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History
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When Commodore Perry sailed his "Black Ships" into Tokyo Bay in 1853
, Yokohama was a mere fishing village of some eighty houses on the distant shore. But it was this harbour, well out of harm's way as far as the Japanese were concerned, that the shogun designated one of the five
treaty ports
open to foreign trade in 1858. At first foreign merchants were limited to a small, semi-restricted compound in today's Kannai - allegedly for their protection from anti-foreign sentiment - but eventually they moved up onto the more favourable southern hills.
From the early 1860s until the first decades of the twentieth century, Yokohama flourished on the back of raw silk exports, a trade dominated by British merchants. During this period the city provided the main conduit for
new ideas and inventions
into Japan: the first bakery, photographers, ice-cream shop, brewery and - perhaps most importantly - the first railway line which linked today's Sakuragicho with Shimbashi in central Tokyo in 1872. Soon established as Japan's major international port, Yokohama held pole position until the
Great Earthquake
levelled the city, killing more than 40,000 people, in 1923. It was eventually rebuilt, only to be devastated again in air raids at the end of World War II. By this time Kobe was in the ascendancy and, though Yokohama still figures among the world's largest ports, it never regained its hold over Japanese trade. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Japan,
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