PURPOSE: To provide an inexpensive hard endoscope equipped with an illumination light transmitting means to transmit illumination light efficiently.

CONSTITUTION: A light guide 2 is provided, at its tip portion and base end portion with a tip fixer 7 and a base end fixer 8 consisting of elastic members respectively, and by these tip fixer 7 and base end fixer 8, the light guide 2 is fixed so that an opening portion 9 may be formed between the light guide 2 and an outer furnishing member 4 and an observation optical system 3. An LG cable that is a light source is connected to an LG metallic cap 5, and illumination light is supplied to the incident end surface of the light guide 2. The illumination light thus supplied repeats total reflection on the border surface of the light guide 2 and is transmitted to the tip and it emitted from the tip surface. At this time, as the opening portion 9 is formed on the border surface of the light guide 2, the illumination light transmitted inside the light guide 2 is not absorbed into the outer furnishing member 4 at the time of reflection.