Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse: Looking back at the short history of the port city

I was in Yokohama on business in late October. After my business was completed, I left the PACIFICO Yokohama convention center and walked to Aka Renga Soko (Red Brick Warehouse) with a guide map.
     I’m Hamakko, a child born and raised in Yokohama but had never yet visited the Red Brick Warehouse, because it reopened as leisure facilities in 2002, when I was living in Tokyo to go to a university. It used to be a government bonded warehouse until 1989, known as the Newport Pier Tax Keeping Warehouse.
     I had a nostalgic fell when found the twin warehouses, because they were the very buildings what I thought of as Western-style building. There are many Victorian red brick houses in Yokohama and they cultivated my longing for European culture, especially British culture. The Warehouse No.1 was completed in 1913 and No.2, in 1911 under government architect Yorinaka Tsumaki who graduated with a degree in Architecture from Cornell University.
     Noboru, the hero boy of Gogo no Eiko (“The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea”) by Yukio Mishima, is also Hamakko. His mother Fusako runs a luxury shop in Yokohama’s swank Motomachi district, and the shop has enjoyed a reputation for fine quality. Among the clientele are wealthy foreigners who live in Yamate district of Yokohama, dandies, movie people, and buyers form Tokyo.
     I had been none sure of this part of the novel for a long time because many shops in Tokyo had a better selection of products than Yokohama’s. But I could understand the situation within seconds when I saw the Warehouse, stretched to the former Yokohama harbor. At the age of ships were major means of international trade of Japan, the Port of Yokohama was the very base for overseas trade. The freighters imported wool, sugar, iron, and machinery, and exported raw silk, silk product, tea, copper, and seafood. In the novel, whenever a ship docks in Yokohama, an import agent uses his connections to get Fusako and her elderly manager into the bonded warehouse as soon as the cargo had been unloaded. Not only products but a large number of travelers went ashore and left the port. My friend also went to Shanghai on a ferry form Yokohama in the end of the 1980s.
     Each distinctive city has the red-letter year. Tokyo became a capital in 1603 and Kyoto, in 794. Such traditional cities are never conquered easily by newcomers, but Yokohama was a sleepy fishing and farming village. The Port of Yokohama was opened to foreign trade in 1859, after 250 yeas national isolation of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Yokohama grew overnight into Japan’s chief trade center with a large foreign population. Foreign trade merchants or officers and their families occupied Kannai or Yamate district in Yokohama. The residents were British, American, German, French, Italian, Chinese, etc, and the Westerners enjoyed Western lifestyle and horse racing, cricket, tennis, rugby, etc. Between the 1860s and 1870s, Japan’s first English newspaper published, the first ice cream and beer to be produced, and the first gas-powered street lampas and railway constructed in Yokohama.
     Jun'ichiro Tanizaki described Motomachi district in his novella Nikutai (“The Flesh”); “Motomachi, with its heavy traffic of Westerners and shops selling only Western articles, exudes a special atmosphere. The odor of cigars, the aroma of chocolate, the fragrance of flowers, the scent of perfume.” The influence of Western culture in Yokohama was decisive. It was the first love for the land and local people. The culture was Western culture to them. The Yokohama Port Festival celebrates the Port Opening Memorial Day, the 2nd of June.
     But there was a gap between this exotic image and my simple daily life in Yokohama. When I started living in Tokyo, I was puzzled by people’s reaction to my answer to question about my hometown. Because such a sophisticated image only fitted into the surrounding area of the port, Yamate, Motomachi, or Kannai district. I used to live in a newly residential area where developed hills, it was far away from the sea and even the closest bus stop or station.
     Mishima wrote about Center Pier of the port in the above novel; “The sea was responsible for the unreality of the place, for it was to her service alone that streets, the buildings, even the dumb bricks in the wall were pledged. The sea had simplified and abstracted, and the pier in turn had lost its sense of reality and appeared to be dwelling within a dream.” This description also fits into the structure of the city. The port town gave attention to only the sea, and went over the Pacific Ocean and toward the overseas, and the urban function concentrated the surrounding area of the port.
     But in the early 1980s, my geography teacher at high school said “The total cargo volume at Yokohama was overtaken by Tokyo....” The main transportation also changed and the door to the overseas moved to Narita International Airport in Chiba Prefecture.
     Yokohama shipyard closed in 1980 and was redeveloped as Minato Mirai 21 (future of the port in the 21st century) area. The waterfront area has become a major center for business, shopping, and tourism in Yokohama. Many major corporations locating their headquarters and branches, and about 79,000 people are working in there. The numerous tourists also visiting the area and the Red Brick Warehouse is one of the major tourist spots. The shops, restaurants, clubs, and an exhibition and concert space in it. I occasionally go to the Yokohama Museum of Art. And the PACIFICO Yokohama where I visited in the day is one of the major convention centers in the Tokyo area.
     Yokohama, the second largest city in Japan, towards new urban model where founded on the former international trade center.

“Leonora Martinů Talks Ballet, Drama, and Family” Fictitious interview

The way she comes into the entrance of restaurant, many heads turn. Her silhouette, framed for a moment by the entrance, is a picture, evoking theater posters of Medea or Carmen. The deep blue eyes with black mascara eyelashes, crimson lipstick, and the chic black suits with large white buttons look good on her. She pose with her hands to the side of her head as she looks around room, is exactly the gesture of Giselle's mad scene. Giselle was one of her most successful characters. She is Leonora Martinů, a former principal dancer of the Austrian Ballet Company, famous for her dramatic acting skills, and now a choreographer.
     Guerlain’s “Vol de Nuit” has a light scent when she extends her hand. Her watch is a Bvlgari and her manicured nails pale pink. She smiles when I tell her my first strong impression of her. The line at the corners of her eyes and mouth are deepen. “My mother was a tragic actress but retired young because she became pregnant soon after marriage.” Her alto voice is soft. “She wanted me to become a great actress. So, she made me take ballet lessons when I was 4.” Leonora also took acting, singing, and piano lessons. And her mother always went to the theater with her and visited her former colleagues backstage. The backstage was the little girl’s playground and school. “I was Mum’s dream,” says Leonora.

Let’s Cook and Eat! by "Guri to Gura"

I baked a fruit-filled pound cake on this three-day weekend, because I reread Guri to Gura (Guri and Gura), made me want to cook and eat a cake.
     Guri and Gura are children’s books about two field mice. My favorite story when I was a child was the first one, Guri and Gura: The Giant Egg. The story is that the twin brothers Guri and Gura find a gigantic egg in the woods, and use it to bake a castella, a Japanese sponge cake. They bake the castella on the spot, because the egg is bigger than themselves and they can't take it home. All the animals in the woods gather around to share the delicious-smelling cake. Guri and Gura treat the animals to the giant cake, and they eat up.
     Guri and Gura sing the song, “What do you think we like to do best? Cook and eat. Eat and cook.” Me too. I could almost smell the castella baking and imagine the sweet taste of it. The impression is in the book intense, and I found that I still remembered the scenes of cooking and eating though I had forgotten the details of the story from my childhood reading.
     I went to Books Kinokuniya in Shinjuku to reread this book, and found it in the home baking section! I also found many books in the Guri and Gura series in the children’s books area, of course. Not only have many Japanese children loved these books over the years, but they have been translated into other languages, so countless readers have shared my reading experience across borders and generations!

English is the modern Latin

I reread The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, recently. One of the highlights of this novel is the part where a poor peasant girl sneaked into the kitchen of the Abbey. She was suspected of being a witch by the inquisitor, and couldn’t clear herself of the charge. This was because she could not speak Latin; the common language of the “holy” church, intellectuals and the powerful. “For all her shouting,” Eco wrote, “she was as if mute. There are words that give power, others that make us all the more derelict.”

     This episode reminded me of a scene from a barbecue at the South African Ambassador’s Residence in Tokyo. A lady from that country spoke to me but, unfortunately, I couldn’t speak English well and she left quickly. Nobody else spoke or paid attention to me. “I was like an invisible person,” I was thinking that night. At that time, I was already middle-aged, and had no alternative to “words”; beauty, youthfulness, talent or status...things like that. 

     But then I enjoyed the party in my own way; as an observer. I appreciated a sand painting of a camel rider in a desert, a large egg art―an ostrich eggshell―, the elegant white colonial mansion, the large lawn garden, the beautiful summer night view and the South African families who had a nice chat. The ambassador was of African descent, but almost all the guests were European. Some of their wives were Japanese. I felt like I had slipped into a villa in colonial Africa or India.

     In contrast, Jun, my Japanese friend who asked me to the party, fully enjoyed the “real” party. She talked and laughed with other guests. She wasn’t much different from me, but a good English speaker. (I just recently heard news about her. Our mutual friend Philip, a Scot, said that she married a South African gentleman.)

     It was nearly a decade ago. I’ve gone through similar experiences sometimes. I think that the influence of language is quite similar to the distribution of currency. The languages of countries with political or economic power (in addition to military power, perhaps,) become the common languages. Chinese used to be the common language of intellectuals in East Asia, including Japan. Latin was also the common language of European intellectuals and church for centuries, even after the Roman Empire collapsed. And you have no doubt that the today’s global common language is English―it’s the modern Latin. People who can’t speak English are the same as mute on the occasions of international exchange. Ergo the episode of a peasant girl in The Name of the Rose always reminds me of the summer night when I was “an invisible person”.