Gokurakubashi Bridge

Gokurakubashi Bridge lies above the inner moat, and its smooth reinforced-concrete span is screened by railings with traditional finials. Its name arose before the castle: when Ishiyama Hongan-ji stood on this site, the crossing led to Amida's temple, and Gokuraku was the name for the Buddhist Pure Land. The crossing itself was rebuilt, but the name outlasted both the early wooden bridge and the crossing from the shoguns' era.

In fifteen ninety-six, Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered the northern crossing over the inner moat to be rebuilt here. The result was a covered bridge-corridor with walls, a roof, and a small tower above the span. Vast sums were spent on it: Hideyoshi was preparing to receive envoys from the Chinese Ming dynasty.

Four years earlier, Hideyoshi, who had unified Japan and hoped to expand his domains on the mainland, sent troops to the Korean Peninsula. Korean resistance and the entry of the Ming army halted the advance. Negotiations began, but the intermediaries seeking peace passed on to Beijing only part of Hideyoshi's terms.

At the reception for which the ceremonial bridge was built, the envoys presented him with a letter from the Ming emperor. It declared Hideyoshi a vassal of the empire and granted him the title of King of Japan; his own demands did not appear in the document. The story that he tore up the letter in anger arose later: the surviving original has no tears. But Hideyoshi rejected the proposed peace. The negotiations collapsed, and Japanese troops invaded Korea again. Hideyoshi died during that campaign, after which the troops were withdrawn.

The covered bridge stood here for only a few years. In sixteen hundred, it was dismantled and moved to Kyoto, to Hideyoshi's mausoleum. There, the former part of the bridge became gates. When the mausoleum structures began to be removed, Toyotomi Hideyori—Hideyoshi's son, who sought to preserve his father's buildings—assigned his guardian and works administrator, Katagiri Katsumoto, to move the gates once again. In sixteen hundred two, they were sent to Hogonji Temple on Chikubushima Island, and a year later they were assembled at the entrance to Kannon Hall. By the time the Toyotomi clan perished in the fall of Osaka Castle, this part of the bridge was already in the middle of Lake Biwa.

The name outlasted both Hideyoshi's wooden bridge and the later bridge of the shoguns. “Gokuraku” means the Buddhist Pure Land. The name is believed to have arisen before the castle, when Ishiyama Hongan-ji stood here and the crossing led to Amida's temple.

The present Gokurakubashi Bridge was built in nineteen sixty-five. Its piers and beams are made of reinforced concrete; railings with traditional finials preserve its old appearance. The covered corridor built for the Ming envoys is not here. Its presumed surviving part—the black-lacquered Karamon Gate, with gilding and colored carvings—stands at Hogonji Temple and is considered the only surviving structure of Hideyoshi's castle.