Tuesday, April 23, 2024

The complex maze-like Upper Town Yokosuka

 http://www3.koutaro.name/machi/yokosuka.htm

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The military port city of Yokosuka had two city centers with very different landscapes.

One was the labyrinthine townscape up on the hills and bluffs.

It is a town where houses are lined up so as to cover the intricately detailed hillsides, and the alleys continue like a maze.

It is an old urban area that expanded rapidly as it developed as a military port city after the Meiji period (1868-1912).

The other is a rectangular townscape on the seaward side of the city.

It is a town of the reclaimed land that was built in a planned manner with high-rise buildings neatly lined up on a wide straight road.

After the war, the urban area of Yokosuka was expanded by reclaiming the coast.

The Keikyu Main Train Line separates these two towns.

From the Keikyu Main Line stations such as Shioiri, Yokosuka Chuo, and Kenritsu Daigaku, one step into the mountain side and the labyrinthine town spreads out, while on the sea side, the flat land and the shaped townscape spread out like a different world.

This is because the Keikyu Main Line was laid along the edge of a hilly terrain.

This gap between the two urban areas, old and new, is a characteristic of Yokosuka's townscape.

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In the hills and bluffs areas, including Shioiri-cho, Uwamachi, Tadodai, and Fujimi-cho, there are hills where narrow ridges and deep valleys intersect like folds in a complex. There are no roads of any kind, and houses are built to the best of one's ability on narrow flat lands with cliffs.  There are narrow, winding roads along the ridges and valleys, but the roads that branch off from these roads immediately come to a dead end, and 10 to 20 houses are located along the roads, forming a cluster at each dead end. The narrow, winding roads are so steep that it is impossible to drive on, and it is a maze to walk up and down.  First-time visitors will probably need a map to find their way out.

The labyrinthine town also had a main street.  The road from Yokosuka to Misaki is called Misaki Kaido, and Uemachi-dori, the street line, is a wide straight road with arcades on both sides.  Many signboards can still be seen in the shopping streets along the street.

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