Yamashitacho

In 1859 (Ansei 6), the port of Yokohama was opened. Near the middle of Yokohama Village, where the Kanagawa Prefectural Government Office stands today, the Unjosho was set up to handle trade and diplomacy, and the land to its east was designated the foreign settlement (Naka Ward Historical Chronology). That settlement is today’s Yamashitacho. In March 1866 (Keio 2), the marshland of Otaya Shinden was filled in, and the settlement grew (Naka Ward, Yokohama).

That October, the Butaya Fire, which burned through Kannai, also swept across most of the settlement. How the town was rebuilt after the fire is told on the Bashamichi & Nihon-odori Avenue page.

In January 1879 (Meiji 12), thirty district names, among them Kagacho, Satsumacho, Echigocho, Kaigan-dori and Honcho-dori, were given to the streets of the settlement (Naka Ward, Yokohama). At what is now 1 Yamashitacho, where the Silk Center stands, was the British trading house Jardine Matheson & Co. People are said to have called it Ei Ichiban-kan, “English House No. 1” (Silk Museum).

In the days when ships were the only way between Japan and the rest of the world, the port of Yokohama was where travelers from across the sea first set foot. To house them, Hotel New Grand writes in its own history, hotel after hotel once stood side by side around Yamashitacho.

In 1899 (Meiji 32), with the revision of the treaties, the settlement system came to an end (Port and Harbor Bureau, City of Yokohama; Yokohama City Central Library). On July 24 of that year, all of the settlement’s district names were abolished, and the whole area became a single town, Yamashitacho (Naka Ward, Yokohama). It was exactly forty years since the port had opened: the day a town where people from abroad had made their lives was given a Japanese name.

When the port opened, Chinese merchants who had crossed the sea alongside the Westerners also began trading in this settlement (Yokohama City tourism information). By address, Yokohama Chinatown lies within Yamashitacho to this day. The story of Chinatown’s gates and temples, and of the people who built it, is told on the Motomachi & Chinatown page.

The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, 1923 (Taisho 12) turned Yamashitacho’s hotel district, along with the rest of Yokohama, into rubble. Temporary lodgings were put up in the stricken area for foreign guests, but they were so makeshift, it is said, that people called them “tent hotels” (Hotel New Grand).

The sea beyond Kaigan-dori in Yamashitacho was designated as the place to dump the vast amount of rubble the earthquake had left behind. Under the direct management of the national Reconstruction Bureau, work on the seawall began in 1925 (Taisho 14), and the park opened in 1930 (Showa 5). The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes Yamashita Park as the first waterfront city park to open in Japan.

When the park opened, its main gate stood at the center of the south side, facing Hotel New Grand. The four gateposts, and the fence running west from the main gate, remain just as they were on opening day. The stone balconies that curve out toward the sea in an oval, and the stone steps leading down to the water, also keep their original form in two places, at the center and on the west side (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

At the west end of the park stands a drinking fountain of Islamic-style design. It was given in 1939 (Showa 14) by the Yokohama Indian merchants’ association in gratitude for the help they received at the time of the earthquake, and the people of the city know it fondly as the Indian Water Tower (Agency for Cultural Affairs). By the sea sits the Statue of the Girl in Red Shoes, familiar from a children’s song (Yokohama City tourism information).

In 2007, Yamashita Park was registered as a national Registered Monument (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

After the earthquake, the City of Yokohama, and with it the political and business leaders of the day, called with one voice for a new hotel. On December 1, 1927 (Showa 2), Hotel New Grand opened, looking out on Yamashita Park, made from the rubble that had filled the sea. Its main building, designed by the architect Jin Watanabe, is recognized as one of the City of Yokohama’s historic buildings (Hotel New Grand).

Saly Weil, the first executive chef, recruited in Paris, introduced authentic French cuisine and, with it, a freer air to hotel dining rooms that had been stiff and formal. His apprentices are said to have called him “Swiss Papa.” From 1931 (Showa 6), for about ten years, the writer Jiro Osaragi worked in Room 318, which looks straight out onto the harbor (Hotel New Grand).

The dishes born in this hotel, and the story of the guest who arrived here in the year the war ended, are told on the Yokohama’s Food Stories page.

Off Yamashita Park, a single ship lies afloat. She is the Hikawa Maru, a passenger-cargo liner completed at the Yokohama Dock Company in 1930 (Showa 5) for NYK Line’s Seattle route. The story of the ships built at that shipyard, which stood in what is now Minato Mirai, is also told on the Sakuragicho & Minato Mirai page.

To carry silk, a vital export of the day, safely, the ship was fitted with dedicated holds lined with wooden boards, known as “silk rooms.” The interiors of her first-class lounge and dining saloon were the work of a French designer, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs writes that they may be called the first designs to bring the Art Deco style directly to Japan (Agency for Cultural Affairs). She is also known as a ship that carried the great comedian Charlie Chaplin (Yokohama City tourism information).

In the years of war, the Hikawa Maru became a navy hospital ship. Three times before the war ended she struck a mine, and each time she stayed afloat. When the war was over, she served as a demobilization ship carrying soldiers home, and as a repatriation ship bringing people back to Japan from overseas (Agency for Cultural Affairs; NYK Line).

In 1953, the Hikawa Maru returned to the Seattle route. By the time she left front-line service at thirty years of age, she had crossed the Pacific 254 times and carried more than 25,000 passengers. She retired in 1960, and since 1961 she has been moored off Yamashita Park. In 2008 she reopened to the public as NYK Hikawa Maru, and in 2016 she was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan, as the only surviving passenger-cargo ship built in prewar Japan (NYK Line; Agency for Cultural Affairs).

After the port opened, Yokohama prospered as a great port for the export of raw silk. The silk rooms of the Hikawa Maru are a trace of that age.

In 1959 (Showa 34), on the site of Ei Ichiban-kan, the Silk Center International Trade and Tourism Building was built, and the Silk Museum opened inside it, as a project marking the 100th anniversary of the port’s opening. Behind the plan lay a hope for postwar recovery: that visitors from abroad would come to know Japanese silk, and that exports of raw silk would grow (Silk Museum).

In 1969, a statue called the Silk Maiden was set up at the entrance on the sea side, and in the same spot a mulberry tree, said to have been planted around the time Yokohama’s port opened, was replanted as a gift from what is now the city of Sagamihara (Silk Museum). On the museum’s first floor, you can watch living silkworms and try reeling thread from a cocoon.

In 1961 (Showa 36), Yokohama Marine Tower was built to mark the 100th anniversary of the port’s opening. It stands 106 meters tall. At the time it was the tallest lighthouse in the world, and for many years it watched over the harbor (Yokohama City tourism information). Its work as a lighthouse ended on September 1, 2008. It closed in 2019 and reopened after renovation in September 2022 (City of Yokohama). In 2026, the tower marks 65 years since it opened (Yokohama Marine Tower).

Beyond the west end of Yamashita Park, Osanbashi Pier runs straight out into the sea. In 1894 (Meiji 27), as the first harbor works of the port of Yokohama, an iron pier about 457 meters long was built. People call it Meriken Hatoba, the “American pier.” In the Great Kanto Earthquake, the pier sank and the sheds on it burned (Osanbashi).

In the year the war ended, Osanbashi Pier was requisitioned by the occupation forces and called the “South Pier.” It was returned in 1952. An international passenger terminal opened in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, and the present terminal, chosen through an international design competition that drew 660 entries, was completed in 2002 (Osanbashi). Its rooftop is an open plaza with a sweeping view of the harbor.

At the east end of Yamashita Park stands the Yokohama Doll Museum. In June 2026, it marked forty years since its opening.

Its collection began with the dolls of one woman, Eiko Ono. After working as secretary and interpreter to Kokichi Mikimoto, the “Pearl King,” she struck out on her own, ran a pearl shop in Motomachi, and came to be called “the Pearl Queen of Hama,” Hama being Yokohama’s affectionate nickname. She devoted herself to private diplomacy as well, inviting travelers from abroad into her home, and having seen how dolls could deepen the bonds between people, she came to wish that Yokohama might one day have a place to show them. The dream did not come true in her lifetime, but her wishes led to a donation to the City of Yokohama and became one of the forces that brought the Doll Museum into being. The dolls given to the museum number 1,981, from 76 countries and regions (Yokohama Doll Museum).

Facing Yamashita Park Avenue is Kanagawa Kenmin Hall. From its opening on January 17, 1975, it kept the stage lights burning for fifty years, for everything from full-company tours by European opera houses to pop concerts and the performances of the prefecture’s own people. On March 31, 2025, it closed owing to the aging of the building, and its redevelopment is now under consideration (Kanagawa Kenmin Hall). For now, the hall’s stage travels out to towns across the prefecture, bringing performances to them.

When the war ended, the center of Yokohama was requisitioned by the Allied forces. The area taken reached 74% of Naka Ward (Naka Ward Historical Chronology).

On August 30, 1945, Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, came straight from Atsugi to Hotel New Grand and stayed in Room 315, overlooking the harbor (Hotel New Grand). Yamashita Park was used by the Japanese navy during the war, and afterward as a site for housing for the occupation forces. The requisition was lifted in 1954 (Showa 29), and the whole park was opened to the people of the city in 1960 (Showa 35) (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Today’s sunken flower garden was made around that time by reshaping the boat basin of the park’s opening years (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Earthquake, then war. Twice this town let go of its shore, and thirty years passed from the park’s opening before it became, once more, a park for the people of the city.