Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse was originally a bonded warehouse at Shinko Pier under the jurisdiction of the customs authorities

Red brick warehouse in Yokohama — Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse

Along a stretch of the Yokohama waterfront stand a pair of brick buildings so red and stately that they seem to have washed ashore from another century. Today they’re known simply as the Red Brick Warehouses—an obligatory stop for café-seekers, weekend strollers, and people who like their leisure wrapped in a bit of industrial nostalgia. But the buildings themselves were once far from leisurely. They began life as bonded warehouses under the jurisdiction of the Meiji-era customs office, built with national pride and a budget that would make modern administrators perspire. Some of the bricks, they say, were shipped all the way from Britain, as if the government feared domestic clay wasn’t civilized enough.

What strikes me, though, is how extravagantly impractical these old warehouses are. The decorative gables, the finials, the ironwork—none of it has any practical use. No cargo needed such ornamentation. Yet this devotion to beautiful “waste” is precisely what has allowed the buildings to endure. A contemporary warehouse, made of steel frames and corrugated panels, may withstand typhoons, but no one will visit it a century later just to admire its soul. The Red Brick Warehouses, on the other hand, continue to stand by the harbor, carrying the faint perfume of a time when even storage boxes were designed with a sense of ambition.

Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse on Google Map

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