Tailors, Barbers and Cooks: The “Three Blades” of Yokohama’s ChineseWhy three trades that use blades became typical of the Chinese community

Yokohama Chinatown is known for food, but from the Meiji to the Taisho era, tailoring and barbering stood alongside cooking as the typical jobs of its Chinese residents.

Merchants from the start

In many Chinatowns around the world, the first Chinese settlers worked as laborers in farming or mining. Yokohama was different: most Chinese who arrived after the port opened were merchants or craftsmen from the start, working as compradors for Western trading houses, traders, carpenters, bricklayers, printers, cooks and furniture makers (How Yokohama Chinatown Began).

Three trades that use blades

Over time their work concentrated in three trades: tailoring, barbering and cooking. Because scissors, razors and kitchen knives were their tools, these were called the “three blades” (sanbato).

Why the jobs narrowed to three

The biggest factor was the abolition of the foreign settlement in 1899. By then Japanese had learned Western skills, and while Japanese merchants and craftsmen moved in, Chinese working outside the former settlement faced restrictions on which jobs they could take. The three blades, in which Chinese skill was highly regarded, remained permitted and became their typical work.

The 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake was another turning point. Yokohama’s Chinese population fell from 5,721 to 434, and many survivors moved to Kobe, Shanghai or Hong Kong.

The first Chinese-run tailor

In 1860 a Dutchman opened Japan’s first Western tailor. Four years later, Tan Youfa from Hong Kong opened an English-style tailor called Cock Eye at Lot 147 of the settlement, the first tailor run by a Chinese. Demand for military and official uniforms, and later women’s Western clothes, grew steadily; by 1918 there were nearly 40 Chinese tailors. Cock Eye closed that same year after 54 years.

Barbers and the queue

Records show a Chinese barbershop called Ah Loon at Lots 49 and 136 around 1870; Lot 136 is where Yokohama Masobyo stands today (A Sea Goddess Temple Built on a Planned Condo Site). Barbershops grew slowly, because Chinese men wore the queue and wealthy households kept servants who could shave heads. They multiplied only around 1911, when the Qing dynasty fell and many gave up the queue. Many barbers came from Yangzhou in Jiangsu, a city long known for making blades.