Yodoyabashi Bridge

This guide to Yodoyabashi Bridge in Osaka opens in 1705, the year one of the richest men in Japanese history lost his entire fortune on a single order from the shogun's government. It traces how Yodoya Joan built that fortune after the Siege of Osaka, reclaiming the swampy delta at Nakanoshima where his mansion once stood, and how his son founded a rice exchange so influential it set national prices for a century. For a hundred years the family bankrolled samurai clans across western Japan from that spot.