Oblique arches built with masonry or brickwork have to be used as an exceptional technique for transmitting the axial forces all over the voussoir. One of the methods for realizing this technique was conceived by Japanese engineers in Meiji or Taisho Era who attempted to match spiral brickworks to oblique arches. In this paper, we describe the distribution of these structures in Japan, and gather detailed information about the technique from literature available in those days. The findings from the survey may be summarized as follows; (1) the oblique arches in Japan are widely distributed around Kansai district; (2) the technique for oblique arches built with spiral brickworks was applied in three methods-“hericoidal”, “logarithmic” and “corne de vache”; (3) oblique arches in Japan were built by hericoidal method; (4) some cases were found in which these techniques other than spiral brickworks were employed such as ribbed oblique arches; (5) hericoidal method had been used since early days of railway construction in Japan, and this technique may have been introduced by English railway engineers in 1870'; (6) this technique is speculated to have originated from an Irish canal of 18th century or a skew bridge of 16th century in Florence.
