Now and Then 5

The pier from the Bund (Yamashita Park) : Meiji - Today

"Harborside buildings faced inland on Water Street, so named for its proximity to the bay. The buildings, with a picket fence atop the seawall at their rear, resembled a laager of structures huddled for defense. But this turning away from the sea repudiated the town’s origins as a deep-water harbor and did not conform to the treaty port pattern. The pattern included a bund, or waterfront road.

The bund was the face of an Eastern port. Nagasaki had one. Shanghai’s was famous. Hong Kong had the Praya, but Macao the Praya Grande.

In April 1862 Yokohama’s foreign residents formed a bund subcommittee. The Japanese government promised one. Construction was completed the following year. Japanese and foreigners, however, were of different minds as to its purpose. For foreigners, it was an esplanade, a place to stroll and drink in the seascape and refresh in a sea-turn on a sultry day. The Japanese were of a more utilitarian view. They would build houses for foreigners and bonded warehouses seaward of them. The foreign community protested, and prevailed.

The Bund was the place to be (…) The Bund filled at the end of the workday. Young men would no sooner set down their pens than they would pick up their long narrow canoes and rush to the waterfront (…)

The Bund became a true promenade in 1885, when it was extended 18 feet seaward from the road. Pine trees were planted between the road and the new esplanade. Benches were set at intervals. Stone posts linked by chains were placed near the top of the seawall (…)

Buildings on the Bund disintegrated in the 1923 earthquake. The City planned to use the debris to reclaim the sea for a new pier. It was not built, thanks to a Scotsman named Marshall Martin.

Martin arrived in Japan in 1873 and began to import Cardiff coal from Wales. We can presume he was a diligent student of Japanese, for he served as interpreter to the Yokohama Court from 1884 through 1886. In 1887 he became president of the Japanese Gazette.

Mayor Ariyoshi Chuichi asked this Japanese-speaking Scotsman who had lived in Yokohama for half a century to serve as an adviser for the city’s reconstruction (…)

Martin persuaded the city to use the rubble of the quake-flattened Bund buildings to reclaim the sea for a park. Yamashita Park opened on top of the bricks of buildings.

Martin would have been inspired with this vision of Japan’s first seaside park by a keen appreciation of the view of bay from the Bund. He would have been a water-gazer.

The fill extended the land 50 meters seaward and 774 meters along what had been the Bund. Yamashita Park opened on March 15, 1930.

Much like then appears the park today, with trellises, flower beds, shrubbery, and a fountain."
(Burritt Sabin, 'A historical guide to Yokohama', ed. Yurindo, Yokohama, 2002, p. 48-51)