Kannai ( 関内 ) is a district in Naka Ward , Yokohama , Japan , bounded by the Ōoka River , JR Negishi Line , Nakamura River , and Yokohama waterfront. "Kannai" is not an official name of the area, but the common term of reference has been in use for over a century.
100-558: Yokohama ( Japanese : 横浜 , pronounced [jokohama] ) is the second-largest city in Japan by population and by area, and the country's most populous municipality . It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture , with a population of 3.7 million in 2023. It lies on Tokyo Bay , south of Tokyo , in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu . Yokohama
200-624: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
300-589: A complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
400-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
500-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
600-479: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
700-423: A pattern of rain, clouds and sun, although in winter, it is surprisingly sunny, more so than Southern Spain. Winter temperatures rarely drop below freezing, while summer can seem quite warm, because of the effects of humidity. The coldest temperature was on 24 January 1927 when −8.2 °C (17.2 °F) was reached, whilst the hottest day was 11 August 2013 at 37.4 °C (99.3 °F). The highest monthly rainfall
800-501: A policy of national seclusion , having little contact with foreigners. A major turning point in Japanese history happened in 1853–54, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived just south of Yokohama with a fleet of American warships, demanding that Japan open several ports for commerce, and the Tokugawa shogunate agreed by signing the Treaty of Peace and Amity . It was initially agreed that one of
900-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1000-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
1100-517: A total of 18 Wards. The LDP has minority control with 36 seats. The incumbent mayor is Takeharu Yamanaka , who defeated his predecessor Fumiko Hayashi in the 2021 Yokohama mayoral election . Yokohama has 18 wards ( ku ): per km In 2020, Yokohama's total gross regional product was 14.06 trillion yen or US$ 133 billion, a 1.9 per cent decrease compared to the previous year due to the COVID-19 pandemic . This converts to US$ 35,107 per citizen, below
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#17328377315521200-624: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
1300-623: Is a leading university in Yokohama which is also one of the highest ranking national universities in Japan. Yokohama is twinned with: Yokohama also cooperates with: Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan ,
1400-445: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
1500-616: Is also the major economic, cultural, and commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area along the Keihin Industrial Zone . Yokohama was one of the cities to open for trade with the West following the 1859 end of the policy of seclusion and has since been known as a cosmopolitan port city, after Kobe opened in 1853. Yokohama is the home of many Japan's firsts in the Meiji period , including
1600-519: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
1700-643: Is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has
1800-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
1900-635: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
2000-462: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
2100-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
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#17328377315522200-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
2300-500: Is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and
2400-722: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
2500-600: Is no official survey of the citizens' countries of birth, hence these numbers do not include naturalized citizens, but they include foreign nationals born outside their country of citizenship. Yokohama is one of the 20 designated cities in the country, which means the city has many powers that usually belong to prefectural governments, while having wards as subdivisions with administrative functions. Yokohama city consists of 18 wards, with its government seat in Naka Ward . The Yokohama City Council consists of 86 members elected from
2600-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
2700-489: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
2800-433: Is served by Tokyo's two main airports Haneda Airport which is 17.4 km away and Narita International Airport which is 77 km away. Yokohama is the world's 31st largest seaport in terms of total cargo volume, at 121,326 freight tons as of 2011, and is ranked 37th in terms of TEUs ( Twenty-foot equivalent units ). In 2013, APM Terminals Yokohama facility was recognized as the most productive container terminal in
2900-573: Is the heart of administrative and commercial Yokohama, with the Kanagawa Prefectural Government offices, the Yokohama Municipal Government offices, Kanagawa Prefectural Police Headquarters, other governmental offices as well as major business offices within its borders. Kannai encompasses the old districts of Bashamichi , Chinatown , and Yamashita Park , making Kannai a major tourist destination in Yokohama, rivaling
3000-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
3100-750: Is today one of its major ports along with Kobe , Osaka , Nagoya , Fukuoka , Tokyo and Chiba . Yokohama is the largest port city and high tech industrial hub in the Greater Tokyo Area and the Kantō region. The city proper is headquarters to companies such as Isuzu , Nissan , JVCKenwood , Keikyu , Koei Tecmo , Sotetsu and Bank of Yokohama . Famous landmarks in Yokohama include Minato Mirai 21 , Nippon Maru Memorial Park , Yokohama Chinatown , Motomachi Shopping Street , Yokohama Marine Tower , Yamashita Park , and Ōsanbashi Pier . Yokohama (横浜) means "horizontal beach". The current area surrounded by Maita Park,
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3200-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
3300-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
3400-644: The East Coast of the United States . Minato Mirai 21 hosted the Yokohama Exotic Showcase in 1989, which saw the first public operation of maglev trains in Japan and the opening of Cosmo Clock 21 , then the tallest Ferris wheel in the world. The 860-metre-long (2,820 ft) Yokohama Bay Bridge opened in the same year. In 1993, Minato Mirai 21 saw the opening of the Yokohama Landmark Tower ,
3500-536: The Edo period , Yokohama-mura ( 横浜村 , lit. side beach village ) was a remote village adjacent to the Kanagawa-juku ( 神奈川宿 ) , one of the 53 stations of Tōkaidō . Upon being demanded by the United States , the Tokugawa shogunate declared Yokohama-mura to be a part of Kanagawa and then opened its port. The Tokugawa government chose the remotely located Yokohama-mura , to prevent foreigners from entering
3600-510: The Great Kantō earthquake . The Yokohama police reported casualties at 30,771 dead and 47,908 injured, out of a pre-earthquake population of 434,170. Fuelled by rumors of rebellion and sabotage, vigilante mobs thereupon murdered many Koreans in the Kojiki-yato slum. Many people believed that Koreans used black magic to cause the earthquake. Martial law was in place until November 19. Rubble from
3700-505: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
3800-504: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
3900-793: The Tsurumi River , which begins in the Tama Hills and empties into the Pacific Ocean . These municipalities surround Yokohama: Kawasaki , Yokosuka , Zushi , Kamakura , Fujisawa , Yamato , Machida . The city is very prone to natural phenomena such as earthquakes and tropical cyclones because the island of Honshū has a high level of seismic activity, being in the middle of the Pacific Ring of Fire . Most seismic movements are of low intensity and are generally not perceived by people. However, Yokohama has experienced two major tremors that reflect
4000-661: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
4100-794: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
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4200-686: The second-tallest building in Japan . The 2002 FIFA World Cup final was held in June at the International Stadium Yokohama . In 2009, the city marked the 150th anniversary of the opening of the port and the 120th anniversary of the commencement of the City Administration. An early part in the commemoration project incorporated the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV), which
4300-525: The Ōoka River and the Nakamura River have been a gulf divided by a sandbar from the open sea. This sandbar was the original Yokohama fishing village. Since the sandbar protruded perpendicularly from the land, or horizontally when viewed from the sea, it was called a "horizontal beach". Before the Europeans arrived, Yokohama was a small fishing village up to the end of the feudal Edo period , when Japan held
4400-518: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
4500-482: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
4600-724: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
4700-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
4800-469: The Tokugawa government built a commercial sex district which opened on November 10, 1859, with 6 brothels and 200 indentured sex workers. The area of Yokohama with the highest concentration of brothels was known as Bloodtown. Kannai , the foreign trade and commercial district (literally, inside the barrier ), was surrounded by a moat, foreign residents enjoying extraterritorial status both within and outside
4900-503: The Yoshida River. The bridge has become part of the road. And a stone monument is all that remains to show the location of the bridge and the river. Today, Bashamichi Street adjoins Yoshida Bridge with the former settlement area of Kannai. On the other side of Yoshida Bridge is Isezakichō . The vicinity of Isezakicho was outside the Kanmon , and was called Kangai ( 関外 ) (meaning "outside
5000-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
5100-458: The adjacent Minato Mirai 21 . The Kannai region was part of the ocean until the Edo period when Yoshida Shinden was reclaimed in 1667. Upon reclamation, the streets were lined up according to a grid plan . And towns ( 町 , machi ) in the region were auspiciously named after individuals involved with the reclamation, Noh songs, and Hyakunin Isshu , rather than any ancient names. During
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#17328377315525200-600: The basis for the Yokohama Cooperative Electric Light Company. The city was officially incorporated on April 1, 1889. By the time the extraterritoriality of foreigner areas was abolished in 1899, Yokohama was the most international city in Japan, with foreigner areas stretching from Kannai to the Bluff area and the large Yokohama Chinatown . The early 20th century was marked by rapid growth of industry. Entrepreneurs built factories along reclaimed land to
5300-425: The boundary between the Japanese settlement area on the west, and the foreign settlement area on the east. In 1860, canals were built in addition to the existing rivers, so that Kannai was completely surrounded by water. There was a Kanmon placed on each bridge, to restrict access, and to prevent contact between samurai and foreigners. The samurai were not allowed into Kannai. After subsequent modernizations over
5400-517: The bustling Kanagawa-juku . Upon the opening of the Port of Yokohama in 1859, Kannai became the commercial center of the foreign settlement and home of international trading companies and diplomatic missions , similar to Dejima in Nagasaki . As the foreign settlement rapidly expanded, further residential areas, churches, a cemetery and schools were added on the nearby elevated Yamate Bluff overlooking
5500-400: The characteristic mountain system of the island of Honshū , so its growth has been limited and it has had to gain ground from the sea. This also affects the population density, one of the highest in Japan with 8,500 inhabitants per km. The highest points within the urban boundary are Omaruyama (156 m [512 ft]) and Mount Enkaizan (153 m [502 ft]). The main river is
5600-509: The city and in just one hour and nine minutes, reducing 42% of it to rubble. During the American occupation , Yokohama was a major transshipment base for American supplies and personnel, especially during the Korean War . After the occupation, most local U.S. naval activity moved from Yokohama to an American base in nearby Yokosuka . Four years after the Treaty of San Francisco signed, the city
5700-510: The city area, including. In 2016, 46,017,157 tourists visited the city, 13.1% of whom were overnight guests. Yokohama is serviced by the Tōkaidō Shinkansen , a high-speed rail line with a stop at Shin-Yokohama Station . Yokohama Station is also a major station, with two million passengers daily. The Yokohama Municipal Subway , Minatomirai Line and Kanazawa Seaside Line provide metro services. Yokohama does not have an airport, but
5800-527: The compound. Interactions with the local population, particularly young samurai, outside the settlement inevitably caused problems; the Namamugi Incident , one of the events that preceded the downfall of the shogunate , took place in what is now Tsurumi Ward in 1862, and prompted the Bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863. To protect British commercial and diplomatic interests in Yokohama a military garrison
5900-564: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
6000-510: The evolution of Earthquake engineering : the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake devastated the city and caused more than 100,000 fatalities throughout the region, while the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami , with its epicenter on the east coast, was felt in the locality but only material damage was lamented because most buildings were already prepared to withstand them. Yokohama features a humid subtropical climate ( Köppen : Cfa ) with hot, humid summers and chilly winters. Weatherwise, Yokohama has
6100-423: The first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese
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#17328377315526200-411: The first foreign trading port and Chinatown (1859), European-style sport venues (1860s), English-language newspaper (1861), confectionery and beer manufacturing (1865), daily newspaper (1870), gas-powered street lamps (1870s), railway station (1872), and power plant (1882). Yokohama developed rapidly as Japan's prominent port city following the end of Japan's relative isolation in the mid-19th century and
6300-569: The foreign settlement on November 26, 1866, and smallpox was a recurrent public health hazard, but the city continued to grow rapidly – attracting foreigners and Japanese alike. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the port was developed for trading silk , the main trading partner being Great Britain. Western influence and technological transfer contributed to the establishment of Japan's first daily newspaper (1870), first gas-powered street lamps (1872) and Japan's first railway constructed in
6400-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
6500-450: The harbour. The historic Osanbashi Pier was built adjacent to Kannai in 1894, and has been the international pier of the Port of Yokohama ever since. Since the opening of the Port of Yokohama, Kannai saw a sudden influx of Western culture . According to the Yokohama Municipal Government, the Kannai region boasts many "firsts in Japan", such as ice cream , beer , and gas lamps . A road
6600-453: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
6700-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
6800-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
6900-508: The national average. A large number of Yokohama's citizens work outside the city (693,064 in 2020), primarily in Tokyo , and the economic value they generate outside the city does not contribute to Yokohama's economic output. The largest contributors to this figure were wholesale and retail (17.8%), healthcare (11.7%), and academic, professional, or technological services (11.0%). Yokohama's cultural and tourist sights include: There are 42 museums in
7000-477: The north of the city toward Kawasaki , which eventually grew to be the Keihin Industrial Area . The growth of Japanese industry brought affluence, and many wealthy trading families constructed sprawling residences there, while the rapid influx of population from Japan and Korea also led to the formation of Kojiki-Yato, then the largest slum in Japan. Much of Yokohama was destroyed on September 1, 1923, by
7100-545: The only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little
7200-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
7300-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
7400-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
7500-499: The ports to be opened to foreign ships would be the town of Kanagawa-juku (in what is now Kanagawa Ward ) on the Tōkaidō , a strategic highway that linked Edo to Kyoto and Osaka. However, the Tokugawa shogunate decided that Kanagawa-juku was too close to the Tōkaidō for comfort, and port facilities were instead built across the inlet in the fishing village of Yokohama. The Port of Yokohama
7600-477: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
7700-608: The quake was used to reclaim land for parks, the most famous being the Yamashita Park on the waterfront which opened in 1930. Yokohama was rebuilt, only to be destroyed again by U.S. air raids during World War II. The first bombing was in the April 18, 1942 Doolittle Raid . An estimated 7,000–8,000 people were killed in a single morning on May 29, 1945, in what is now known as the Great Yokohama Air Raid, when B-29s firebombed
7800-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
7900-599: The same year to connect Yokohama to Shinagawa and Shinbashi in Tokyo. In 1872 Jules Verne portrayed Yokohama, which he had never visited, in an episode of his widely read novel Around the World in Eighty Days , capturing the atmosphere of the fast-developing, internationally oriented Japanese city. In 1887, a British merchant, Samuel Cocking , built the city's first power plant. At first for his own use, this coal power plant became
8000-797: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
8100-476: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
8200-535: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Kannai Kannai
8300-536: The total population, with the number having grown significantly in recent years. While all three countries with the number of nationals living in Yokohama as citizens exceeding 10,000 are all in Asia ( China , South Korea , Vietnam ), other major countries of origin for Yokohama's non-Japanese residents include Brazil (2,823), the United States (2,793), Peru (1,312), the United Kingdom (840), and Germany (770). There
8400-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
8500-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
8600-413: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
8700-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
8800-548: The world averaging 163 crane moves per hour, per ship between the vessel's arrival and departure at the berth. Public elementary and middle schools are operated by the city of Yokohama. There are nine public high schools which are operated by the Yokohama City Board of Education, and a number of public high schools which are operated by the Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education . Yokohama National University
8900-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
9000-418: The years, the Kanmon lost its significance, and was eventually removed. However, even after the abolishment of the Kanmon , the name Kannai (which originally meant "inside the Kanmon ") remains popular to this day. Examples of modern western architecture built in the 1920s and 1930s still remain in Kannai. Buildings of note include: Today, Shuto Expressway and Ōdōri Park occupy the former location of
9100-701: Was Kohoku with a population of 364,760, followed by Aoba (308,379), Tsurumi (297,230), and Totsuka (282,601). In terms of population density, Nishi and Minami are the most densely populated, with a per square kilometre population exceeding 15,000. Of Yokohama's population, 1,548,077 work outside the city, while 1,226,618 workers commute from outside the city. As these numbers suggest, some of Yokohama's residential areas are commuter suburbs (or "bed towns" as known in Japanese) for those who work in other major cities, primarily Tokyo. As of June 2024, Yokohama's population includes 121,042 foreign nationals, making up 3.2% of
9200-535: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
9300-568: Was built from Kanagawa-juku to Yokohama-mura . And on this road, the Yoshida Bridge was built across Yoshida River, a branch of the Ōoka River. There was a Kanmon ( 関門 ) , a "checkpoint", on this Yoshida Bridge . The area inside the Kanmon (the Yokohama side) was called Kannai ( Kannai meant "inside the Kanmon "). Within Kannai, the current location of the Kanagawa prefectural office marked
9400-511: Was designated by government ordinance on September 1, 1956. The city's tram and trolleybus system was abolished in 1972, the same year as the opening of the first line of Yokohama Municipal Subway . Construction of Minato Mirai 21 ("Port Future 21"), a major urban development project on reclaimed land started in 1983, nicknamed the " Philadelphia and Boston of the Orient" was compared to Center City, Philadelphia and Downtown Boston located in
9500-681: Was established in 1862. With the growth in trade increasing numbers of Chinese also came to settle in the city. Yokohama was the scene of many notable firsts for Japan including the growing acceptance of western fashion, photography by pioneers such as Felice Beato , Japan's first English language newspaper, the Japan Herald published in 1861 and in 1865 the first ice cream confectionery and beer to be produced in Japan. Recreational sports introduced to Japan by foreign residents in Yokohama included European style horse racing in 1862, cricket in 1863 and rugby union in 1866. A great fire destroyed much of
9600-537: Was held in Yokohama in May 2008. In November 2010, Yokohama hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting. Yokohama has a total area of 437.38 km (168.87 sq mi) at an elevation of 5 metres (16 ft) above sea level. It is the capital of Kanagawa Prefecture , bordered to the east by Tokyo Bay and located in the middle of the Kantō plain . The city is surrounded by hills and
9700-718: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
9800-458: Was in October 2004 with 761.5 millimetres (30.0 in), closely followed by July 1941 with 753.4 millimetres (29.66 in), whilst December and January have recorded no measurable precipitation three times each. The city's population is 3,772,726 as of 1 June 2024, making it the second-most populated city in the country after Tokyo's 23 special wards . Among Yokohama's 18 wards, the most inhabited
9900-465: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
10000-450: Was officially opened on June 2, 1859. Yokohama quickly became the base of foreign trade in Japan. Foreigners initially occupied the low-lying district of the city called Kannai , residential districts later expanding as the settlement grew to incorporate much of the elevated Yamate district overlooking the city, commonly referred to by English-speaking residents as The Bluff . Under pressure from United States and United Kingdom officials,
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