Koganecho & Hinodecho

The name Koganecho comes from a line in the Chinese classic Huainanzi: “In clear water there is gold; in the dragon’s deep, jade.” Together with Shimizucho, which no longer exists, and neighboring Hanabusacho, it is one of a set of town names that answer one another within that single sentence. Across the river, Hinodecho was the land where the Echizen Fukui domain, ordered to guard Yokohama when the port opened, kept its jin’ya, its local headquarters. It later became army land, and in 1871 (Meiji 4) its newly laid-out streets were given an auspicious name: Hinodecho, “the town of the rising sun.”

In the middle of the Meiji era, when the old jin’ya grounds were sold off, cherry trees were planted along both sides of the road, and the cherry blossoms of Hinodecho-dori became one of the city’s famous sights. Boat traffic on the Ooka River brought wholesale merchants to line the riverbanks, and the main street was as lively as Noge or Isezakicho. One street back, the town’s elders recall, it was a quiet neighborhood with many doctors’ clinics, and cherry branches swayed on the river embankment. The writer Shin Hasegawa was born here in Hinodecho in 1884 (Meiji 17).

In the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 (Taisho 12), Hinodecho’s three bridges, the Kogane, the Asahi and the Choja, all burned and fell. With nowhere left to escape, more than 140 people lost their lives. The cherry trees of Hinodecho-dori were lost at this time as well.

One of the pillars of the recovery was the Shonan Electric Railway, today’s Keikyu Line. Koganecho Station opened in 1930 (Showa 5), and Hinodecho Station the following year, 1931. The track between the two stations, just 0.6 kilometers long, was built entirely on an elevated viaduct. That viaduct would go on to shape the fate of the town.

In the Great Yokohama Air Raid of May 29, 1945 (Showa 20), everything from Hinodecho to Koganecho burned at once. The war dead at Koganecho Station are put at 628, and the ward’s history keeps the record of a family who died beneath the railway overpass by the station. Until the station building was rebuilt in 1979, the concrete of the overpass still bore the bullet marks of strafing from the air.

People who had lost their homes in the air raids, and people whose land had been requisitioned, began living under the viaduct, where at least the rain could not reach them. Shacks went up along the overpass, then small drinking stands and simple lodgings, and in time prostitution aimed at soldiers of the occupation forces took hold. The ward’s history describes the area as “a so-called aosen district,” the postwar term for a quarter outside the licensed areas.

Around the same time, a drug trade spread, centered on the space beneath the Keikyu tracks. Local people look back on those years as a time when “no one would come near.” The same records tell of a resident who took a person struggling with addiction into their own home and stayed by their side day and night. It is also well known that Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) captured the shadows of this town.

Even after the Anti-Prostitution Act took effect in 1958 (Showa 33), the lights of the small establishments under the viaduct did not go out, despite repeated police crackdowns. After the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, when work began to make the viaduct earthquake-resistant, the establishments moved out from under the tracks into the surrounding alleys, and their number grew to well over two hundred.

Those who were there were, most likely, people who had drifted to this town, each carrying circumstances of their own. The part of Yokohama that never came to the surface, from the burned ruins of the war to the years of rapid economic growth. This town was also a place that bore that weight.

In September 2002 (Heisei 14), the Hatsuko and Hinodecho neighborhood associations met together for the first time. Joined by the PTA of the local elementary school, they began patrolling at night. The following year, the Hatsuko-Hinodecho Council for the Promotion of Environmental Cleanup was formed, and the town’s voice reached the city, and then the national government.

In January 2005 (Heisei 17), the Kanagawa Prefectural Police launched “Operation Bye-Bye.” After an effort in which residents, police and government worked as one, every illegal establishment was closed. Members of the council say that the Ooka River Cherry Blossom Festival, kept up for years by the eight neighborhoods on both banks, had laid the groundwork, linking one neighborhood to the next so that they could share the same hopes.

Yet what remained after the establishments disappeared was a row of small buildings with their shutters down. Those who later became involved have called the town of that time a “ghost town.”

In 2007, the City of Yokohama began leasing the empty premises, turning the small former establishments into studios for people who paint and make things. In 2008, Koganecho Bazaar opened alongside the Yokohama Triennale, and under the viaduct facing the river, Kogane Studio and Hinode Studio were built. The following year, 2009, saw the founding of the Koganecho Area Management Center, a nonprofit organization that leads the town’s revitalization.

Many of the artists in residence here come from abroad, and the town has long valued its exchanges with cities across Asia, including in Taiwan, Korea and Vietnam. Held every autumn, Koganecho Bazaar is, in 2026, “approaching its 20th year.” With the studios under the tracks and the shops around town as its venues, the works melt into the alleys. There are also English-language tours of the town’s history and art, and Koganecho Sanpo walks guided by local residents.

Still, art alone has not filled the town. The city holds 81 buildings, through leases or purchases. Many are row-house shops without kitchens or plumbing, and in 2024 the City of Yokohama began looking for new partners to put them to uses “other than art.” Like a canvas still being painted, this town is not yet finished. That struggle, we think, is part of what Koganecho is today.

In spring, the Ooka becomes a river of cherry blossoms. Each year the Naka Ward Office reports on the blossoms along the river with photographs; in 2026 it followed them from the buds of mid-March to the fresh leaves of early April. Upstream in Minami Ward, the Ooka River Promenade has about 500 trees. Planted little by little since the late Meiji era, these cherry trees are now a symbol of Minami Ward.

Along the river from Hinodecho to Koganecho, too, the neighborhoods on both banks have joined hands to keep the Ooka River Cherry Blossom Festival going. The Meiji-era cherry trees of Hinodecho-dori were lost in the earthquake. Even so, cherry trees have been planted along this riverside once again. As you walk beneath the blossoms, we hope you might remember that, if only a little.

Close to Koganecho Station, in Wakabacho, there was once a movie theater called the Yokohama Nichigeki. It opened at the end of 1953 (Showa 28). Across the front of the building, which kept the air of the Showa era, glowed the neon sign “CINEMASCOPE NICHIGEKI.”

Then there is Private Detective Mike Hama, directed by Kaizo Hayashi and starring Masatoshi Nagase. In the three films shot between 1993 and 1996 (The Most Terrible Time in My Life, The Stairway to the Distant Past and The Trap, released abroad as the Maiku Hama Trilogy) and in the 2002 television series, Mike’s detective office was set inside the Yokohama Nichigeki. The elevated tracks with Keikyu trains passing overhead; the Landmark Tower, visible from all over the city. Along with the films, the name of this old movie theater became known throughout Japan.

The Yokohama Nichigeki brought down its curtain on February 18, 2005. In March 2007, before demolition, a final special screening was held, and the last film shown was Cinema Paradiso. The building was torn down that spring.

Directly across the street stood its sister theater, the Yokohama Meigaza. Carrying on that lineage today is the small independent cinema Cinema Jack & Betty. In 2023, the series’ 30th anniversary, the three films were screened here in 4K digital remasters. The City of Yokohama’s tourism website notes that the number of fans visiting the filming locations has not dwindled over the years.

For many years Koganecho had a strip theater called the Kogane Gekijo. It closed in the summer of 2013, and the building has been reborn as Kyu Gekijo, “the Former Theater,” a shared studio for young makers. The ground floor, where the stage once stood, became a workshop, and the second floor, once the dancers’ dressing rooms, became studios. The theater’s name also appears in an article that went in search of the filming locations of Private Detective Mike Hama. Near Hinodecho Station, one strip theater still keeps its lights on today.

Under Japanese law, a strip theater counts as a “store-based special sex-related business.” Such businesses may not operate near schools, libraries and similar facilities, and each prefecture may also designate by ordinance areas where they are prohibited. The theaters that exist today are allowed to continue because they were already operating when those rules came into force. Opening a new theater is said to be all but impossible, and even rebuilding an existing one is difficult. Theaters once said to number as many as 300 across Japan were counted at 17 in a 2026 news report. Once a theater closes, it is hard for it ever to open again.

On the way from Hinodecho Station toward Noge, the name of the Koonza, one of the movie theaters built after the war, still remains. Its operator describes it as the only theater in the Tokyo metropolitan area that shows gay films as first-run releases. A town where all kinds of people have come, each looking for a place to belong. This, too, is part of its story.