Yodoyabashi is a bridge spanning the Tosabori River in Osaka City, designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2008. The first bridge was built by the wealthy Edo-period Osaka merchant family Yodoya and measured about 65 m long and about 4 m wide. The bridge’s name comes from that family. The first head of the family, Yodoya Jōan—then said to be Japan’s leading timber merchant—was also known as a developer of Nakanoshima; his name remains today in the downstream bridge called Jōanbashi. The Yodoya family contributed greatly to the formation of Osaka as a commercial city through initiatives such as the Dojima Rice Exchange, the Tenma vegetable market, and the Zakoba fish market, but their influence extended into the samurai world and in 1705 they were abruptly punished by confiscation (kessho). The old bridge was washed away in a major flood in 1885. The current bridge was completed in 1935 as part of the First Urban Planning Project that began in 1922, after a public design competition. Its design, considerate of the cityscape and inspired by Paris’s Seine River bridges, is a defining feature; in a city survey on bridges conducted by Osaka City, it has been named as one of the most attractive bridges to citizens.