Abstract
Many bridges have been constructed over the Shirakawa river which runs across the Kumamoto city from east to west. Because of swift-moving waters of the Shirakawa river during the rainy seasons, these bridges were demolished and reconstructed repeatedly. The writers investigated the development of these bridges from the view point of flood history. This paper describes the design concept and the process of its deveropment in bridge construction over the Shirakawa river. It is concluded that the understanding of disastrous history as well as technological, regional and sociological history is very important criteria for the evaluation for civil engineering structures.
