Meiji Bricks and Tiles Beneath Chinatown’s StreetsThe bricks under Masobyo, and Gerard, Japan’s first Western roof tiles

Pieces of the old town lie under Chinatown’s streets. Bricks and tiles that surface during construction show how people lived in the settlement before the 1923 earthquake.

History under your feet

Clues to a town’s past are not only in records and memories. Fragments of the old town buried underground matter too. Most of Chinatown is covered by buildings and roads, but pieces sometimes surface during construction.

Brick paving at Lot 136

At Lot 136 in Yamashita-cho, where Yokohama Masobyo now stands, construction in spring 2005 uncovered many bricks and glass bottles. The brick paving found there predates the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and had survived both the earthquake and the air raids, a rare find.

About 1,000 of the bricks were reused in the bases of the temple’s bell and drum towers. The lot once held a Japanese dairy, Chinese money changers and a rattan furniture shop, and a Western bar; the paving is thought to have been a courtyard or earthen floor.

Fragments of the Qing consulate

In 2000, rubble thought to be from the pre-earthquake Qing consulate was found at Lot 135, with many kinds of brick and colorful fragments of what seem to be Chinese dishes. Everything was smashed into small pieces, showing how violent the earthquake was.

Gerard, Japan’s first Western roof tiles

Many bricks and tiles found in Chinatown are by Gerard, and Gerard bricks were the most common among the consulate fragments.

The Gerard works stood at lots 77 and 78 on the Bluff, next to Chinatown, making bricks and tiles from around 1873 to the end of the Meiji era; its tiles were Japan’s first Western-style roof tiles. The site also sold spring water to ships. It later became a film studio and, after the earthquake, a city pool fed by the spring, the origin of today’s Motomachi Park.