1 Lit. "eight bridges." A type of low bridge built over a shallow pond or marsh using wooden planks without rails, laid in a zig-zag pattern. Although the name yatsuhashi means a bridge of eight planks, the term is also used for bridges of greater or fewer planks. The name yatsuhashi comes from an incident in the 10th-century Ise monogatari 伊勢物語 (The Tales of Ise) in which the story's protagonist and his companions stop to rest at a famous iris marsh traversed by an eight-planked bridge. In Edo period gardens, especially those built by daimyō 大名 (see *daimyō teien 大名庭園), yatsuhashi were often built over iris marshes in an obvious reference to Ise monogatari. A good example is found at Koishikawa Kōrakuen 小石川後楽園, Tokyo.
2 Yatsuhashi. Originally located in Mikawa 三河 Province (now Aichi Prefecture) just off the Eastern Sea Road, Tōkaidō 東海道, where the Azuma 逢妻 River (wife-meeting river) branched into eight streams, each requiring a bridge. Mentioned in Episode 9 of Ise monogatari 伊勢物語 (The Tales of Ise; see *Ise monogatari-e 伊勢物語絵 and *Azuma kudari 東下り) as a place famous for irises kakitsubata 燕子花. The protagonist, often identified as Ariwara no Narihira 在原業平 (825-80), composes the following acrostic on kakitsubata かきつばた:
からごろも karagoromo
きつつなれにし kitsutsu narenishi
つましあれば tsuma shi areba
はるばるきぬる harubaru kinuru
たびをしぞおもふ tabi wo shi zo omo-uI have a beloved wife
familiar as the skirt
of a well-worn robe
and so this distant journeying
fills my heart with grief— Translated by McCullough
The theme sometimes rendered only as irises and a few (not eight) foot bridges without human figures is found in *Rinpa 琳派 paintings, lacquerware decoration, and in *ukiyo-e 浮世絵. The most famous example associated with this episode is a pair of folding screens of Kakitsubata-zu 燕子花図 (Irises) by Ogata Kōrin 尾形光琳 (1658-1716) in the Nezu 根津 Museum, Tokyo, where only patternized flowers are depicted without the bridge or human figures.
