A large signboard of a jazz bar was posted in Kannai, once a foreign settlement

Signboard of a jazz bar in Kannai, Yokohama — Jazz bar in Kannai, Yokohama

I was walking in Yokohama in an area called Kannai. I had assumed that the name Kannai existed in this area, which is home to major tourist attractions such as Yamashita Park, Yokohama Stadium, and Chinatown, and also has a station named Kannai. However, this is not the case. It is merely a common name for an area surrounded by the Ooka River, the Yokohane Line of the Metropolitan Expressway, the Nakamura River, and the sea.

Originally, the name "Kannai" was derived from the name "Kannai" for the area of the foreign settlement established in Yokohama. The year was 1859, before the Meiji Restoration. The Shogunate, which did not like contact between Japanese and Westerners, placed a kind of barrier gate at the entrance to the foreign settlement to prevent people from freely coming and going between the inside and outside. As a result, the name of the gate was changed to "Kan-nai" (inside the gate) and "Kan-gai" (outside the gate).

In other words, the street I was walking on at this time was also a foreign settlement. Many foreign trading companies set up stores in this area, including the Sassoon House on the Bund in Shanghai, China, and the Sassoon Trading Company, whose name can be found in the Sassoon Dock in Mumbai, India.

However, more than 100 years have passed since the settlement was returned, and there are few reminders of its history as a foreign settlement in the surrounding area. I looked up and saw a sign for a jazz bar. For a moment I thought of a settlement, but that was not the case. This, too, had nothing to do with the history of the foreign settlement.

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