Celebrate a Shared Legacy during the Chinese New Year in Yokohama Chinatown

Published：2/28/2025

Xin Nian Kuai Le! That’s the popular greeting heard during the Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival, a 15-day celebration that begins with the new moon that occurs sometime between January 21 and February 20. However, if you are in Guangdong or Hong Kong, you would instead go with the greeting Gong Xi Fa Cai (pronounced “kung hei fat choi” in Cantonese). China’s area is almost as big as Europe’s and its population about as diverse. This diversity translates well to Yokohama Chinatown, a microcosm of China itself. More than just an enclave for the Chinese diaspora in Japan, Yokohama Chinatown is an integral part of the port city’s international history, a place where Chinese, Japanese, and Western cultures have coexisted for over 160 years. Come learn about the singular spirit of Japan’s second biggest city and enjoy some amazing food as you welcome the new and the good of the Chinese New Year in Yokohama Chinatown, where the celebration has taken place since 1986.

Yokohama Chinatown: A Story of Cooperation and Resilience

When the port of Yokohama opened to the world in 1859, Chinese immigrants accompanying traders from the US and Europe headed for Japan to find their fortunes. Thanks to their knowledge of English and their ability to communicate with the Japanese using Chinese characters, the Chinese acted as translators and contributed significantly to Yokohama’s growth and power in the years that followed. By 1912, the city was home to over 1,000 Chinese immigrants including merchants, carpenters, artists, and dressmakers.

But as they built Western- and Japanese-style houses and painted European-style portraits, these transplants held on to their ancestral culture. In 1871, the temple Kuan Ti Miao was built in Chinatown, venerating the deified warrior Holy Emperor Lord Guan Yu. In 2006, Mazu Miao, a temple dedicated to the Holy Heavenly Mother Mazu opened on the site of the Qing dynasty consulate. Today, Mazu Miao stands as a colorful Chinatown landmark, dazzling passersby with its bright-red, shimmering-gold, and deep-black decorations and providing locals with a place to pray and find peace from the hustle-bustle of this busy Yokohama quarter.

 

Sadly, large parts of Yokohama Chinatown were devastated by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and the WWII air raids, but the area endured, rebuilt, and rebounded. In 1955, the first of the iconic Chinatown gates, Zenrin (meaning “good neighbor,” to symbolize the friendship between China and Japan), was built to help bring more tourists to the area, and it seems to have worked, because 95 percent of visitors to Yokohama Chinatown reportedly come from outside China.

The Culture of Yokohama Chinatown Brings the Past and the Future Together

The Spring Festival parade is a great occasion to witness traditional Chinese performing arts up close, and it typically kicks off with a bang—literally!—and plenty of smoke as firecrackers are set off to scare away evil spirits. What follows next is a spellbinding pageant that showcases the diverse traditions of China—music from the two-stringed erhu, beautifully choreographed fan dances by costumed performers, heart-stopping demonstrations of the flying hammer (a flail-and-chain weapon), jar juggling, and processions of traditionally dressed participants. But the animal dances are the highlight of any Yokohama Chinatown parade.

The lion dance in particular is riveting. More than just a group of artists in an ornamental lion costume twirling around imitating a lion, the performance is a dance full of dynamic, fluid movement and acrobatics accompanied by the music of traditional Chinese instruments. As the performers sway in perfectly synchronized routines or jump on each other’s shoulders to make the lion rise up to the sky, there comes a brief moment when you are no longer seeing humans in a costume but rather a majestic mythical beast.

Similarly, the dragon dance, a giant puppet performance, undulates with intricate precision, mesmerizing spectators to the point where the puppeteers disappear before their eyes and they see real dragons flying through the air. 

Chinatown also aims to preserve its traditions for futures to come with sustainable policies.The Lantern Festival at the Mazu Miao Temple and other illuminations throughout Chinatown are powered by renewable energy in efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses.

Yokohama Chinatown’s Ongoing Spirit of Multiculturalism

Yokohama Chinatown’s goal is to be the gateway to the city, exemplifying the best of Yokohama in a spirit of collaboration and multiculturalism. Since its inception, Yokohama Chinatown has grown and prospered through the cooperation of its locals and visitors. Chinatown locals’ courtesy and hospitality ensure happy customers and attract people of all cultures and nationalities. In addition, the high concentration of restaurants breeds healthy competition and encourages creativity, exemplifying the industrious spirit of Yokohama Chinatown.

The job of ensuring a smooth flow of commercial activities, events, and functions, which will help Chinatown to remain open and to evolve, belongs to the Yokohama Chinatown Development Association, a cooperative of restaurants, stores, and other local businesses. They are the ones safeguarding Chinatown’s present and past, while the future is being nurtured by two educational facilities—the Yokohama Overseas Chinese School and the Yokohama Yamate Chinese School, where Japanese students make up a portion of each class and everyone studies Chinese, Japanese, and English in the international spirit of Chinatown.