"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 (…)
Guests at The Grand Hotel could use the telescope on its Piazza. Its lens disclosed pointillistic scenes - families picknicking or fishing boats, lads and lasses skinny-dipping in the bay. Rudyard Kipling, a guest at the Grand in 1889, peered through the telescope at Japanese and American warships.
The Grand Hotel and other buildings on the Bund disintegrated in the 1923 earthquake. The city asked Marshall Martin, a 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. 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 (...)
What a practical idea: build a grassy park to celebrate life on the desolate site of death and destruction (...) The fill extended the land 50 meters seaward and 774 meters along what had been the Bund. Yamashita Park opened on March 15, 1930.
If one spot has to be named the spiritual heart of Yokohama, this it it."
(Burritt Sabin, 'A historical guide to Yokohama', ed. Yurindo, Yokohama, 2002, p. 49-51)
(John Carroll, 'Trail of Two Cities', ed. Kodansha, Tokyo, 1994, p. 40-41)
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