Yokohama Port Museum

The Yokohama Port Museum is a museum about the Port of Yokohama, on the same site in Minato Mirai as the sail training ship Nippon Maru. Its main theme is the port in history and in daily life. Besides its exhibitions, it researches the port and collects records and books about it.

Port history

The main zone tells about 160 years of the port in seven periods. It begins before the port opened, with the Yoshida Shinden rice fields and the village of Yokohama, and moves through the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853, the building of the Osanbashi Pier, the age of the great passenger liners, the port in and after the war and the coming of container ships, up to the present day.

Among the objects are a cast-iron screw pile that held up the Osanbashi Pier from the seabed for about 100 years from 1894, and a model of the French cargo and passenger ship André Lebon, built in 1913, which rescued many people in the port after the Great Kanto Earthquake. The key handed by the US Army port commander to the Mayor of Yokohama when Shinko Pier was returned in 1956 is also on display, along with a model of cargo handling in the late 1960s.

A second zone covers the piers, the Nippon Maru and the training of seafarers, and the port's sister and partner ports. A separate room traces how land was reclaimed from the sea, from the Edo-period rice fields to the building of the Shin-Honmoku pier.

Simulators and the VR theatre

A gantry crane simulator lets visitors load and unload containers, and a ship-handling simulator steers a small boat through a recreated Port of Yokohama. The VR theatre Minato Capsule shows the history of the Nippon Maru and the setting of all its sails on five LED panels.

Art museum and library

The Yanagihara Ryohei Art Museum inside the building shows the work of Yanagihara Ryohei, known for his Uncle Torys advertising designs and his paintings of ships. A specialist library holds books and magazines on the sea and shipping.