A Year in Yokohama

June 2, 1860 (Man’en 1). On that day, exactly one year after the port opened, the people of Yokohama are said to have brought out festival floats and danced in the streets, the whole town joining in the celebration. The City of Yokohama regards this as the beginning of Port Opening Day (Koho Yokohama, May 2026). More than 160 years later, June 2 is still a special day for this city.

Many of Yokohama’s festivals came from across the sea and took root here. Chinese New Year in Chinatown, where the new year begins by the lunar calendar. The Christmases of many countries, decorating the Western-style houses of Yamate. And close by, the festival of a shrine that has stood here since the new rice fields were first reclaimed makes its way through the same neighborhood every year.

Every festival has people who have kept it going. Those who revived the plum-viewing gathering the war had cut short. The shopkeepers who brought street performers to a town the crowds had deserted. The volunteers who unfurl the sails by hand, one by one. Each year, the seasonal festivals take shape anew in their hands.

During the first three days of the New Year, Sankeien opens Kakushokaku (a Tangible Cultural Property designated by the City of Yokohama), which Hara Sankei built as his home in 1902. It is a building you cannot normally enter. The program varies from year to year.

In the Chinese calendar, the first month of the lunar year is called Chunjie, the Spring Festival, and is celebrated in grand style. Yokohama Chinatown has held Spring Festival events since 1986; in 2026 they reached their 40th year.

Lions adorned in white and yellow go from shop to shop, praying for thriving business and a bountiful harvest: this is caiqing, “plucking the greens.” In the Celebration Dance Parade, a procession in imperial costume winds through the streets with the lions. And to close the New Year season, Yokohama Mazu Temple holds its lantern festival for Yuanxiao, the Lantern Festival (March 3 in 2026). It is the season when the town greets the new year by the same calendar as the lands across the sea.

In 1908, Hara Sankei gathered old trees from the plum groves of Kamata, Sugita and elsewhere to complete his own grove, and held a plum-viewing gathering to celebrate. Interrupted by the war, among other things, it was revived in 1975, and in 2026 was held for the 52nd time. The garyubai, “reclining dragon” plums surviving from the trees Sankei moved here, and the ryokugakubai, green-calyx plums given by the city of Shanghai in 1977, bring the first news of spring.

On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays during the plum festival, barley tea is offered at Hatsune Chaya, a teahouse at the far end of the Outer Garden. Ever since the garden first opened, anyone has been free to drink tea here; in 1915, Akutagawa Ryunosuke stopped by as well.

From Hinodecho to Koganecho, cherry trees line both banks of the Ooka River. Every year, the Naka Ward Office reports on how the blossoms along the river are coming along (in 2026, from March 17 to April 6).

These riverside cherries stand on an unbroken thread of time. In the first years of Meiji, cherry trees were planted along the banks. In the summer of 1948, after the war, there were people who cleared sunken boats and rubbish from the river and replanted cherries and willows along its banks as they had been before the war (History of Naka Ward).

Upstream in Minami Ward, the Ooka River Promenade is also one of Yokohama’s finest places for cherry blossoms. During Minami Ward’s Minami Sakura Festival (the third in 2026), paper lanterns sponsored by residents and local people line the river and light the blossoms at night.

The garden has about 250 cherry trees of nine varieties. Opening hours are extended into the evening, and along with the blossoms, old buildings such as the Three-Story Pagoda of Former Tomyoji Temple are lit up.

Noge’s street performance festival began in the spring of 1986, at the call of local shopkeepers, in a Noge the crowds had begun to leave. Volunteers, mostly people of the town, do everything from planning to running it, and in April 2026 it was held for the 51st time.

The price of watching is nagesen, money tossed by viewers according to how much they enjoyed the show. One of the festival’s organizers has said this is because postwar Noge was a “black market” with no fixed prices (Yokohama Keizai Shimbun, 2004).

From the parade on May 3 to Port Opening Day on June 2: the City of Yokohama celebrates this month as Yokohama Port Opening Month.

It began in 1953, soon after the war, as the International Costume Parade, held to show the revival of the Port of Yokohama and the city’s recovery as an international city. Since 2002 it has been The Yokohama Parade, a fixture of early summer that draws more than 300,000 people every year (Koho Yokohama, May 2026).

The procession sets off in front of Yamashita Park, passes the Red Brick Warehouse, goes through Bashamichi and on to Isezakicho.

The citizens’ festival for Port Opening Day began in 1982 as Yokohama Dontaku, held every June 2 under the motto “Celebrate the opening of the port, and give thanks to the port.” Since 1995 it has been the Yokohama Port Opening Festival, a festival carried on by the people of the city, welcoming large crowds every year.

The main venue is Rinko Park in Minato Mirai, where more than 300 citizens raise their voices together in the great chorus Dream of Harmony. On the final night in 2026, the light-and-sound show Beam Spectacle in Harbor lit up the port.

June 2 is also the birthday of places that carry the memory of the port’s opening. The Yokohama Archives of History opened on this day in 1981, and Zou-no-hana Park, where the port first opened, on this day in 2009, the 150th anniversary of the opening.

From the mud, it brings forth a pure flower: Hara Sankei loved the lotus above all others. The flowers are at their best from about 7 to 9 in the morning, and on lotus-viewing days the garden opens at 7 a.m. It is a quiet hour, before the heat arrives.

Rites and celebrations for the birthday of Guan Yu, who is enshrined at Kanteibyo. Chinatown’s Kanteibyo began in 1862 as a small shrine in a back street, housing a wooden statue of Guan Sheng Di Jun; in 1871, with donations from the overseas Chinese of the Kanto region, a proper temple was built (Yokohama Kanteibyo).

In the Edo period, at the western corner of Yoshida Shinden, stood a Sanno shrine: Hie Shrine, long known to the people as Osannomiya. After the war, the festival was revived in 1948, and a mikoshi came out from Yoshidamachi too (History of Naka Ward). Today, at the annual festival in September, the neighborhood mikoshi still make their way through the streets.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the three great Chinese festivals, alongside the Spring Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival. People admire the full moon of the fifteenth night and celebrate the autumn harvest (Yokohama Chinatown Development Association). Mooncakes line the shopfronts of Chinatown.

At Sankeien, the same moon is viewed from a Japanese garden. On moon-viewing nights the old buildings are lit up, and with Rinshunkaku as the stage, the biwa lute, gagaku court music and other performances change from night to night.

An art event that began in 2008. Held in venues such as the studios lined up beneath the elevated railway between Hinodecho and Koganecho stations, it has taken as its themes “the relationship between art and community” and “exchange with Asia.” It is a season for encountering artworks, together with the time this town has lived through.

Yokohama is where jazz was first played in Japan, in 1925 (Taisho 14). The festival began in 1993, with citizens and musicians working as one under the motto “Make the whole city a stage.” Concert halls, jazz clubs and street corners all become its stages.

In Noge there was a jazz kissa, a café for listening to records, that lost its collection in the air raids and opened its doors again after the war. It is in places like these that the city’s jazz has been listened to, and handed down.

A festival first held in November 1976 on Bashamichi, the street known for its red-brick pavements and gas lamps (Bashamichi Shopping Street). Along the street, you can enjoy the atmosphere of the Bunmei Kaika years, when Western ways first came to Japan.

In autumn, lion dances and dragon dances wind through the streets of Chinatown (Yokohama City tourism information).

The grand annual festival of Kotohira Otori Shrine, near Isezakicho. Otori shrines are affectionately known as Otori-sama; once a rite of the samurai class, this festival spread in faith among merchants and the people of the geisha quarters, and came to be held every year on the Days of the Rooster in November (Yokohama City tourism information). Kumade, lucky bamboo rakes said to rake in good fortune, are on display into the night.

When Choshukaku was moved to Sankeien in 1922, Sankei gave it its present name, and its surroundings were shaped into a landscape for enjoying the autumn leaves. It is a pavilion for “listening” to autumn. In the autumn-leaf season, the path behind it is opened for a limited time.

Each of the Western-style houses on Yamate hill chooses a country as its theme and presents that country’s Christmas decorations and culture. For one month, in homes where foreign residents once lived, you meet the ways faraway lands celebrate winter.

As the new year arrives, the ships berthed in the Port of Yokohama sound their whistles at the stroke of midnight (Yokohama City tourism information). It is the sound with which a port that has carried on since its opening closes the year.

Built in 1930, the sailing ship Nippon Maru spent 54 years at sea as a training ship. On certain days, all 29 of her sails are unfurled. Each time, some 80 of the registered volunteers set the sails by hand. The sails go up in the morning and are furled again in the afternoon.

Mostly on weekends, short fireworks displays of about five minutes are launched from Shinko Pier and Osanbashi Pier. In fiscal 2026 there are about 30 such days over the year. Flowers that bloom suddenly in the harbor night and are gone just as quickly.