Yokohama

• Japanese: 横浜 (Yokohama)

Yokohama is a major port city in Kanagawa prefecture, just southwest of Tokyo. Along with Osaka, it is one of Japan's largest cities.

In terms of historical significance, Yokohama is chiefly known as one of Japan's most major treaty ports in the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods, and a major center of Western settlement and activity during those periods. As such it was the site of numerous key events of the late 19th century pertaining to interactions with Westerners and the West; further, a great many notable historical figures who came to Japan, or left Japan, traveled via Yokohama, including former US President Ulysses S. Grant and King Kalākaua who entered Japan at Yokohama, and the first Japanese emigrants to Hawai'i, who departed from the port city.

History

Yokohama was officially opened to Western settlement and trade in 1859, along with Nagasaki, following a series of Treaties of Amity & Commerce signed with the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Russia, and France in the preceding years. The fishing village developed practically overnight into one of Japan's most major port cities, and the country's chief site of Western settlement; numerous US and European businesses, legations, churches, and other institutions were established, and formed the core of the city.

The Western presence brought commercial growth and cultural interaction, but considerable tension as well. After British merchant Charles Richardson was killed on 1862/8/21 for obstructing a Shimazu clan procession at Namamugi (on the outskirts of Yokohama), anti-foreign groups burned down the British Legation.

The port was briefly closed in the spring and summer of 1864 in connection with political instabilities and tensions, but it was reopened in the 9th month that year.

The first modern ironworks in Japan was established in Yokohama in 1865.

The Butaya fire destroyed sections of the city in 1866, spreading initially from a fire which started in the city's Miyozaki pleasure district on 1866/10/26.

In 1868, some 150 Japanese workers left Yokohama for Hawai'i, departing the country without authorization. Arriving in Hawai'i later that same year, they became known as the gannenmono (lit. "people of the first year [of the Meiji era]"), the first Japanese immigrants to Hawai'i. Many later Japanese immigrants to Hawai'i and the Americas also departed from Yokohama.