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In 1878, just 19 years after Japan opened it first ports to the world, and a mere ten years after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, an adventurous 47-year old woman from the UK set out to explore the interior of Japan. The country was virtually unknown to Westerners, and a woman traveling only with a guide seemed outrageous. Everybody advised her not to, but she went anyway and wrote this unique and vivid journal of what she saw and experienced.
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Kobe 1930 • The Bund
The Kobe Bund in 1930 (Showa 5) lined with the offices of steamship companies and trading houses. The tall building in the back with the rounded ornament on the corner is the office of Osaka Shosen Kaisha, a major Osaka-based steamship line. It is one of the only buildings on this photo that still stands today. The original seawall has been replaced by a train-track, warehouses and a quay, greatly extending the port into the harbor. Where the warehouses and the quay end, at the top-right, the old American Hatoba starts. It was through this pier that once all visitors entered Kobe. That location is now the entrance to Meriken Park.
After Kobe was opened as a harbor to foreign trade in 1868 (Meiji 1), it quickly grew into Japan’s most important harbor. In the early 20th century Kobe handled even more trade than Yokohama, even though that city had been opened as early as 1859.
Kobe’s exports at the time of this photograph consisted of an incredible range of goods: matches, whale-oil, tea, sake, vegetable wax, refined camphor, peppermint oil, agar agar (寒天, kanten), pearl buttons, straw matting, toothbrushes, porcelain, rice, cotton, copper, woolen cloth, and so on.
The enormous wealth that the trade in these goods created is clearly visible from the imposing buildings that line the street. It is almost impossible to imagine that only some sixty odd years earlier this had been an often flooded wasteland.
This detail shows the different forms of transport in 1930: automobiles, a man on a bicycle, a horse-drawn cart, and carts push or pulled by people.
1929 (Showa 4) Map of Kobe: 1. Kaigandori (known in English as Bund); 2. Sakaemachi; 3. American Hatoba; 4. Osaka Shosen Kaisha.
Publisher: New York State Education Department
Medium: Glass Slide
Image Number 80122-0013
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Duits, K. (2009, May 13). Kobe 1930 • The Bund, Old Photos of Japan. Retrieved on 2021, May 18 from https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/454/the-bund
OldPhotosJapan.com — a photo blog about old Japan that reads like a book and works like an archive. All the photographs are from the Kjeld Duits Collection and available for licensing at MeijiShowa.com. Use when you need historical photos, maps or illustrations of Japan for your newspaper article, book, documentary, advertising or other project. For questions, contact us.