Japan Guide
Tokyo
Nihombashi
North of Ginza, Nihombashi was once the heart of Edo's teeming Shitamachi, growing from a cluster of riverside markets in the early seventeenth century to become the city's chief financial district. The earlier warehouses and moneylenders have evolved into the banks, brokers and trading companies that line the streets today.
Since 1603, the centre of Nihombashi (meaning "Bridge of Japan"), and effectively of the whole country, was an arched red lacquered bridge – a favourite of ukiyo-e artists – which marked the start of the Tōkaidō, the great road running between Edo and Kyoto. The original wooden structure has long gone, but distances from Tokyo are still measured from a bronze marker at the halfway point of the present stone bridge, erected in 1911. Although it's now smothered by the Shuto Expressway, it's still worth swinging by here to see the bronze statues of dragons and wrought-iron lamps that decorate the bridge.