Red Brick Warehouse — What Was the Secret That Survived the Great Earthquake?

The secret behind the Red Brick Warehouse's survival of the Great Kantō Earthquake lies hidden within the walls themselves — in a skeleton of steel concealed inside the brick. Along the waterfront to the west of Ōsanbashi Pier, two deep reddish-brown buildings stand side by side. These are the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse. Warehouse No. 1 was completed in 1913, and Warehouse No. 2 two years earlier, in 1911. The architect was Tsumaki Yorinaka, a structural engineer with the Ministry of Finance, and he employed a technique that was extraordinarily rare in Japan at the time. Steel beams and columns were woven into the interior of the brick outer walls, creating a supple, resilient framework to support the entire structure. Iron reinforcement was also threaded between the layers of brick to bind them together and prevent the masonry from shaking apart in an earthquake. In essence, it was a double construction — a flexible skeleton of iron concealed within an armor of hard brick. The thinking anticipated the principles of earthquake-resistant architecture that would only come to be widely understood much later. On the first of September, 1923, when the Great Kantō Earthquake struck Yokohama, buildings all around collapsed one after another. Warehouse No. 2 survived almost entirely unscathed. Warehouse No. 1, sadly, was half destroyed and has retained the shorter profile you see today — yet even it was not lost entirely. Tsumaki's remarkably far-sighted vision for his time had kept the brick walls standing. Yet as the years passed, the warehouses outlived their purpose and fell into a long silence. They awakened again in 2002, reborn as a commercial and cultural complex, and became a new symbol of Yokohama. A building that endured catastrophic disaster now lives a second life as a place where people gather and smile. In every one of those red bricks, the memory of Yokohama's destruction and rebirth — a history stretching well beyond a hundred years — has been quietly inscribed. If the light happens to be falling on those walls right now, take a moment to let that warm red color burn itself into your memory. That color is nothing less than the will of this city — the will to rise, no matter how many times it is brought low. Completion: Warehouse No. 1 — 1913 (Taishō 2); Warehouse No. 2 — 1911 (Meiji 44) Architect: Tsumaki Yorinaka (Temporary Construction Division, Ministry of Finance) Structure: Brick construction with integrated steel-frame and iron reinforcement Change of use: Bonded warehouse → revived as commercial and cultural facility in 2002 Location: 1-chome, Shinko, Naka-ku, Yokohama Designations: Yokohama Certified Historic Building (both warehouses, 2002); Heritage of Industrial Modernization (2007)