History
No prefecture on this site has a more literal connection to Japan’s relationship with the West than Kanagawa — it’s not a connection this page has to go looking for, because the connection is in the name.
Kanagawa and the wider world
In 1854, after Commodore Matthew Perry’s US Navy squadron returned with a show of force following his first visit the previous year, Japanese and American negotiators signed the Convention of Kanagawa here, ending over two centuries of the Tokugawa shogunate’s sakoku (closed-country) policy and opening two ports to American ships. A follow-up treaty in 1858 then designated Yokohama, a small fishing village at the time, as one of Japan’s first treaty ports open to full foreign trade and residence — and Yokohama grew explosively from that moment on, developing Japan’s largest Chinatown and a lasting identity as the country’s most internationally minded major city, a role Kanagawa arguably still plays today as home to more resident foreign nationals than almost any other prefecture.
Kanagawa’s older brush with reshaping Japan came from within: in 1185, the samurai leader Minamoto no Yoritomo established his government in Kamakura rather than the imperial capital of Kyoto, founding Japan’s first shogunate and beginning nearly 700 years of military, rather than imperial court, rule — a shift in the country’s center of gravity not unlike the one Tokyo would pull off centuries later at Kyoto’s expense again.
Neighbors: Kanagawa and Tokyo
Kanagawa borders Tokyo directly to the south and functions as its most economically integrated neighbor — Yokohama is Japan’s second-largest city by population, but has never seriously competed with Tokyo for national dominance, settling instead into a permanent, comfortable role as the country’s biggest and most historically international “second city.”
Getting there and getting around
Yokohama and Kamakura are both easily reached from central Tokyo by regular train in 30-60 minutes; Hakone is about 90 minutes via the Odakyu Romancecar limited express. Shin-Yokohama is also a Tokaido Shinkansen stop for travelers heading further west.
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