YOKOHAMA--When night falls, a landmark arc-shaped building in this port city’s Naka Ward beckons to visitors, luring them in from near and far. 

The Noge Miyakobashi Shotengai (shopping arcade) building is a popular sightseeing spot in the Noge bar district of this capital of Kanagawa Prefecture. The structure curves along a gentle bend of the Ookagawa river near the approach to Miyakobashi bridge.

Come dusk, the edifice begins to cast alluring specks of light on the surface of the river.

Signboards of “izakaya” taverns and “snack” bars--which in Japan refer to watering holes where alcoholic beverages are offered--line an alley on the opposite side of the building from the river, making for an eye-catching sight. 

The joints occupy areas of only around 10 square meters each, just enough room for five or six customers.

Housed in the two-storied building are some 60 bars and restaurants, according to Junichi Yoneyama, 71, the managing director of Yokohama Heritage, a public interest corporation that administers and maintains the building.

ROOTS IN 1964 TOKYO OLYMPICS

The structure was built in 1964 to accommodate street vendors from the area, including operators of open-air stalls, as part of the city government’s neighborhood improvement project associated with the Tokyo Summer Olympics of the same year.

The Shinbashi Ekimae buildings, in Tokyo’s Minato Ward, and the Tokyo Kotsu Kaikan building, in the capital’s Chiyoda Ward, were also erected for similar purposes, but most of the bars and other shops in those buildings are housed on the basement floors.

The Miyakobashi building is unusual in that it houses so many bars aboveground, Yoneyama said.

The taverns in the building are of various genres, ranging from long-established “snack” bars to yakitori joints, pubs specializing in highballs and wine bars.

The establishments are mostly patronized by regular customers, but they are also attracting a younger clientele, who are lured partly by the unique landscape and partly out of a nostalgic craze for retro things from the Showa Era (1926-1989).

A growing number of customers are coming from outside Kanagawa Prefecture in recent years specifically to visit the Miyakobashi building, Yoneyama said.

“The Miyakobashi building has an allure that gets you hooked,” he added.

Yoneyama explained that many think twice about crossing the threshold to its bars but, once they do, they become regular customers, because “many of the establishments have a unique atmosphere that is full of the human touch.”

To emphasize the characteristic curve and uniqueness of the architecture, an Asahi Shimbun photographer used a wide-angle lens. 

The photographer began taking pictures of the Showa Era building on the side facing the Ookagawa river, to shoot it against the background of a forest of contemporary high-rise buildings, including the Yokohama Landmark Tower, a skyscraper that opened 30 years ago about one kilometer away.

As dusk fell, the Miyakobashi building, a number of skyscrapers and the bluish, post-sunset sky were all seen reflected on the river surface, allowing the photographer to capture them in a single frame.

The older landmark continues to light up night after night, conveying a human ambience that is difficult to find in the city’s high-rise buildings.

MIYAKOBASHI RETAINS OLD-TIME FLAVOR

The building started out as a collection of street stalls.

The hospitality that characterizes open-air stalls, where the owners are close to their customers and engage them in conversation in addition to serving them food and drinks, stays alive in the building.

That tradition has carried on despite the longest-serving barkeeper having spent only 40 years in the Miyakobashi building and nobody in the complex knowing what it was like when it first opened six decades ago.

Yokohama, which is home to 3.76 million residents, developed around a port that opened as Japan’s gateway to the rest of the world in 1859. The city was home, 151 years ago, to Yokohama Station, a terminal for the country’s first railroad section.

Skyscrapers continue to be developed in the city’s Minato Mirai waterfront district, whereas, in the meantime, Yokohama also retains buildings that date to earlier stages of the modern period.

COMFORTABLE PLACE TO DRINK

Last summer, an Asahi reporter took the plunge and entered one of the bars in the Miyakobashi building on his own. 

Before he knew it, the man found himself engaged in a conversation with a regular customer, to whom a bar worker relayed his words. The character of the bar worker was therefore key to the comfort of drinking in the arc-shaped building, as generations have discovered. 

“Ours is the older landmark,” Yoneyama said playfully in reference to Landmark Tower, the port city’s newer landmark. 

(This article was written by Eiichiro Nakamura and Tetsuro Takehana.)