Suido-bridge, Tokyo, c. 1910. A streetcar crosses Suidobashi Bridge while a Chuo Line train carriage departs Suidobashi Station for Ochanomizu Station along elevated, electrified track .

“She agreed to help me, but on one condition. I must throw away the necklace, and she must be witness to the act. Since it was nothing to me, I agreed. The two of us went to the bridge in front of the Suidobashi Station. I took it off and handed it to her, and told her to throw it with her own hand into the filthy canal. She flung it from her, arching it high into the sunlight of the winter evening. It hit the stinking water over which a barge was just then passing. She fell on me, breathing a heavy as if she had just committed murder. Passers-by looked at us curiously.”

– The Decay of the Angel: The Sea of Fertility, Yukio Mishima, 1971

In the Edo era, there were six main aqueducts feeding water into the city by means of over-ground or underground piping, or diverted waterways (those being used mostly to flood the defensive moats surrounding Edo Castle). Near present-day Suidobashi, one aqueduct crossed back over the Kanda River as it headed to Koshikawa-Korakuen gardens on the Mito-han estate. When modernization took hold, after the Meiji Restoration, modern water and sewage systems replaced the feudal aqueducts. The aqueduct at Suidobashi [literally, water-carrying bridge] was torn down but its name given to the modern-era bridge erected in its place.

An example of a “sui-do-bashi” [water bridge] aqueduct crossing the Kandagawa, at Ochanomizu, c. 1900.

Another “suidobashi” [water bridge] aqueduct coursing along the upper reaches of the Yedogawa, Tokyo, c. 1910.