The bridge is made entirely of mountain vines, woven and suspended over a gorge that drops fourteen meters to the river below. Every three years, the entire structure is rebuilt from scratch — the same vines, the same method used for over eight hundred years. Walking it requires committing to each step, because the floor has gaps and the bridge moves. Iya is one of Japan's three great hidden regions — remote valleys in the Shikoku mountains where, according to legend, survivors of defeated clans came to hide in the twelfth century. Whether or not the legend is accurate, the landscape makes it plausible. The gorges are deep. The roads are narrow. The feeling of having arrived somewhere that did not want to be found persists even now. The Kazurabashi is the most direct way to experience Iya's character. It is not a comfortable crossing. The vines flex underfoot; the drop is visible through the gaps; the far bank seems both close and not close enough. What it offers, in exchange for the discomfort, is the sensation of moving through space the way people here have been moving through space for eight centuries.