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Yokosuka is a port city of about 370,000 people on the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture, at the mouth of Tokyo Bay, home to a major United States Navy base and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. It is known for the battleship Mikasa, the fort island of Sarushima and the place where Commodore Perry landed in 1853.
Yokosuka grew around the ironworks and shipyard founded in the 1860s with the help of the French engineer Léonce Verny, which became one of the main yards of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Perry's Black Ships had anchored off Uraga in 1853, and his landing at Kurihama began the opening of Japan.
Visitors board the Mikasa, walk Verny Park and Dobuita Street, take the naval port cruise and the boat to Sarushima. Along the bay they find Kannonzaki Lighthouse, the Yokosuka Museum of Art and, in the south, Perry Park, the harbour of Uraga and the flower fields of Kurihama.
The battleship Mikasa is a museum ship in Mikasa Park in Yokosuka, Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's flagship at the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905. Built in Britain, she is the last surviving pre-dreadnought battleship and the last British-built battleship in the world.
Verny Park is a city park in Yokosuka, named after Léonce Verny, the French engineer who guided the building of the Yokosuka ironworks. About 2,000 roses bloom here in May and June, and its Verny Memorial Hall keeps two Dutch steam hammers of 1865, both Important Cultural Properties.
The Yokosuka Naval Port Cruise is a sightseeing boat that tours Yokosuka harbour and the Nagaura inlet, running several times a day since 2008. It passes close to the ships of the United States Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, which visitors can watch at anchor from the water.
Dobuita Street is a shopping street of about 300 metres in central Yokosuka, with its mix of American and Japanese culture and as the birthplace of the embroidered sukajan jacket. Its name recalls the iron plates from the naval arsenal that once covered a ditch running down the middle of the street.
Sarushima is the only natural island in Tokyo Bay, an uninhabited island off Yokosuka that is now a city park. A battery was first built here in 1847, and the army's Tokyo Bay fort of 1881 left tunnels and walls lined with multicoloured brick in Flemish bond, now a National Historic Site.
Kannonzaki Lighthouse stands on Cape Kannon at the eastern tip of the Miura Peninsula in Yokosuka, guarding the busy Uraga Channel into Tokyo Bay. It was the first Western-style lighthouse in Japan, first designed with Léonce Verny, and the white octagonal tower of today is the third on the site.
Kannonzaki Park is the largest park in Kanagawa Prefecture, a wooded headland on Cape Kannon in Yokosuka. Fortified with gun batteries from the Meiji era until the end of the Second World War, it was long closed to the public, which left its nature well preserved.
The Yokosuka Museum of Art opened in 2007 in Kannonzaki Park, facing Tokyo Bay, in a building designed by the architect Riken Yamamoto. Its collection of some 5,000 works includes works by the painters Fujishima Takeji and Nakamura Tsune. It stands in the same park as Kannonzaki Lighthouse.
Perry Park in the Kurihama district of Yokosuka marks the place where Commodore Matthew Perry landed on 14 July 1853 for his first talks on opening Japan. Its large monument, raised in 1901, bears an inscription by Itō Hirobumi, and a small Perry Memorial Hall opened in the park in 1987.
Uraga is the old harbour district in eastern Yokosuka, on a deep inlet facing the Uraga Channel at the mouth of Tokyo Bay. Commodore Perry's Black Ships arrived here in 1853, and a small ferry still links the east and west sides of the harbour as part of a city road for local people and visitors.
Hashirimizu Shrine is a Shinto shrine in the Hashirimizu district of Yokosuka, linked to the legend of Yamato Takeru. Its story tells how his wife Ototachibana-hime threw herself into the sea to calm a storm during his crossing to Kazusa, and she has been worshipped here since 1909.
Kurihama Flower Park is a free city park in the Kurihama district of Yokosuka, built on land once used for United States military warehouses. Its 23,000 m² field blooms with more than a million poppies and rapeseed flowers in spring and cosmos in autumn, drawing over 500,000 visitors a year.
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