The Yokohama That Was

Yokohama is said to be a city of new things. The railway, gas lamps, Western-style horse racing: all of them began here. Even now, the view of the harbor changes every few years.

But wherever something new rises, there was always an age before it. The sea that was filled in had people who fished it; the cinemas that were torn down had people who went every week. That time cannot be measured simply by whether the city has grown cleaner.

This page does not only mourn what has vanished; it tries to tell what each place left behind for the city. Most of the sites can be visited on foot. In the stones underfoot, and behind the names that remain, we hope you will sense the Yokohama that was.

In 1872 (Meiji 5), Japan’s first railway opened between Shimbashi and Yokohama. The Yokohama Station of that day is today’s JR Sakuragicho Station.

Yokohama Station later moved north twice. In 1915 (Taisho 4), a second station of red brick, with a tower, went up near what is now the Takashimacho intersection. In the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 it burned, leaving only its outer walls. It had served for just eight years. Then, in 1928 (Showa 3), the third Yokohama Station opened where it stands today.

In 1866 (Keio 2), Japan’s first Western-style racecourse was built on the hill at Negishi. It stands for the sporting culture that came from across the sea with the opening of the port.

To replace the grandstand that had collapsed in the Great Kanto Earthquake, the First-Class Grandstand (Itto Umamisho) was built in 1929 (Showa 4), in steel-framed reinforced concrete, to a design by the architect J.H. Morgan. It became a model for racecourse buildings across Japan.

As the war intensified, racing ceased after the autumn of 1942, and the racecourse closed in 1943. After the war it was requisitioned by the US military and used for housing and a golf course. Part of the land was returned, and in 1977 (Showa 52) Negishi Forest Park opened. Its broad, gently rolling lawns follow the lie of the old racecourse.

At the end of the Meiji era, a line was laid linking Shinko Pier with the Yokohama Station of the day (today’s Sakuragicho). Boat trains for passengers joining their ships ran from Tokyo Station right onto the pier, to Yokohama Port Station. This was Yokohama’s international gateway, passed through by those setting out for abroad and those arriving from overseas.

After the war, in 1965, a freight line was extended from Yokohama Port Station to Yamashita Pier, but it too came to the end of its service in 1986.

In December 1911 (Meiji 44), a German whose name is recorded in Japanese as Weruderuman opened the Odeon-za, a cinema devoted to foreign films. The National Film Archive of Japan describes it as the country’s first first-run house for Western films. Musicians played below the stage, and audiences laughed at comedies from across the sea.

In the Taisho era, Isezakicho was the city’s foremost entertainment district. The Odeon-za rose again after the earthquake and was rebuilt in 1936 (Showa 11). After the war it was requisitioned by the US military, renamed the Octagon Theater, and served as a cinema for the occupation forces until 1954.

Until the end of the Showa era, the cinemas formed one continuous theater district, from Isezakicho through Wakabacho and Suehirocho. One by one, their lights went out. The Yokohama Nichigeki in Wakabacho closed in 2005, and in 2018 the curtain came down on the Yokohama New Theater in Isezakicho.

In 1914 (Taisho 3), Hiraoka Hirotaka, owner of the Kagetsu, a fine restaurant in Shimbashi, leased the grounds of Tofukuji Temple in Tsurumi and opened Kagetsuen, an amusement park for children. It is said the idea came to him while traveling in Europe with his wife, when he saw, on the outskirts of Paris, an amusement park where children were the stars.

It began with a zoo, fountains and a great waterfall, and in time came a long slide down the hillside, a miniature train, a Ferris wheel, a girls’ revue and an ice-skating rink. There was a dance hall for grown-ups, too, which appears in Tanizaki Jun’ichiro’s novel <i>A Fool’s Love</i> (<i>Chijin no Ai</i>). Many visitors came from abroad, and it was called “the finest amusement park in the East.” In 1916 (Taisho 5), Japan’s first nationwide exhibition of children’s paintings was held here, and in later years pictures by children from overseas hung alongside them.

In time, the crowds drifted to newer amusement parks, and management passed to Keihin Electric Express Railway. The park reopened briefly after the war, but with a children’s art exhibition in November 1946 (Showa 21), it closed for good. The name Kagetsuen lived on afterward in a keirin velodrome, until 2010.

As a centerpiece of the recovery from the Great Kanto Earthquake, a ballpark was completed in Yokohama Park in 1929 (Showa 4). In November 1934 (Showa 9), an American major-league all-star team, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig among them, played an All-Japan team here, and the people of Yokohama saw their hits with their own eyes.

After the war, the ballpark was requisitioned and named Gehrig Field. Lights were installed, and on August 17, 1948 (Showa 23), the first night game in Japanese professional baseball was played here. After its return it was loved as Heiwa Stadium, the “Peace Stadium,” and after nearly half a century of use, it was reborn in 1978 (Showa 53) as Yokohama Stadium.

The Great Yokohama Air Raid of May 29, 1945, left the city heavily damaged. When the war ended, large areas of Kannai, Isezakicho and Honmoku were requisitioned by the US military. At their peak, requisitioned lands in the city reached 1,200 hectares. On the land that remained to them, people set about rebuilding their lives.

With the heart of Yokohama requisitioned, Noge was one of the few neighborhoods where Japanese people could gather. In November 1945, the Yokohama Market opened on the streets of Noge, and amid the smoke of grilling whale meat, demobilized soldiers and people who had lost their jobs came looking for food and for work.

In 1953, the alleys along the Sakuragawa were either moved into shared shop buildings or cleared away, and in 1964 the last of the street stalls moved into the Noge Miyakobashi Shopping Street Building, newly built along the Ooka River.

Soon after the war, a large area of Honmoku was requisitioned and became a residential area for US military families. Houses with lawns, a school, a church, a movie theater. Beyond the fence lay an America inside Japan.

Those who had owned the land called for its return for many years. It is said that by the time it was returned in 1982 (Showa 57), many of them were already living elsewhere. After land readjustment, the site opened in 1988 as a new Honmoku neighborhood.

The sea from Honmoku through Negishi to Isogo was a rich one, full of fish, shellfish and seaweed. Fishermen hauled their nets, nori was farmed on a large scale in Negishi Bay, and in summer the shore was lively with swimmers and people digging for clams. In 1929 (Showa 4), a city-run beach also opened at Isogo.

In the years after 1955, land reclamation began to create an industrial zone. In 1956, the fishermen of Negishi Bay submitted a resolution to the city opposing the reclamation and held a rally. A compensation agreement was concluded in 1959. In 1963, the Byobugaura fishing cooperative erected a monument to the reclamation, and the following year, 1964, it held a ceremony to dissolve. For people who had lived alongside the sea, it was the end of an era.

The shore at Honmoku, too, was reclaimed from 1963 on, and the beaches disappeared.

South of Kannai, where Odori Park is today, a river once flowed. It was a canal running through Yoshida Shinden, land reclaimed in the Edo period, and in the Meiji era boats could carry goods along it from Negishi Bay to the center of town. Many bridges crossed it: Horaibashi, Nagashimabashi, Yokohamabashi, Bandobashi.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, carrying goods by boat faded away, and the age of the automobile arrived. By 1973 the river had been filled in; the municipal subway now runs beneath, and above ground, in 1978, Odori Park opened, about 1.2 km long.

In 1904 (Meiji 37), Yokohama’s first streetcar ran from Kanagawa to Oebashi (from today’s Aokibashi to Sakuragicho). In 1921 the line was taken over by the city, and the Yokohama City Tram was born. It was the beginning of today’s Yokohama Municipal Transportation Bureau.

People called it, with affection, the “chin-chin” tram. The name is said to come from the sound of its bells: the signal bell the conductor rang by pulling a cord, and the bell the driver sounded with his foot. The streetcars were damaged in the earthquake, and in the Great Yokohama Air Raid of May 29, 1945, 45 cars burned. Even so, the trams kept running.

In time, cars multiplied, and when the Negishi Line opened in 1964, ridership fell away. On March 31, 1972 (Showa 47), the last route, from Sakuragicho to Takigashira and Ashinabashi, ended service, and the curtain came down on some 70 years of history.

In August 1964 (Showa 39), Yokohama Dreamland opened in Matano, Totsuka. It was one of the country’s leading leisure destinations of its day, with a hotel, swimming pools and a bowling alley, and guard parades and sightseeing helicopter flights to delight its visitors. Totsuka Ward’s public newsletter describes it as having been “just like a land of dreams.”

In May 1966, a monorail to the park opened as well. But cracks were found in its girders, and after just one year and four months, service was suspended. When a large new amusement park opened in Chiba in 1983, the crowds thinned, and in February 2002 (Heisei 14), Dreamland closed.

From the Meiji era, a shipyard stood on the waterfront where Minato Mirai is today. It began repairing ships in 1891 (Meiji 24) as Yokohama Dock Company and later became the Yokohama Shipyard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The Hikawa Maru, afloat beside Yamashita Park, was born here in 1930.

Over 83 years, from 1899 to 1982, Dock No. 1 repaired several thousand ships. In 1982, the shipyard moved to Honmoku in cooperation with the development of Minato Mirai, and the waterfront land was reborn as a new district. The shipyard did not disappear; in Honmoku, it is still at work, making things today.

In 1962 (Showa 37), as a project marking the centennial of the port’s opening, the Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium opened south of Kannai. Two years later, at the Tokyo Olympics, it served as a venue for volleyball and other events.

Fifty-eight years followed. Sumo, professional wrestling, boxing. International competitions, concerts, and the coming-of-age ceremonies of Yokohama’s young people. People called it “Buntai” and kept coming back. On New Year’s Eve 2011, a world title boxing match promoted by the Ohashi Boxing Gym, near Yokohama Station, was held here as well.

In September 2020, the gymnasium closed, deeply missed.

In 1989 (Heisei 1), to mark the 100th anniversary of Yokohama’s city status and the 130th anniversary of the port’s opening, the Yokohama Exposition was held in the Minato Mirai 21 district, then still largely empty land. After a run of a little over six months, a new city rose, little by little, where the exposition had been.

Takashimacho Station opened in 1928 and Sakuragicho Station in 1932, and for some 70 years, Toyoko Line trains from Tokyo ended their journey at Sakuragicho. With the last train on January 30, 2004 (Heisei 16), the line from Yokohama to Sakuragicho finished its work. Two days later, the Toyoko Line was joined to the Minatomirai Line and began running through to Motomachi-Chukagai.

In 1864 (Genji 1), in a Yokohama only just opened as a port, the Nozawaya kimono shop was founded. At the end of the Meiji era it moved to Isezakicho, in time became Yokohama Matsuzakaya, and for many years remained the face of this street. More than 140 years after its founding, on October 26, 2008 (Heisei 20), the department store brought its history to a close.

In 1959 (Showa 34), as a project marking the centennial of the port’s opening, a city hall designed by the architect Togo Murano was built. For more than 60 years, the business of governing Yokohama was carried out here. In 2020 (Reiwa 2), City Hall moved to a new building in Honcho 6-chome.

The assembly wing is gone, but the administrative wing was kept, and in 2025 it became the first postwar building to be certified as a Yokohama City Certified Historic Building. Today it is a hotel, marking new hours of its own.

On June 30, 2026 (Reiwa 8), the US military’s Negishi Housing Area, spanning Naka, Minami and Isogo wards, was returned. The requisitions that began after the war are still, more than 80 years on, coming to an end little by little.

Yokohama will go on changing. At the feet of its new buildings, the time of places that are no longer here will quietly go on gathering, layer upon layer. We hope to pass on both, as treasures of this city.