Yokohama Port — What Was the Very First Thing to Arrive?

The very first things to arrive at Yokohama Port — there was not just one. A remarkable number of things made their first landfall in Japan through this very harbor. Take ice cream, for instance. It is said that in 1869, a man named Fusazō Machida manufactured and sold Japan's first ice cream along Bashamichi in Yokohama. That cold, sweet sensation savored beneath the blazing midsummer sun — a pleasure we now take entirely for granted — began right here at this port. Beer, too, has its origins here. From the final years of the Edo period through the Meiji era, brewing took root in the foreign settlement, and Yokohama became the birthplace of beer culture in Japan. In 1870, an American named William Copeland opened a brewery in Tenauma, Yokohama. The first practical telephone test in Japan was also conducted on a line running between Yokohama and Tokyo, and by 1890, telephone exchange services had begun. The first gas lamps ever to illuminate a Japanese street were lit here in Yokohama as well. In 1872, a soft glow was kindled along Bashamichi and the surrounding streets — a light that became the very emblem of Japan's encounter with modernity. That same year, Japan's first railway began running between Shimbashi and Yokohama, and the sound of its whistle rang out across this harbor town. When we line these facts up together, a certain truth comes into focus. So many of the things we consider ordinary in Japanese life today first stepped ashore at this port. Yokohama Port was not merely a hub for the movement of goods. It was the shore upon which new cultures and technologies first set foot. Look out at the surface of the harbor spread before you from this observation floor. From somewhere beyond that quiet sea, they came — carried on ships, rocking through the waves — those things that were once entirely unknown. Sweetness and bitterness. Light and speed. All of it crossed this ocean, touched down on these very quays, and gradually spread to every corner of Japan. That expanse of water lying so serenely before you — it was nothing less than the front door of modern Japan. Port opening: June 2, 1859 (Ansei 6) Japan's first ice cream sold: 1869 (Meiji 2), Bashamichi, Yokohama Brewery established: 1870, Copeland Brewery, Tenauma Gas lamps first lit: 1872 (Meiji 5), Bashamichi and Honchō-dōri Railway inaugurated: 1872 (Meiji 5), Shimbashi–Yokohama line Telephone exchange launched: 1890 (Meiji 23), Yokohama–Tokyo line