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.
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