Seta no Karahashi

What is there

The Seta river leaves Lake Biwa at its southern tip, and the Karahashi crosses it in two spans over a small island, as it has in one form or another since the seventh century. The present bridge dates from 1979 and keeps the old shape, with bronze finials on the rails. Whoever held the bridge held the road to the capital, and it was burned and rebuilt in every war that crossed it. At the eastern end a small shrine, Ryūōgū Hidesato-sha, enshrines the dragon king of the lake and the archer of the tale, and Mount Mikami, the centipede’s mountain, stands conical to the east.

Why here

A dragon lay across the bridge, and only the warrior Hidesato walked over it without fear; the dragon king asked him in return to kill the great centipede that wound seven times round Mount Mikami, and the third arrow, wetted with saliva, went home. Eight centuries later a young man on the same bridge met a shark-man exiled from the Dragon Palace, whose tears turned to rubies. The two tales are told in their articles; the bridge and the mountain are in the same places.

Yokai you will meet

• Ōmukade 大百足 — The bridge of the dragon king and the archer; Mount Mikami, the centipede's mountain, is in view to the east.
• Samebito 鮫人 — The Long Bridge of Seta where the shark-man was found weeping in the 1900 tale.

Getting there

Karahashimae Station (Keihan Ishiyama-Sakamoto Line). About five minutes on foot.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)