COMPANY History of Yokogawa Bridge

This bridge is named after an old story in which Narihira Ariwara called out to the bird on the banks of the Sumida River, saying, ``My name is a bad word, but the person I think is not good.'' It is located at the furthest upstream of the six Sumida River bridges (Aioi, Eitai, Kuramae, Komagata, and Kototoi) built by the Reconstruction Bureau. The main bridge was a gelber plate girder (46.4m + 67.2m + 462m), and the riverside bridge was a 3-span continuous plate girder (12.95m + 13.72m + 6.55m) with a width of 22m, making it the largest bridge in Japan at the time.

This is an overpass that straddles the Tokaido Line between Minato and Shinagawa wards, and is the second full-scale steel bridge constructed by our company after Yamagabashi in Kyoto. It is Japan's first braced tied arch type, with a span of 138 feet (approx. 42 m), a width of 63 feet (approx. 19 m), and a weight of 350 tons. Because it was built over a railway line, piers could not be used and trains could not be stopped. Moreover, it was a diagonal bridge at an angle of 55 degrees to the railway line, requiring the highest level of technology at the time. Met.

General MacArthur, who moved to Japan shortly after the end of the war, established the Dai-ichi Life Headquarters Building as GHQ (Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers). This building was a magnificent building with 7 floors above ground and 4 floors below ground, but during construction, the ground was soft and close to a moat, so underground water infiltration was significant, so a submerged box construction method was used, and because it was close to the Imperial Palace, it was noisy. With this in mind, the riveting method was banned, and new methods such as reinforcing bolts and welding were adopted.