge name plate is the purpose, you will look around the four corners of each bridge.
It is very easy for a small bridge that spans a one-way road, but for a large bridge with multiple lanes like the Sumida River Bridge, just checking the four corners of one bridge takes a reasonable amount of time.

Because it is a hot day in June, the image of how to go around the bridge in advance so that the time can be reduced as much as possible.
In order to understand the characteristics of the bridge nameplate of each bridge over each river and to prevent forgetting to go around, we decided to go around the bridge between the Sumida River, Nihonbashi River, Kanda River, Kaede River, etc.

What I noticed while walking around the bridge while paying attention to the bridge name plate is that the bridge name plate has a taste.
Depending on the bridge, there were differences in the age, material, shape, font, how to engrave the bridge name (whether it is floated, carved, or plane), and the installation location, from which the history of the bridge was glimpseed.

In addition, no rules common to the 66 bridges were found in the installation of the kanji bridge name plate and the hiragana bridge name plate.
However, we can see something like regularity between bridges over each river, and we would like to pursue what is affected by it in the future.

Furthermore, in Chuo-ku, there are only three bridges, and kanji notation is used on all bridge name boards.
The three bridges we are worried about are Yanagibashi, Chiyodabashi, and Takahashi.

Yanagibashi

Chiyodabashi

Takahashi

Conversely, there were no bridges with hiragana notation on all bridge names, but it is also an issue for future research to determine why there are bridges that use kanji in all.

In this field survey, we have also confirmed how the "bridge" is written on the hiragana bridge name plate.
For details, I would like to see the results of the field survey, but in fact, both "bashi" and "bashi" were seen.

The breakdown was that out of 63 bridges, except for the three bridges with kanji notation, 25 bridges adopted "bashi" and 38 bridges adopted "bashi", and 38 bridges adopted "bashi", and 60% of "bashi" did not become cloudy.
Looking at the bridge year, we did not find the regularity about this notation, but bridges with a long history and bridges that have passed a certain time since they were replaced tend to adopt the "hashi" notation. I think there is.

In addition, there are things written from right to left, such as Ichiishibashi's "Shihakukochii", and those written in variant kana like Jobanbashi, so you can enjoy it quite easily just by looking at the bridge name plate .

It is a bridge nameplate that is hardly in the limelight, but why not look a little conscious when walking around the town?
There may be unexpectedly interesting discoveries.

・This is based on the survey. Regarding the Sumida River Bridge, the upstream side is north and the downstream side is south.
・At Eitai Bridge, bridge nameplates are installed on both the bridge and the balustrade, and the following list uses the notation of the bridge.
・We reconfirmed using Google map before posting, but we will correct it at any time if there is an error.