Arai Bridge, Steel bridge in Kitamoto City, Japan

Arai Bridge is a steel structure spanning approximately 642 meters across the Arakawa River, connecting Kitamoto City with Yoshimi Town in Saitama Prefecture. The bridge carries traffic between the two communities on opposite riverbanks.

A ferry called Arai no Watashi crossed the river here until 1933, when a 90-metre wooden submersible bridge opened on 15 March. Floods repeatedly destroyed it, including in 1965, and in 1973 a new wooden bridge was built over the Kitamoto shortcut channel. The current steel continuous box-girder bridge opened on 1 May 1982.

The bridge name comes from Arai no Watashi, the ferry that crossed here until the first bridge opened in 1933. Cherry trees stand nearby, among them Ishidokaba-zakura, counted among Japan's five great cherry trees, and Takao Sakura Park holds about 200 trees of 30 varieties. The riverbed near the bridge is narrow, widening upstream and downstream.

The bridge carries Saitama Prefectural Route 33 between Kitamoto and Yoshimi, with a sidewalk only on the upstream side. The nearest stop on the Yoshimi side is Higashi-Daini Shogakko Iriguchi; the Kitamoto side links to Kitamoto Station by the Kawagoe Kanko bus. About 800 m upstream stands the submersible Takao Bridge.

The 1982 steel bridge stands slightly upstream of the old ferry crossing and the 1933 wooden bridge. The approach road of the earlier bridge survives in the river area as a farm road, and there the Arai Bridge Monument, erected on 10 November 1940, records the floods that repeatedly swept the bridge away.