At just under 60cm wide, Nishinomiya City’s Namaze Water Pipe Bridge (西宮市の生瀬水道橋) is regarded as the narrowest bridge in Japan. Built in 1975, originally to oversee a water pipe crossing the Mukogawa River (武庫川), due to the lack of bridges in the neighbourhood it was also made open to pedestrians.
Also in the city of Nishinomiya is the more famous Manbow Tunnel (マンボウトンネル), featured not long ago on the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. There is no record of when it was built but it appeared in maps as early as 1909 when it was used primarily by local farmers as a waterway tunnel. As with Namaze Water Pipe Bridge, it was turned into a pedestrian passageway tunnel as there weren’t any other alternatives nearby to cross the JR tracks running overhead. Both the bridge and tunnel are frequently used by the locals, so if visiting a good amount of consideration for their daily users is required.
The mural featuring Japanese artist Okamoto Taro was painted by the duo known as Doppel (BAKIBAKI and MON) as part of the “Yodokabe” (淀壁) mural project in Osaka’s Yodogawa area (淀川エリア) . The project, started by local artist BAKIBAKI, in collaboration with mural art company WALLSHARE, begun in 2021 with a mural of pioneering nurse Florence Nightingale as a homage to all the medical workers fighting the then ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It is scheduled to continue until 2025, the year the city of Osaka will host the World Expo, with the aim of producing a total of 30 murals. Okamoto Taro’s arguably most famous work, The Tower of the Sun (太陽の塔), was the symbol of Expo’70 also hosted in Osaka.
🎵 “Woken by You” (2016) by Ketsa from the album “Our Story This”. (ketsa.uk/)
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