Minato Mirai about 60 years ago and today

History of Minato Mirai

The port of Yokohama is a port that has grown by filling in the sea ever since it opened. An inlet cut in between the town of Kannai and the Yokohama Station side, and whether to run a railway or to berth large ships, the sea first had to be turned into land. At the start of the Meiji era, to bring the railway extending from Shimbashi Station into Yokohama, an embankment was built over the inlet. The name of Takashima Kaemon, the businessman who took on this work, later remained as the place name of the area, Takashima-cho. When the railway opened between Shimbashi Station and here in 1872, the terminal station was at the tip of this embankment, at the position of today's Sakuragicho Station. Yokohama Station later moved north, and the first station was renamed Sakuragicho Station and became the gateway to this district. At the end of the Meiji era, the Yokohama Dock Company dug stone docks, and the place became a site for rebuilding ships. This company eventually became the Yokohama Shipyard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. A railway freight station and a shipyard lined up on the land gained by reclamation, and the center of the town could no longer touch the port's water's edge.

A water's edge of tracks and docks

In the 1945-50 photograph, the upper right of the frame is the water surface of Yokohama Port, with white ship shapes scattered in dots. From the upper part of the center toward the water's edge, a long, narrow yard with many parallel tracks extends, and piers divided into many branches lie beyond it. It is the freight yard of Takashima Station of Japanese National Railways. Near the center, a dark part where the water surface cuts into the land in a square can be seen. It is a dock for bringing in ships. The left half of the frame is filled with fine rows of houses, the lower left is hills covered with trees, and the lower right is a continuing grid of blocks. It is a composition in which tracks and docks lie between the sea and the town. The places where people worked at the port took up the water's edge, and the places where they lived were pushed up onto the slopes behind.

The 1961-69 photograph that appears when you open the location catches the period when this arrangement was at its densest. The bundle of tracks in the yard has grown thicker, and several large ships lie alongside the quays. The surroundings of the docks are filled with buildings, and on the pier to the right warehouses line up in order. Lighters and small boats are stopped on the water, and you can read that cargo went back and forth between offshore and the shore. The residential area on the hills is also packed with houses, and almost no vacant land can be seen. This yard was the connection point linking the Tokaido freight line directly with the port's quays, a place where the railway and ships handed cargo over. It was the industrial heart of Yokohama Port, not a place citizens could walk into.

The 1974-78 photograph has color, but the outline of the district has barely changed from 1961-69. The tracks of the yard remain as a brown band, and on the shipyard site long buildings and ship hulls moored at the quays can be seen. On the pier to the right, square boxes of different colors are piled up, showing that the main player in cargo handling was changing. In this period the City of Yokohama was growing in population and spreading residential areas into the suburbs, while the water's edge of the city center stayed occupied by port and shipbuilding facilities and did not move. It is in the next photograph that the contents of the district move greatly.

The city center turns into prepared land

The concept had been moving much earlier. The City Center Strengthening Project, one of the Six Major Projects that the City of Yokohama put forward in 1965, is the starting point of this district. The idea was to reconnect, by reclamation and redevelopment, the two centers, the area around Yokohama Station and Kannai, which were cut apart by the shipyard and the freight station. In 1983 construction of the Minato Mirai 21 project began, and the core of shipbuilding moved to the Honmoku and Kanazawa sides. The project's name was chosen by public submission from citizens and joins two words, port and future. In the 1987-90 photograph, the area in the center has changed into flat, sand-colored prepared land. The lines of roads dividing the lots are drawn, and round outlines and sparse buildings are scattered on them. In 1989 the Yokohama Exposition was held with this prepared land as its venue, and the large Ferris wheel set up then remained, in a changed place, after the exposition ended. In the yard toward the top, the bundle of tracks has thinned, and a band no longer in use extends. Its role as a freight station also ended within the 1980s, and the traces where the tracks were pulled up remained as long, narrow vacant land.

The dock left behind and the Kishamichi

Yokohama Landmark Tower, completed in 1993, is 296 m tall and was the tallest building in Japan until it was overtaken by Abeno Harukas in Osaka in 2014. At its foot, one stone dock that was not filled back in remains. The huge hollow for floating ships is used as a stepped plaza and has been designated an Important Cultural Property of the nation as the Former Yokohama Dock Company No. 2 Dock. The stone walls and stepped tiers are from the time when they supported ships, and they are used as seating for events. In the neighboring dock the sailing ship Nippon Maru is moored. The Kishamichi promenade, which enters the district from Sakuragicho Station, converts the iron bridges of the freight line directly into a footpath, and the memory of the railway is underfoot. The decision to deliberately leave holes and bridges of the past on land leveled by development expresses the character of this district well.

When the Minatomirai Line opened in 2004, the district was linked directly by rail with the Yokohama Station side. In 2020 the City of Yokohama's new city hall opened on Kitanakadori, and the speed at which the empty blocks filled rose further. In the photograph as of 2026, a group of skyscrapers in the center casts long shadows, and along the water's edge piers and wide paving continue. Meanwhile, the dense rows of houses and the green of the hills in the left half of the frame remain in almost the same shape as in the 1945-50 photograph. More than thirty years passed from the start of construction in 1983 to the opening of the city hall, and the speed of land development and the speed at which the town filled were different. On the sea side and on the hills, time did not flow in the same direction. The official land price (Chika Koji) of the residential land in Goshoyama-cho, Nishi Ward, in the old town, fell for a long time from 435,000 yen per square meter in 1993 to 249,000 yen in 2012, the lowest up to the 2026 publication, then recovered, and is 336,000 yen in the 2026 publication. The elevation is 3 m at the measuring point near the location, 4 m to the south, 4.5 m to the east, 3.6 m to the north and 3.4 m to the west, so the differences by direction are small.

If you go back and forth between the photographs, the differences come out clearly in the following places.