To provide a useful and novel artificial esophagus which is extremely highly elastic and are freely deformable like vital soft tissues, remains stable over a long period of time, has excellent mechanical strength and is coexistable with the vital tissues over a long period of time and more specifically to obtain the novel artificial esophagus made of a tubular hydrous gel consisting of crosslinked polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) having a moisture content of 30 to 80%.

A monomer prepolymerized to a viscosity of 20 to 200 centipoises is used at the time of polymerizing a copolymer consisting of 90 to 99.5wt.% vinyl acetate and 0.05 to 10wt.% triallylisocyanurate or the diallylidene pentaerythritol expressed by the formula. This monomer is molded to a tubular form and is further hydrolyzed, by which the artificial esophagus made of the tubular hydrous gel consisting of the crosslinked PVA having the moisture content of 30 to 80% is obtd.