Abstract:

This article applies the framework of François Hartog’s regime of historicity to a comparative and historical study of three successive maritime museums in postwar Yokohama, Japan. Each museum was operated by the city to educate its citizens about Yokohama’s maritime identity, though through different affectively-laced temporal organizations that reflected evolving conceptions of municipal identity. The article distinguishes between “scientific universalism” in the Marine Science Museum (1961-1988), “romantic futurism” at the Maritime Museum (1989-2009), and “nostalgic presentism” at the Port Museum (2009-). As evidence of each historical regime, the article uses the form and content of exhibits, architectural changes to the museum building, and fieldwork when possible. Over the course of time, the spirit of the museum shifted from the natural sciences to romanticism and, lastly, nostalgia. These museums show how temporality-infused historiography has implications for the politics of identity.

Keywords:
Presentism; Public History; Collective Memory

Introduction: Temporality and the “port city”

What is a “port city,” and what do we mean when we say that a city is one; why does being a “port city” matter, and to what distinct political ends can identity be used? Cities like New York with large ports may not immediately prompt images of the sea; cities like Nagasaki with historic ports may identify themselves with maritime trade despite their current peripherality to the national economy. A description of maritime self-identification does not arise naturally, and in the case of Yokohama, it was part of an important political program beginning in Japan’s early postwar period. From at least the 1960s, politicians in Yokohama believed that the city’s citizens lacked a proper understanding and appreciation of the sea, and sought to rectify this shortage by opening a city-funded museum to symbolize municipal identity. This museum was redeveloped in theme, exhibit, and architecture twice over, each time exemplifying evolving conceptions of what it meant for Yokohama to be a port. This series of three museums reflects evolving political interests in teaching the city’s residents how to be better port citizens. This lesson in port citizenship, this duty cast upon the city’s maritime museums, underlines how, to complement new political contexts, what appears superficially to be the same identity can evolve and require reeducation over the course of decades. This article examines how new forms of identity coincide with new regimes of historicity that frame how the city perceives the possibilities of its future and its relationship with its past.

The three museums this article studies are the successive Yokohama Marine Science Museum (Kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan, 1961-1988), Yokohama Maritime Museum (Maritaimu myūjiamu, 1989-2008), and Yokohama Port Museum (Minato hakubutsukan, 2009-). I argue that though each of the three museums share the same historiographical argument narrating Yokohama’s important role in Japanese modernization and all the ideological baggage it entails, this same historiographical message turns into three different practical lessons depending on how this past is made sense of vis-à-vis the present and future. I distinguish between three regimes of historicity that correspond with the three successive museums. The Marine Science Museum turns Yokohama’s residents into port citizens through lessons in “scientific universalism”; the Maritime Museum through “romantic futurism”; and the Port Museum through “nostalgic presentism.” Each regime is composed of two terms, the first describing the museum’s affective component and the second describing the temporality of its exhibit. If the basic historiographical narrative treating Yokohama as a pioneer in Japanese modernization remains consistent across museums, the exhibits’ affective thematization and the relationship between science and history evolves substantially. The question here is not whether the museum displays accurate information or even whether the historiography is a balanced one; it is rather more epistemically fundamental, raising questions of how material can be made objective and what objective materials are worth exhibiting. These regimes of historicity are the very conditions for science; they address questions of what can even be known as worthwhile and of practical use.

I borrow the idea of a “regime of historicity” from François Hartog, who defines it as an “artifact” and “comparative instrument” for studying the “modes of relation to time” (HARTOG, 2012HARTOG, F. Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps. Paris: Seuil, 2012., p. 15; 29). Developing Reinhart Koselleck’s theory of historical time as produced by the distance between the field of experience and the horizon of expectation, Hartog’s regime of historicity questions the “types of distance and the modes of tension” (HARTOG, 2012HARTOG, F. Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps. Paris: Seuil, 2012., p. 39), using the “regime” as an alimentary metaphor to describe an organization “around notions of more and of less, of degree, of mixture, of composition and equilibrium always provisional and unstable” (HARTOG, 2012HARTOG, F. Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps. Paris: Seuil, 2012., p. 13). Like Hartog describes, though the history of how Yokohama’s museums have represented the city’s identity mirrors global trends towards presentism and nostalgia, later museums also inherit its past collections, material property, and staff. A regime of historicity, as described in these museums, is therefore no ideal construction that can be interpreted as offering a single clear and irrefutable message, but rather a synthesis that manifests the accidents of historical inheritance.

In speaking of historical regimes, I join a wealth of existing research debating what scholars agree is a twenty-first century temporal crisis: the fragmentation of simple modernization narratives, the usurping eruption of memory, and the rapid disappearance of traditional ways of life through economic and environmental change (TAMM; OLIVIER, 2019TAMM, Marek; OLIVIER, Laurent. (ed.). Rethinking Historical Time: New Approaches to Presentism. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.; WOOD, 2019WOOD, Karl. “The Best Town by a Dam-Site:” Celebrating Memory in a Midwestern Small Town. In: MIANOWSKI, Jacek; BORODO, Michał; SCHREIBER, Paweł (Ed.). Memory, Identity and Cognition: Explorations in Culture and Communication. Cham: Springer, 2019. p. 87-102.). Much to the consternation of some, this historical instability invites arguable misuses by states and past oppressors who may control the dominant narrative (PÉREZ BAQUERO, 2020PÉREZ BAQUERO, R. Memory, narrative, and conflict in writing the past: when historians undergo ethical and political strains. História da Historiografia, Ouro Preto, v. 13, n. 32, p. 47-81, 2020.; BLAKKISRUD; KUZIEV, 2019BLAKKISRUD, Helge; KUZIEV, Faruh. Museums, memory and meaning-creation:(re) constructing the Tajik nation. Nations and Nationalism, Hoboken, v. 25, n. 3, p. 997-1017, 2019.; LÓPEZ VILLAVERDE, 2014LÓPEZ VILLAVERDE Angel Luis . La cultura de la memoria: nuevo balance bibliográfico. Studia Historica: Historia Contemporánea, Salamanca, v. 32, p. 263-283, 2014.). To make sense of temporal complexity, one substantial segment of scholars has argued for “pluritemporal” or “multiple” temporalities that contemporaneously exist and may even conflict with each other (FRYXELL, 2019FRYXELL, Allegra R. Time and the modern: current trends in the history of modern temporalities. Past & Present, Oxford, v. 243, n. 1, p. 285-298, 2019.; JORDHEIM, 2014JORDHEIM, Helge. Introduction: Multiple times and the work of synchronization. History and Theory, Hoboken, v. 53, n. 4, p. 498-518, 2014.). My study builds upon this work by clarifying the operation and presence of abstract temporality in lived, material experience. The specific case study of Yokohama’s maritime museums allows me to untangle the complex interrelations between temporality, historiography, heritage, politics, and historical change. Indeed, my study shows how time is inherently both political and material: politicians in Yokohama used different modes of relating to time to educate their citizens, and museum curators manifested these temporal framings not only through historical narrative, but also architecture, spatialization, and exhibition.

The paper’s sections develop through a successive comparison of Yokohama’s three museums in chronological progression. Each section examines the ideologies that explained the creative choices behind each museum, as well as the history behind its development. Museum architecture and exhibit structure are also attended to, revealing how abstract temporally- and affectively-laced ideologies manifest themselves within concrete space. As the first two museums are defunct and the third moderately altered from its original construction, I have relied primarily on written sources to reconstruct their history, supplementing these documents with fieldwork when possible. Contextual information on contemporary Japanese history is included within the content sections to facilitate reading. The conclusion summarizes the findings and discusses the lessons they can offer to historical practice.

Scientific Universalism at the Marine Science Museum

From the end of Japan’s self-isolation in the mid-nineteenth century until the abolishment of its treaty ports at the fin-de-siècle, Yokohama was the most important foreign settlement in Japan and a conduit through which the modernizing country exchanged ideas, goods, and people with both the West and Asia. Though Yokohama Port opened because of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States, Yokohama was not the agreed-upon port site, but rather a sleepy village nearby selected by the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate, which desired to quarantine foreign traders from their main highways. Yokohama urbanized and industrialized quickly as the city came to account for over two-thirds of nation’s imports (SANO, 1983SANO, M. Minatomachi no keisei katei: Yokohama [Development process of a harbor town: Yokohama]. Chizu, Tokyo, v. 21, n. 4, p. 11-20, 1983., p. 15). Though Yokohama gradually lost maritime importance to nearby Tokyo after the abolishment of foreign settlements in 1899, land reclamation and factory manufacturing continued apace in the twentieth century and, indeed, up until today. Though the city recovered rapidly from the fires of World War II and its subsequent American occupation, by the 1970s, the logistical evolution of shipping to container-suitable deep-sea harbors hollowed out the formerly bustling downtown waterfront. The city’s center of gravity, furthermore, progressively shifted north towards better-connected Yokohama Station, leaving its old center at risk of decline. None of this, of course, was known to the proponents of the Marine Science Museum. The Japan they lived in was still on the upswing, and the harbor they viewed was still mottled with the figures of day-laborers hauling cargo on shore.

The Marine Science Museum, Yokohama’s first maritime museum, opened in 1961 on the third floor of the newly built Marine Tower, an observation tower-cum-lighthouse erected as an urban landmark. Both the museum and the tower were part of a movement to commemorate the centenary, in 1959, of the opening of Yokohama Port. Its construction occurred amidst Japan’s high-growth period. Driven by sources including economic reforms and American demand from the Korean War, the Japanese real GNP grew at 9.6 percent annually from 1946 to 1973 (KŌSAI; GOBLE, 1989KŌSAI, Yutaka; GOBLE, Andrew. The Postwar Japanese Economy, 1945-1973. In: DUUS, Peter. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Japan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. v. VI. p. 494-538., p. 494). At Yokohama’s centenary, the local elites who built the Marine Tower felt pride at the important role their city played, and continued to play, in their nation’s glorious present. Such an attitude lent itself to a regime of historicity called “scientific universalism”. This regime is affectively scientific for its pretension of cold objectivity, which contrasts with the powerful affective rhetoric in later museums. It is also temporally universalist because it is non-historical, not considering differences between time and place. Indeed, though the Marine Science Museum was intended to symbolize Yokohama, as a natural science museum, its exhibits had little relationship to the city; and though it was intended to commemorate its history, history had no place in its exhibits.

The initial plans to build the Marine Tower date from 1958 and developed as a concretization of a plan to build a “Yokohama Oceanic Culture Center” to commemorate the port centenary. A collective composed mostly of local business leaders formed the Yokohama Observation Tower Company the same year. The tower, functioning as a symbol of “international port Yokohama,” would let visitors gaze over the entirety of the port and city. Within the tower would be built a maritime museum and an observation deck (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI, 1991HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI (ed.). Hikawamaru Marintawā 30 nen shi [Hikawamaru and Marine Tower, history of 30 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā kabushiki gaisha, 1991., p. 28). Construction began in December 1959 and ended in January 1961 (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI, 1991HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI (ed.). Hikawamaru Marintawā 30 nen shi [Hikawamaru and Marine Tower, history of 30 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā kabushiki gaisha, 1991., p. 32). Situated in the center of Yokohama’s old town, the tower would finance itself by targeting locals, tourists, and elementary and middle school students on school trips (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI, 1991HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI (ed.). Hikawamaru Marintawā 30 nen shi [Hikawamaru and Marine Tower, history of 30 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā kabushiki gaisha, 1991., p. 31). This focus reflects one goal of the tower, which was to stop the increasing number of tourists and school-trip students from crowding the city’s ports, as their sightseeing was causing a hindrance to the harbor’s cargo workers (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ KABUSHIKI GAISHA, 1981HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ KABUSHIKI GAISHA. 20 nen no ayumi [History of 20 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā Kabushiki Gaisha, 1981., p. 2). The Marine Tower would therefore act as an apt replacement for both sightseeing and education. The City of Yokohama and the Marine Science Museum would each contribute a small fraction of the costs for the project (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI, 1991HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI (ed.). Hikawamaru Marintawā 30 nen shi [Hikawamaru and Marine Tower, history of 30 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā kabushiki gaisha, 1991., p. 30).

With a height of 106 meters, the Marine Tower would have a total of thirty-three floors (Figure 1). The observation deck, to which visitors could take an elevator, was on the thirtieth and thirty-first floors, and the lighthouse beacon on the thirty-third. The bottom four floors would include a rest space, shops, the Marine Science Museum, and a cafeteria (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ KABUSHIKI GAISHA, 1981HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ KABUSHIKI GAISHA. 20 nen no ayumi [History of 20 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā Kabushiki Gaisha, 1981., p. 6). The bottom floors would be built with steel frames and reinforced concrete, and the tower and observation deck with steel frames and aluminum (HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI, 1991HIKAWAMARU MARINTAWĀ 30 NEN SHI HENSAN IINKAI (ed.). Hikawamaru Marintawā 30 nen shi [Hikawamaru and Marine Tower, history of 30 years]. Yokohama: Hikawamaru Marintawā kabushiki gaisha, 1991., p. 32-33). The tower’s construction took notes from the recently built Tokyo Tower, a broadcasting tower completed in 1958 that was at the time the highest tower in the world, as well as a symbol of Japan’s postwar revival (KITAZAWA, 2012KITAZAWA, Y. Kakuchi no tawā to Tōkyō Sukaiturī [Towers across Japan and the Tokyo Skytree]. Eizō jōhō media gakkaishi, Tokyo, 66, n. 7, p. 549-554, 2012.). The Marine Tower’s architects noted, for instance, how the tower’s decagonal steel frame rising above a larger circular base contrasted with similar constructions like the Tokyo Tower, which were mostly quadrilateral. Although the Tokyo Tower broadcasted television and the Marine Tower was a lighthouse, furthermore, both were colored in easily recognizable alternating red and white stripes (YOKOHAMA TENBŌTŌ KABUSHIKI GAISHA, 1961? YOKOHAMA TENBŌTŌ KABUSHIKI GAISHA. Yokohama Marintawā [Yokohama Marine Tower]. Yokohama: Yokohama Tenbōtō Kabushiki Gaisha, 1961?). In the Marine Tower’s case, this bright coloration helped guide ships into the harbor. Both the Tokyo and Marine Towers also had observatories on the upper floors, and almost all visitors to the Marine Science Museum paired their visit with a trip to its observation deck. The sight of the bay from above reinforces a scientific, objective way of seeing reinforced by the museum.

Figure 1 -
Photo of the Yokohama Marine Tower

The idea for a Marine Science Museum was initially spearheaded by Kushida Kaichi, the leader of a shipping agent collective, as early as November 1957, when Kushida submitted pleas to the Kanagawa prefectural governor and the mayor of Yokohama on the need for a maritime museum (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 1). Though developed and operated independently, the planning for the museum was incorporated into contemporary discussions involving the Oceanic Culture Center project and the Marine Tower. In October 1958, Kushida and other individuals interested in starting the museum organized a conference where they established the proposed museum’s basic functions. A letter of intent authored at this meeting repeated many of the themes and motivations of the Marine Tower. The writers note that maritime industries were important for Japan as a country surrounded by ocean, but that though students were interested in learning about the ocean, many places lacked the facilities for the spread of “maritime thought.” They write that the many tourists visiting Yokohama, including many youths, were squeezing into the narrow Ōsanbashi pier, causing disturbances to labor, and worse, practicing a trivial “sightseeing excursion” (monomi yusan) rather than receiving a proper “social studies education”. The letter concluded that for the sake of Yokohama’s duty to all Japanese citizens of promoting maritime education, the Observation Tower Company would lease the tower’s second floor to this proposed museum (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 2). By the end of the month, the Marine Science Museum had formalized its name and registered as a legal body (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 3).

With the financial support of the City of Yokohama, the Marine Science Museum began greeting visitors on the third floor of the Marine Tower in January 1961, the same month as the tower’s completion. Staying true to its target demographic, the museum began the same year a membership program called the “Circle of Friends” where visitors paid an annual fee for unlimited access to the museum and its events. A significant majority of its subscribers were middle-school students, and the program, along with a regular newsletter also targeting children, became the “centerpiece” of the museum’s operations. The first newsletter explained to readers that the curators wanted them to, while remembering that they were born and live in an “ocean country,” examine the exhibits and better understand how the sea contributed to their everyday lives (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 8). Within the Marine Tower, reflecting the tower’s donut shape, these exhibits circled around an inaccessible center. Divided into seven sections, the visitor would stroll across the sections in the following order: (1) ocean voyages and meteorology; (2) fisheries and aquatic industries; (3) fisheries and whaling; (4) maritime transportation; (5) oceanic voyages; (6) shipbuilding; and (7) harbor logistics and ports around the world (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 15). Though the original idea of the Marine Science Museum proposed a social science education, what the Marine Science Museum teaches is better understood as natural science. The first section on ocean voyages, for instance, exhibited a weather observation machine, a nautical chart of the world, and a model of the exploitation of an underwater oil field. The second section on fisheries displayed exhibits on the cultivation of seaweed, the production of salt, and the methods of longline fishing (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 24). There is little clear connection between the scientific exhibits and local Yokohama, apart from some miniature models of ships that docked in the city’s piers.

As a museum designed in the regime of scientific universalism, the Marine Science Museum manifested Yokohama’s importance as a Japanese port rather than as local heritage. The primary target audience was not those in Yokohama, but Japanese in general. Students from other cities would come to Yokohama to visit the Marine Tower. They would learn about Japan’s important relationship with the sea along with Yokohama’s important place mediating this relationship. They would have observed the port’s bustling activities from the observation deck before descending to study its scientific operations in the Marine Science Museum. Both the bird’s-eye view from the tower and the nature of the museum’s exhibits encouraged an emotionally detached study, where Yokohama’s importance is presented as observable rather than felt. The implicit frame of comparison is between Yokohama and other cities in Japan, which have done less to promote maritime education. Yokohama’s local tradition lies not in its history or culture, but rather the city’s relative importance to the Japanese nation and economy, in turn measured by the current vibrancy of its port. Indeed, the decision to include an observation tower that doubled as a lighthouse reflects a moment in history when the docks remained in the old city. Citizens in Yokohama still experienced the port in their everyday lives, and an observation tower would give visitors proof of the port’s vibrancy. As container shipping moved the ports further from the city, however, Yokohama’s identity as a port city became more ambiguous. The relationship between citizens and the port would henceforth require a greater work of linkage, increasingly imagined not through simple empiricism and daily life, but via romance and nostalgia.

Romantic Futurism in the Maritime Museum

In 1989, the Maritime Museum replaced the Marine Science Museum, reflecting political developments within the City of Yokohama as well as consistently disappointing visitor numbers. This new museum is characterized by the temporal regime of “romantic futurism,” in contrast to the Marine Science Museum’s scientific universalism. Affectively, it is romantic rather than scientific for its appeal to local citizens’ excitement towards the sea. Temporally, it is futurist in its negation of both present and past as either uninteresting or long-gone, such that the priority of action lies in what is to come in the previous section. I evidence this regime through the museum’s planning history and examinations of its architecture and exhibits.

The romantic symbolism of architectural futurism

Visitor numbers to the Marine Science Museum peaked the year it opened and soon fell into decline (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1988YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN. Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan no ayumi: Shōwa 58 nendo kara 63 nendo heikan made [The history of the Yokohama Marine Science Museum: From 1983 to its closing in 1988] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan , 1988., p. 7). Within the first decade, the museum met financial difficulties and responded by raising prices, halving the number of employees, and accepting assistance from the City of Yokohama (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 10). Though official subsidies eventually stabilized its finances, by the late 1970s, curators planned to reorient the museum around local Yokohama rather than the entirety of maritime affairs in a “museum of ships and harbors” (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 13). This desire to renew the museum dovetailed with other projects occurring in Yokohama at the time. There was, firstly, the realization of a long-planned project to revitalize the old city center, which had previously been a port and factory district. This project became known as Minato Mirai 21, or in English “Port of the Future,” with 21 referring to the twenty-first century. It involved reclaiming a significant amount of land from the harbor and repurposing the Mitsubishi shipyard that had previously occupied much of the waterfront. This repurposing of the waterfront was the product of a combination of industrial change, containerization, and a movement to clean up the center city. Secondly, there was a government and civilian movement to attract the Nipponmaru sailing ship to Yokohama. Few such masted ships exist in Japan because of the late introduction of Western technology, and the Nipponmaru has previously served as a training ship for apprentice seaman. As the Nipponmaru retired from service, ten cities around Japan including Tokyo and Kobe also requested from the Ministry of Transportation the right to preserve it as a “symbol of the harbor” (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 1995HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, -. Hansen Nipponmaru kinen zaidan 10 nen no ayumi: Nipponmaru kōkai 10 shūnen kinen [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 10 years’ history: Commemorating 10 years of the opening of the Nipponmaru]. Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan, 1995., p. 19). Yokohama won the bid in 1983, proposing to situate the Nipponmaru within one of the old Mitsubishi docks within Minato Mirai. The renewed Marine Science Museum, now called the Maritime Museum, would be located beside the Nipponmaru as an “attached” exhibition space (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 1995HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, -. Hansen Nipponmaru kinen zaidan 10 nen no ayumi: Nipponmaru kōkai 10 shūnen kinen [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 10 years’ history: Commemorating 10 years of the opening of the Nipponmaru]. Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan, 1995., p. 21).

If the Marine Science Museum was operated principally as a museum, the Maritime Museum was operated as a thematized park. The body responsible for organizing both the Maritime Museum and today’s Port Museum is the Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation (NMF), which is responsible for the museum, the Nipponmaru, and the Nipponmaru Memorial Park that encloses the two. Planners imagined that the two would together be “pioneers” in the Minato Mirai project, and indeed, the Nipponmaru Memorial Park was among the first facilities built within the artificially planned city center (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 21). Moved from the old city center in Kannai to the future one in Minato Mirai, the museum’s new building would adapt to the ship’s needs (Figure 2).

Figure 2 -
Photo of the Yokohama Port Museum

Though the staff at the Marine Science Museum had at one point hoped for a three-story building with a basement (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 71), the Maritime Museum was ultimately built with one aboveground and one underground level to avoid blocking the view of the Nipponmaru (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 1995HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, -. Hansen Nipponmaru kinen zaidan 10 nen no ayumi: Nipponmaru kōkai 10 shūnen kinen [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 10 years’ history: Commemorating 10 years of the opening of the Nipponmaru]. Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan, 1995., p. 23). Located at the center of the park and surrounded by concentric circles drawn on the greenery that naturally draw the eye’s attention, the Nipponmaru is clearly the park’s centerpiece. Because the museum is far lower than the ship, however, it is inversely the museum’s entrance whose view is blocked from sight, and many visitors and residents of Yokohama today are surprised to learn the existence of a major museum hidden behind the ship. The visitor to the museum can only enter by first walking around the magnificent Nipponmaru, which stands between the main road and the museum entrance next to the waterside. Entering the museum, she pays the entrance ticket and descends to the basement to see the main exhibit; after seeing the exhibit, she returns to the ground floor to exit the museum, where she is again greeted with a spectacular view of the ship. The romantic Nipponmaru blends in with the skyscrapers, shopping centers, and convention buildings in Minato Mirai and contrasts with the enclosed underground atmosphere of the museum. At the end of one’s visit, the museum is left behind so that one might return to the futuristic modernity of the twenty-first century.

Planning a spirit of wonder

From the beginning of its conception, the Maritime Museum was intended to match the futuristic ideal of Minato Mirai. In July 1981, the Marine Science Museum set up a “Future Vision Planning Committee” to create a new museum compatible with Yokohama Port in the twenty-first century. The curators were influenced by Yokohama City’s similar planning, in particular the Minato Mirai 21 project that would artificially construct a futuristic city center on land reclaimed from the harbor (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 69). A year later, the committee published a report of their findings in December 1982 titled “Towards a ‘Museum of boats and ports’ of the 21st century.” This report explicitly argued that the future museum should fall in line with the city’s projects by “expanding Yokohama’s image,” “searching for the romance of the sea,” and introducing the importance of ships and the port in Yokohama to citizens and tourists (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 70). This involved a seemingly contradictory celebration of both globalization and Yokohama custom, for as the report explains, Yokohama, with a history as the pioneering Japanese “entryway” to foreign civilizations, is both a “globally representative port city” and, from the perspective of its citizens, the “hometown of the heart” (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 70). On the one hand, the museum would sport “international color”. Reflecting the desire to show Yokohama’s equivalence to international standard, of the five potential names the committee suggested for the new museum, four were in English, and the fifth partially in English (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 75). The museum’s final name would be a transliteration of the English “maritime museum” rather than a translation into Japanese. On the other hand, the museum would become a “plaza for the active participation of citizens,” becoming a “foyer” for citizen communication where they could learn to take pride in their local city (YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN, 1984YOKOHAMA KAIYŌ KAGAKU HAKUBUTSUKAN(ed.). Yokohama kaiyō kagaku hakubutsukan 20 nen no ayumi [Yokohama Marine Science Museum, 20 years’ history] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiyō Kagaku Hakubutsukan, 1984., p. 70). A 1985 report on the “basic conception” of the future Maritime Museum repeated the 1982 report’s ideas. Though both museums primarily targeted youth, where the Marine Science Museum targeted both tourists and Japanese citizens broadly, the Maritime Museum would more narrowly target municipal citizens (YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU, 1985YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU. Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu (kashō) kihon kōsō chōsa hōkokusho [Yokohama Maritime Museum (provisional name), report on study of basic conception] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kōwankyoku, 1985., p. 6). Through the Maritime Museum, youth would learn both local pride and global citizenship.

The museum resolved the seeming contradiction between locality and internationalization through an appeal to romance. The 1985 planning document described the exhibit theme as “People are there, and people speak. ‘Ships, ports, seafaring… In search of the romance of the ocean” (YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU, 1985YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU. Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu (kashō) kihon kōsō chōsa hōkokusho [Yokohama Maritime Museum (provisional name), report on study of basic conception] . Yokohama: Yokohama Kōwankyoku, 1985., p. 8), whereas an introductory pamphlet from 1987 advertised that through the museum, “the romance of the ocean will become yours,” as “the ring of municipal citizen exchange will spread with the base of Yokohama’s history” (YOKOHAMA-SHI KŌWANKYOKU, 1987YOKOHAMA-SHI KŌWANKYOKU. Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu (kashō): 21 seiki no minato to fune no hakubutsukan [Yokohama Maritime Museum (provisional name): A museum of ports and ships of the 21st century]. Yokohama: Yokohama-shi Kōwankyoku, 1987., p. 6). The final theme adopted for the museum, “Yokohama Port and Japan’s modernization,” similarly tied a romanticism towards Yokohama’s past as a pioneer of Japanese modernity with the city’s exciting future as a neo-pioneer of the twenty-first century. By encouraging local citizens to feel the same feeling of romance towards the city’s history, they would be encouraged to identify themselves as locals by feeling the same affects towards the same objects (i.e., ships and the sea) with the same future-oriented temporal gaze. The composition of the museum reflected this orientation. The exhibits were divided into five zones for a total of thirty-four corners. Two zones were on the ground floor: the visitor was greeted with “Sailing Ship Nipponmaru” and exited the museum through the zone “Ports of the World.” The three zones on the underground floor were “The Path of Yokohama Port,” “The Figure of Yokohama Port,” and “The Evolution of Ships” (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 43). Each zone was composed of a collection of floating platforms between which the visitor could move as they pleased, so that they could enjoy a “visit aligning with their interests” (YOKOHAMA-SHI KŌWANKYOKU, 1987YOKOHAMA-SHI KŌWANKYOKU. Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu (kashō): 21 seiki no minato to fune no hakubutsukan [Yokohama Maritime Museum (provisional name): A museum of ports and ships of the 21st century]. Yokohama: Yokohama-shi Kōwankyoku, 1987., p. 6). There was no prescribed route except for the stairways by which visitors entered and exited, though the exhibits describing the histories of ships and Yokohama Port were ordered chronologically. This freedom to explore reflects a desire on the part of curators to promote a sentiment of wonder rather than constraint. Though the Maritime Museum concerns itself more with Yokohama’s history than the Marine Science Museum, the curators did not feel it necessary to ensure that visitors left receiving the correct historiographical message, and indeed, almost all exhibits continue to have little to do with history. History is used primarily to remind visitors of a romance in the past that must be connected to the present and future. Within the exhibit, there is no division between the historical port from modern European ships, nautical tools, and an introduction to Minato Mirai planning (YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU, 1994YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU(ed.). Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu nenpō no. 1 [Yokohama Maritime Museum Annual Bulletin no. 1] . Yokohama: Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu, 1994., p. 8-10).

Unlike the Marine Science Museum, which made no reference to Yokohama, the Maritime Museum was clearly a local museum, introducing Yokohama’s history and targeting local citizens rather than outsiders. It also made emotional appeals absent from the Marine Science Museum, intending for the visitor to feel some combination of excitement, wonder, and nostalgia. The target audience for these feelings was clearly local, for it would be the citizens of Yokohama who took on the duty imposed upon them by the Minato Mirai project to recreate these emotions in the future. The museum’s emotional focus is manifested in its architecture. The visitor to the Marine Science Museum would have ascended to the Marine Tower’s observation deck, where she could observe an objective view of Yokohama Port, before visiting the museum, where she could learn about the science that made harbors possible. The Maritime Museum, in contrast, is subjective and spectacular. It is organized around the symbolism of the spectacular Nipponmaru, a sailing ship around two centuries out of date that invoked fantasies of the Age of Exploration. The museum’s architecture is organized explicitly in a way that obligates the visitor to observe the ship’s grandeur from below upon entering and leaving, and the museum’s exhibits in a way that encourages a promenade centered around subjective interest rather than an objective lesson in things.

The Maritime Museum took on a strange place in Minato Mirai. The idea of a “future port” planned by successive mayors in late twentieth-century Yokohama involved a metaphorical interpretation of a “port” as an institution that brought together peoples and goods of many different origins. Few boats, after all, dock in the harbor of Yokohama’s center city today, and Minato Mirai is in practice a business, shopping, and tourism district common throughout all of Japan. The conspicuous location of the Nipponmaru within this area, however, connects emotions tied to high technology with those deriving from nostalgia, positioning local tradition as the bearer of this affect rather than of any empirical history. Evidencing this purely affective interest in tradition, though the Nipponmaru, like the Marine Tower, is an object intended to represent Yokohama, the ship itself had limited connection with Yokohama, and its design had become outdated before Yokohama Port was opened for trade. The Nipponmaru calls upon visitors to fuse an excitement for technology with nostalgia, acknowledging that though the past may not return, the future may hope to repeat it.

Nostalgic Presentism in the Port Museum

The Maritime Museum celebrated its opening with the grandiose 1989 Yokohama Exposition, one of a chain of regional expositions occurring in the 1980s, many with the same themes, inspired by the momentous 1970 World Exposition in Osaka (MA, 2023MA, Scott. Global history in two chronotopes: Time, identity and the practical past in Nagasaki, Japan, 1990 and 2006. Rethinking History, Abingdon, v. 27, n. 2, p. 312-339, 2023.). This optimism in Japan’s brilliant, romantic future independent from the West, however, would not last. The bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the early 1990s, coupled with enduring factors like population decline and deindustrialization, has led to economic stagnation and demographic change. Yokohama, like many other provincial cities, has continued to see its fortunes eclipsed by nearby Tokyo, for which city planners feared Yokohama would become a bed town. The temporal regime of the current Port Museum, which replaced the Maritime Museum in 2009, reflects this feeling of uncertainty. Its temporal regime can be described as “nostalgic presentism.” Affectively, it is nostalgic in its reference to the past. While the Maritime Museum had also encouraged Yokohama’s citizens to identify with their predecessors, this genealogy was more affectively grounded than it was historical, and moreover, the affect encouraged by its curators was one of excitement. The Port Museum, in contrast, placed more weight on reflective, empirical history than on emotional impulsions. Temporally, the Port Museum was presentist in its orientation. Though both the Maritime Museum and the Port Museum made references to Yokohama’s past and local identity, the former placed clear emphasis on a future culture to come that would contrast with Yokohama today. The Port Museum, in contrast, argued that the past, present, and future repeated many of the same patterns, and that the future would only be a repetition of the present, which repeated the past. An admiration of the past therefore serves not as a tool to negate the present, but rather to understand its current, already completed form. In stark contrast with both the Maritime Museum and the earlier Marine Science Museum, the Port Museum clearly identified with the historical sciences, making no claim to explain the nature of ports around the world, but only of the one in Yokohama.

Curating local authenticity

Like in the case of the Marine Science Museum, disappointing visitor numbers motivated its renewal as the Port Museum. In the years immediately following the Maritime Museum’s opening in 1989, the museum experienced a surge of visitors due to the 1989 Yokohama Exposition and the opening of the Yokohama Landmark Tower in 1993, a year when the museum welcomed 180,000 visitors (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 16). The museum experienced a gradual decline in visitors in the years following, prompting the museum management to plan for a renewal as early as 1996. This plan ultimately came to naught due to funding difficulties, but the basic conception was carried over to the 2009 renewal that changed the museum’s name to the Port Museum (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 16). Though the museum’s management compensated for the decline in ticket sales by cutting employees and advertising more broadly, according to the NMF’s own narration, the most important impetus for change came with the establishment of the Designated Administrator System (shitei kanrisha seido) under a 2003 revision to the Local Autonomy Act (chihō jichi hō) (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 16-17). Where under the previous system, the Port Bureau (kōwankyoku) had delegated authority to manage the Maritime Museum to the Foundation, under the new system, the Foundation would need to compete every five years with private organizations for the right to manage the entire Nippon-maru Memorial Park. The Foundation quickly agreed to form a collaborative venture with the travel agency JTB Corporation, won a five-year contract in 2005, and set about renewing the museum to render it profitable and popular (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 17).

This new museum, called the Port Museum, would preserve the architecture and location of the Maritime Museum while substantially changing the nature of its exhibits and its framing. While like the Maritime Museum, the Port Museum placed great emphasis on local citizens’ correct understanding of Yokohama’s legacy, the emotional reaction to be expected from each differs. If the idea of romantic adventure pervades the Maritime Museum’s planning documents, no mention of either romance or adventure can be found in those of the Port Museum. In its stead, the term “authentic” (honmono) is frequently mentioned. A 2006 Basic Conception of Exhibition Renewal for the Yokohama Maritime Museum was written by a deliberative committee composed of academics, private consultants, city officials, and the Foundation director. This Basic Conception calls for a renewal of the entire Memorial Park area as a “field museum” under a unified theme of “the ocean, harbors, and ships”. It defined a “field museum” as “an open-air museum” that would use “not only the existing cultural resources” but also the land itself as targets for exhibition and preservation. It notes that the Memorial Park already aggregated many authentic things (honmono) including the Nippon-maru, the former Mitsubishi No. 1 dock, and objects collected by the museum. Indeed, the planners’ idea of a “field museum” was an anti-museum in its emphasis not on the curation of objects by experts, but rather the appreciation of these objects’ natural value, presented for direct experience from the eyes of the visitor, to which these authentic objects would “send out value” (kachi o hasshin suru). The expanse of the field’s authenticity also extended beyond the scope of the Memorial Park, as visitors would be able to “experience in close familiarity” not only the material objects in the park, but also the Port of Yokohama as a whole (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 107). The authenticity of the objects within the Memorial Park would allow visitors a feeling of familiarity with them, promoting not only an awareness of, but an identification with, Yokohama’s past.

Within the Port Museum’s planning documents, the notion of feeling authentic objects within the Memorial Park is closely tied to biological metaphors of cultural change and the idea of the park as a public gathering space. The new theme of the Nippon-maru is described as a ship that “continues to live in Yokohama,” and the basic goal of the exhibit in the Port Museum would be give visitors the opportunity to “touch the culture born from aspects such as the relationships between people supported by Yokohama Port as well as the port itself.” The museum itself would “organically” join with the other “authentic objects” (honmono) in the park, and the park would be a place where visitors could “feel the authentic (honmono) port of Yokohama in a way close to their body.” This would be accomplished by making good use of the “authentic” objects in the park, for by using the “real materials,” visitors would feel “satisfied by the appealing power held by its ‘objects’ (mono).” The park would also be serviced to thematize well with the other facilities and attract visitors to them, creating a “waterside oasis” where municipal citizens could take in the Port of Yokohama’s “history, culture, and natural environment in the middle of the noise and bustle of Minato Mirai” (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 108). If in the older Maritime Museum, the museum’s curators sought to instill in visitors an interest in maritime affairs by impressing them with the romance of voyage, in the newer Port Museum, the curators’ role would be more subtle. They would organize the environment and exhibits in the museum and the facilities around it so that the “authentic objects” would speak directly to the visitor. The living, quasi-biological authenticity of both Yokohama and the exhibition material is created through an intentional servicing of the area by the museum’s curators, who seek to frame the objects impressively.

The decision to change the museum’s name from the English-language Maritime Museum (Maritaimu myūjiamu) to the Japanese-language Port Museum (Minato hakubutsukan) reflected this change in orientation from encouraging an international future to treasuring a local past. In the Maritime Museum, the choice to use a loanword rather than the native Sino-Japanese kaiji hakubutsukan, used to translate “maritime museum” in most contexts, allowed for an equivalency between local Japanese museums and foreign ones and, through metonymy, between Yokohama and advanced countries in the rest of the world. The Foundation’s official record writes that one reason for changing the name to a native Japanese word was that the word “maritime” sounded unfamiliar to Japanese ears, made it difficult to listeners to imagine of what the museum consisted, and contributed to the lack of public interest (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2015HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN (ed.). Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan 30 nen no ayumi [Sailing Ship Nipponmaru Memorial Foundation, 30 years’ history] . Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen Zaidan , 2015., p. 19). Indeed, the choice to use the word minato みなと written in syllabic hiragana reflects the impression its organizers wanted to give visitors. The use of a native Japanese alphabet rather Sino-Japanese ideograms suggests a childishness, friendliness, and locality to the institution. The most common translation for “port” or “harbor,” kōwan, another Sino-Japanese loanword, is likely intentionally avoided for its association with legal documents and formality.

Exhibiting a rediscovery of tradition

The desire to create a museum harboring local objects authentic to Yokohama manifested itself in how the new museum was arranged. A 2007 revision of the museum’s Basic Plan further concretized its exhibits. The visitor would enter through the ground floor, where they would find a social “exchange space” including the café, museum shop, and a corner where visitors could consult data on maritime affairs (YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU TENJI KŌSHIN KIHON KŌSŌ TŌ KENTŌ IINKAI, 2007YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU TENJI KŌSHIN KIHON KŌSŌ TŌ KENTŌ IINKAI. Yokohama Maritamu Myūjiamu oyobi hansen Nipponmaru tō rinyūaru kihon keikaku (an) [Yokohama Maritime Museum and sailing ship Nipponmaru etc. renewal, basic plan (draft)]. Yokohama: Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu tenji kōshin kihon kōsō tō kentō iinkai, 2007. Available at: https://bit.ly/3RYsw4Q. Access on: December 1, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3RYsw4Q... , p. 13). The underground floor included the heart of the museum. While the Maritime Museum dedicated less than one of its five sections of its permanent exhibition to Yokohama’s history, the history of Yokohama would take up most of the space in the renewed port museum. The permanent exhibit was divided into two main sections, the “historical exhibit” and the “themed exhibit.” The historical exhibit was split into nine sections, (1) the port’s prehistory, (2) port opening, (3) construction of the modern port, (4) the Kanto Earthquake and reconstruction, (5) war and requisition, (6) the port during the high growth period, (7) the era of containerization, (8) the era of international competition, and (9) Yokohama’s today and future. The themed exhibit, in turn, would be divided between (1) constructing the port, (2) shipbuilding, (3) shipping, (4) port labor, (5) life in the port, and (6) environmental protection. This themed exhibit would introduce specific elements of the port that could not be fully explained within the history section. The visitor would finally exit to experience the outside exhibits in museum’s field (YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU TENJI KŌSHIN KIHON KŌSŌ TŌ KENTŌ IINKAI, 2007YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU TENJI KŌSHIN KIHON KŌSŌ TŌ KENTŌ IINKAI. Yokohama Maritamu Myūjiamu oyobi hansen Nipponmaru tō rinyūaru kihon keikaku (an) [Yokohama Maritime Museum and sailing ship Nipponmaru etc. renewal, basic plan (draft)]. Yokohama: Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu tenji kōshin kihon kōsō tō kentō iinkai, 2007. Available at: https://bit.ly/3RYsw4Q. Access on: December 1, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3RYsw4Q... , p. 20). One repeated theme in this Basic Plan was the “interrelationality” between the port and the everyday lives of its citizens, such as how port shipping brought food to the dining table (YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU TENJI KŌSHIN KIHON KŌSŌ TŌ KENTŌ IINKAI, 2007YOKOHAMA MARITAIMU MYŪJIAMU TENJI KŌSHIN KIHON KŌSŌ TŌ KENTŌ IINKAI. Yokohama Maritamu Myūjiamu oyobi hansen Nipponmaru tō rinyūaru kihon keikaku (an) [Yokohama Maritime Museum and sailing ship Nipponmaru etc. renewal, basic plan (draft)]. Yokohama: Yokohama Maritaimu Myūjiamu tenji kōshin kihon kōsō tō kentō iinkai, 2007. Available at: https://bit.ly/3RYsw4Q. Access on: December 1, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3RYsw4Q... , p. 18). This new interest in daily life was reflected in what became the museum’s new theme, “Yokohama Port, within history and daily life (kurashi)” (YOKOHAMA MINATO HAKUBUTSUKAN, 2020YOKOHAMA MINATO HAKUBUTSUKAN. Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan 30-nen no ayumi, Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan borantia 10-nen no ayumi [30 years of the Yokohama Port Museum, 10 years of the Yokohama Port Museum volunteers] . Yokohama: Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan, 2020., p. 108).

The Port Museum, as it was finally produced, differed slightly in content from its planning. The historical zone remained chronological and was reduced to seven zones, whereas the themed exhibit remained six sections and was renamed the “Yokohama Port Rediscovery Zone”. Miki Aya, a curator at the Port Museum, explains that the segments in the Rediscovery Zone explore themes already surfacing in the History Zone that the museum wants its visitors to understand in greater depth (MIKI, 2018MIKI, A. Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan no shōkai [Introduction to the Yokohama Port Museum]. Marin Enjiniaringu: Nihon Marin Enjiniaringu Gakkaishi, Tokyo, v. 53, n. 1, p. 93-95, 2018., p. 94). The visit concluded with a mock kitchen detailing how as an island country, Japan relies on ports to receive virtually everything one needs for daily life (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN JTB KYŌDŌ JIGYŌTAI, 2009bHANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN JTB KYŌDŌ JIGYŌTAI. Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan, Hansen Nipponmaru, tenji annai [Yokohama Port Museum, sailing ship Nipponmaru, exhibit guide]. Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen ZaidanJTB Kyōdō Jigyōtai, 2009b., p. 12). This mock kitchen drives home the message that regardless of how unaware one may be of it, ports are undeniably close to life for everyday citizens in Yokohama. Though scientific and historical facts like the port’s history and logistical operations may appear distanced from the average citizen, the Port Museum argued that important connections lay beneath the surface. Further reflecting the museum’s ambition as a “field museum” that connected the world internal and external to the exhibits, the museum brochure marks the location of numerous ship-related historical objects within the Memorial Park, including an air compressor and a screw propellor (HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN JTB KYŌDŌ JIGYŌTAI, 2009aHANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN JTB KYŌDŌ JIGYŌTAI. Hansen Nipponmaru Yokohama Minato Hakbutsukan [Sailing ship Nipponmaru, Yokohama Port Museum] (Pamphlet). Yokohama: Hansen Nipponmaru Kinen ZaidanJTB Kyōdō Jigyōtai, 2009a.).

The Port Museum underwent a second, more minor renewal more recently in 2022. While leaving the general organization of its exhibits intact, the NMF introduced new technology and segments. The content in the History Zone remained largely unchanged, though new technology was added to enhance the experience, including a simulation game where visitors could operate a gantry crane and a large-screen video reenacting the arrival of Matthew Perry’s “black ships” (YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU NIGIWAI SHINKŌBU; KŌEKI ZAIDAN HŌJIN HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2022YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU NIGIWAI SHINKŌBU; KŌEKI ZAIDAN HŌJIN HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN. Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan ga rinyūaru ōpun shimasu: Hōdō kankeisha muke ni kannai o kōkai [Yokohama Port Museum will renewal open: Opening the museum for media groups] . 2022. Available at: https://bit.ly/3JVru7D . Access on: December 1, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3JVru7D... ). In contrast to the Maritime Museum, the Port Museum’s historical section remains a one-track visit. The visitor cannot wander from the history zone into non-historical ones; she must proceed from the history of early modern Yokohama into the history of the present, from which she enters the Rediscovery Zone. The Rediscovery Zone has undergone more substantial changes in the 2022 renewal, suggesting the city’s new ambitions for its port a decade after the 2009 opening. There are detailed exhibits on the role of Yokohama’s current wharfs, the role of the Nipponmaru in the seafaring education, and the history and technology of land reclamation (YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU NIGIWAI SHINKŌBU; KŌEKI ZAIDAN HŌJIN HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2022YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU NIGIWAI SHINKŌBU; KŌEKI ZAIDAN HŌJIN HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN. Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan ga rinyūaru ōpun shimasu: Hōdō kankeisha muke ni kannai o kōkai [Yokohama Port Museum will renewal open: Opening the museum for media groups] . 2022. Available at: https://bit.ly/3JVru7D . Access on: December 1, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3JVru7D... ). There is also a virtual reality theater called the “port capsule” where visitors are surrounded in all directions by LED screens projecting images of port Yokohama, as well as an animation introducing the port’s current endeavors such as becoming carbon neutral. Other parts of the exhibit are inherited from the 2009 museum, including the mock kitchen and a ship-steering simulation (YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU NIGIWAI SHINKŌBU; KŌEKI ZAIDAN HŌJIN HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN, 2022YOKOHAMA KŌWANKYOKU NIGIWAI SHINKŌBU; KŌEKI ZAIDAN HŌJIN HANSEN NIPPONMARU KINEN ZAIDAN. Yokohama Minato Hakubutsukan ga rinyūaru ōpun shimasu: Hōdō kankeisha muke ni kannai o kōkai [Yokohama Port Museum will renewal open: Opening the museum for media groups] . 2022. Available at: https://bit.ly/3JVru7D . Access on: December 1, 2023.
https://bit.ly/3JVru7D... ). Though with a somewhat different focus, the roles of the History and Rediscovery Zones remain consistent across the museum’s two versions. Both use the Rediscovery Zone to emphasize parts of history that connect to the present, and both use an identification with this history rather than a distancing, as had been the case in the Maritime Museum.

The ideology of presentism

In contrast to the Maritime Museum’s romantic futurism, the Port Museum embodied a regime of historicity I call “nostalgic presentism.” At least as the curators intended it, the visitor is taught history so that she may better identify with this past. The themed “rediscovery” zone argues that present aspects of port life mirror past elements, and that future developments must be in line with the preservation of the past. This belief places both the onus of change on the present and either denies or underplays the historical element of change over time. It is like how Hartog describes the “ecomuseum” characteristic of contemporary presentism:

Like Hartog’s ecomuseum, the Port Museum is deeply attached from the past while desiring to break free from it. On the one hand, it is nostalgic towards the internationalism of Yokohama’s golden age as a Meiji trade port, yet on the other, it seeks to “escape” from this attachment through a focus on the present, which is presented as a continuation of this past. Through a use of presentism, the nostalgia is not allowed to realize itself, but denied through an identification with others within the same imagined communities as inheritors of the same culture. The museum itself then becomes a material “site of living memory” for those who cling onto the memory of the past, which is both recognized as having disappeared and claimed as still living within the present. The boundary between present and future, furthermore, is indistinct in the face of an all-enveloping present; the future must be controlled to ensure that it includes a preservation of Yokohama’s local tradition, in turn inherited from its past. The faith in cultural authenticity encouraged by the Port Museum’s “field museum” concept means that even current land-reclaiming and other projects must be framed in terms of inheritance rather than novelty, as would have been the case in the Maritime Museum, or in terms of scientific technology, as would have been so in the Marine Science Museum.

Though the Port Museum is a distinctly historical museum unlike its predecessors, its claim to exhibit historical fact also leads to a certain quietism. If the Maritime Museum argued that Yokohama’s citizens should re-appreciate the city’s relationship with the sea to rebuild the metropolis for the twenty-first century, the Port Museum makes few normative statements, satisfying itself with laying out factual data without interpretative commentary. If scientific explanations of the logistics of contemporary port management are retained in the Port Museum, these logistics are contextualized within the history of Yokohama as having a hand in developing Yokohama’s port industry today, rather than given as examples of universally applicable technologies. A romantic historical past does not serve as a springboard for futuristic port life, but rather futuristic port life is the natural culmination of a gradual culmination of historical developments. Only for this reason can the scientific portion be reframed as a “rediscovery” of the past rather than a leap into the future.

The very ordering of facts, however, implies its own arguments about the significance of what is exhibited. If the previous museums suffered from a shortage of local history, the Port Museum has an overabundance. The delineation of what counts within the rubric of “port history” is broad to the point of unwieldiness. It is at once an economic history of the growth of trade and industry along the waterfront; a political history of the figures involved in changing its landscape; and an urban history of land reclamation and city growth. From the bottoms-up, it is also a cultural and social history of life in Yokohama, of how it was influenced by the presence of foreign peoples and foreign products. Considering the potential information that could have been listed on exhibits, the choice of which foreigners are presented is selective. Yokohama is portrayed as a cultural meeting-ground between Japanese emigrating abroad and Western stars and Western ships visiting Japan. Negligible to no mention is given to either the Chinese interpreters who were crucial middlemen between Japanese and Westerners in the first half century of the treaty port, or to the necessary role Yokohama, as did all major ports in imperial Japan, played in supporting the prewar empire. This reflects a general amnesia towards imperial history commonplace throughout historical understanding in much of postwar Japan that forgets the place of Asia. The history of Japanese modernization is a story where Japan, and only Japan, gradually comes to equal standing with the modern West. But this amnesia has hardly been an invention of the Port Museum; it was already present in the museum’s previous iterations, only not brought to the forefront and simply not seen as being worth discussing.

The Port Museum’s ideology is evidenced not only by the uncritical collection of objective facts placed side-by-side, but also the order in which they are placed. The visitor entering the museum by descending into the center of a basement, from which she walks outwards in a spiral to the exit. The walking path is therefore predetermined, and this path moves from the Edo period to the present in linear fashion. After the end of history, there is a sizable section discussing the port’s current importance and future plans, as well as an entire room dedicated to explaining how land reclamation works. The visitor is expected to leave feeling satisfied by the trajectory of history, having an awareness of her past inheritance while opening herself up to what the future will bring. The present and the past do not interact except upon exiting the past; as the visitor moves through the exhibit, she walks both outwards exiting the spiral and outwards from the basement into the daylight. The museum is meant to be refreshing and celebratory, leaving the visitor convinced that the present moment is the necessary culmination of historical precedent and a worthy successor of Yokohama’s past inheritance as a port city. One can think of several alternative structures to the museum that would have made it more critical. Perhaps the story could have been told backwards, from the present to the past; perhaps it could have better distinguished between the multiple conceptions of a “port city” over time. But designing a history museum is difficult, and managers must always compete for visitors with more entertaining attractions. The Port Museum, like all other museums, is informed by the ideological presuppositions of its time. What must be underlined is that a museum does more than simply collect, organize, and exhibit items. The arrangement of its experience itself, with the architecture, emotions, and forms of exploration it implies, has its own consequences in invoking lessons on not only historiography, but also temporal vision and community identity. A study of museums can therefore lend itself to critical considerations of the physical experience of history.

Conclusion

This article has studied the development of three successive port museums in postwar Yokohama: the Marine Science Museum (1961-1988), the Maritime Museum (1989-2008), and the Port Museum (2009-). Each revitalization responded to a decline in visitor numbers on the one hand and the increasing age of its exhibits on the other. This natural need of museums to periodically refashion themselves with new exhibits makes their renewals microcosms of changes in political ideologies and popular imaginations to which each renewal responds. This article has studied the regime of historicity grounding each renewal, focusing on how the political and practical motivations behind them informed the thematization, structure, and architecture of their exhibits. The close ties between the successive maritime museums and the City of Yokohama meant that the government hand was strong in each renewal, as the museum was consistently expected to archive, symbolize, and educate local citizens about Yokohama’s relationship to the sea. What this expectation has amounted to has evolved over time. If the Marine Science Museum educated children about sciences and industries related to the sea, the Maritime Museum sought to inspire in citizens a romantic passion for the ocean, whereas the Port Museum aims to remind citizens to identify with and learn about their historical predecessors. This article has distinguished these three themes as “scientific universalism”, “romantic futurism”, and “nostalgic presentism”. They represent different regimes of historicity - that is, different ways of observing what can be considered if not the truth, then the element of truth that is most important to know. As educational institutions, each maritime museum intended to resolve a perceived lack of awareness of the sea by Yokohama’s citizens. What this lack of awareness amounted to and the content of which these citizens would be informed, however, changed not only over time but also in time.

Though historiography is generally understood to refer to academic books and articles, public-facing museums contribute in their own way to understandings of history. Notably, museums involve a concreteness absent from written texts. If like written historiography, museum exhibits reflect political conditions that change over time, unlike written historiography, the regimes of historicity that frame museums are both more material and more impure. They are material in that history becomes concretized for the visitor through aspects as innocuous as the museum’s layout and its building architecture; they are also more impure in that collections, staff, and place are inherited between successive generations, such that there may be substantial decalage between the museum as imagined by its planners and the logistical reality that limits what can be curated. Indeed, the Port Museum inherited many goals from earlier museums including scientific training for future sailors and the desire to create a public space to speak about the sea. Though the Port Museum rebranded itself as a museum clearly about Yokohama’s history, the material and ideological legacies of former iterations continue to live well into the present, only reframed and translated to serve new political purposes.

All the three museums assume a certain historiographical viewpoint on Yokohama’s past, one that narrates Yokohama’s important role in promoting Japanese modernization by serving as the premier Meiji port. This narrative ignores non-Western influences on Japanese modernization such as Chinese interpreters, as well as much of modernization’s ugly underside, in particular Japan’s prewar imperial adventures. More substantial than this unquestioned narrative, however, is the theory of history that each museum presumes, and in particular the relationship between history, science, and objective truth. A history of these museums tells us not just about the history of historiography, or interpretations of the past, but also temporality and affect, which organizes the past, present, and future. The exhibit in the Marine Science Museum taught visitors to continue the modernizing historical path set by these Meiji predecessors, and for its focus on modernization, it afforded little to no attention to historical personages. The Maritime Museum, in contrast, taught visitors to identify with the past actions of these romantic historical figures to employ these passions for the creation of a utopian society in the future. Past figures are brought forth, but they are only useful as spurs to romantic memory. What truly mattered in the Maritime Museum was not the past, but what citizens would achieve in the future, inspired by its romance. The Port Museum, lastly, is steeped within the imagination of an authentic past. Japanese modernization becomes a cultural problem, and technology such as land reclamation becomes an indelible element of a municipal way of life. Even within the same historical narrative, different assumptions on how history itself works affect what might be considered to be objective, what is seen as important, how this historical narrative is exhibited, and the extent to which it is spoken.

These regimes of historicity exist on a more fundamental plane than issues of truth or even issues of historiography. They speak to questions of what is thought to be even worth the effort of saying, of the very importance of history to resolving the problems of local identity. If history and identity are bound, they can be bound in different ways, dependent upon how history is understood, and what it is, and why it is important.

Acknowledgments

I thank Zoltán Boldizsár Simon and Kirill Postoutenko for welcoming me to Bielefeld University in August 2022, where I did most of the theoretical work for this paper. My stay was funded by the Haraguchi Memorial Asia Research Fund and the Overseas Research Travel Grant Program, both from Waseda University. I am also grateful for the comments from the two anonymous reviewers and the careful editing by the editorial board at HdH.

References

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Edited by

Editors

Data availability

Publication Dates

History