On 5th. July, 1882, Able Seaman Arthur John Patchwork of Her Majesty's Ship, Reliance, sailed into Yokohama Port. From the port deck he scanned the shantie-like buildings of the coastal town.
"Ach, me lad. There's the King, the Queen and the Jack."
Arthur spun around to face the old mate, Bill Tattler. The older man had more or less adopted him in the seven months since he joined the ship.
"The King, the Queen and the Jack?" Arthur repeated dully.
"Yes, see that building o'er there. It's called the Kencho, sorta like the shire offices, if you know what I mean. Now, that's the King. An' o'er there, that brick building wi' the tower, that's Taykarn. That's the Queen, orright."
"And where's the Jack?"
"See the building o'er there with the square hat, the match-kusho or the town hall. That's the Jack."
"I think I like the Jack best of all," young Arthur Patchwork grinned.
"Well, they say that some famous writer was born right there on that spot, a bloke called Tenshin, who wrote about tea."
"Tea?"
"I know it doesn't sound like much, but they love their tea here. It was a silk merchant's house when I first saw it, but that was some twenty years ago now."
On 12th. September, 1923, another sailor, Second Lieutenant John Francis Patchwork of the United States Navy steamed into Yokohama Port, aboard the U.S.S. Liberty. It had been diverted from a Pacific training mission to aid the Japanese following the devastating Great Kanto Earthquake. He scanned the surrounding land and found the town before him all but flattened.
On the landscape, he spotted a single building that dominated the coastline. Its squarish tower seemed somehow solid and dependable amid the fractured municipality around it. The following day, he was drawn to it physically and was able to see that the squarish top actually contained a clock and that the floors of the building had fallen through even if the outer structure had remained sound.
Later on the ship, he had mentioned to his captain that he had found it quite an impressive structure.
"Oh, the old town hall," the captain smiled. "It looks a little stern with its horns, don't you think. They used to hang banners from them to welcome large ocean liners. It was burnt down about twenty years ago, but they rebuilt it."
On 4th. July, 1992, Vince Patchwork, who was no sailor and certainly never one of any military rank, visited Kaiko Kinnenkan with his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Matsumoto. He was neither related to nor had he heard of either of these two earlier Patchworks. Nor did he realise that he was the first Patchwork to actually set foot inside the building.
There seemed to be a rather loud and spirited political meeting going on at the time on the bottom floor. From out of nowhere, a man appeared and introduced himself to the Matsumotos as Mr. Akiyama, the official in charge of the building. He was a short, squat man as bald as the dome of Saint Peter's. Vince who was thinning more than a little himself, recognised immediately that what Mr. Akiyama lacked in hair, he made up for in energy and enthusiasm for his subject.
He took them past a series of stained glass windows, explaining each one in detail. One depicted Commodore Perry's ships and Mr. Akiyama assured them all that during the American occupation after World War 2, the Americans themselves had been very impressed with the flag in the leadlighting. Vince, too, was impressed with the flag, but not for reasons of patriotism. He wondered how they had been able to cut such tiny flecks of glass and fit them into the entire composition. Vince was well aware that stained glass was not a common craft in Japan and yet here, the workmanship was exquisite.
Another pair of stained glass doors showed alternatively transportation by land and by water. Mr. Akiyama bubbled over with enthusiasm as he explained:
"And this is the polesman, the captain of the river boat. And next to him, sitting down, is a teacher, a haiku teacher. And you can just see a sumo wrestler, notice how the boat tilts to one side. And that's a restaurant owner. A travelling performer with a monkey. A priest. And this is a mysterious character, a shady piece of work."
Vince leaned forward to further gauge the mysterious character's level of shadiness. But Mr. Akiyama was already on the other side of the landing in front of a painting of the war ship, Kanrin Maru. It was a very Turneresque canvas.
"The captain of this ship was the samurai, Tekaishu. He was a very brave soldier and he took this ship to the United States after the Meiji Restoration. But as brave a soldier as he was, he wasn't a particularly good sailor. He was very sea sick for the entire voyage."
Mr. Akiyama pealed with laughter and the rest of the company joined him, apart from Vince who was neither a brave soldier or a good sailor. Mr. Akiyama moved onto the next painting.
"This is Yokohama 140 years ago. It was called the Sukan Peninsula then. And the Kaiko Kinnenkan would have been right here in the middle where that tree is. You can see how this gully splits the countryside into two parts. The north side was the Japanese side and the people who lived there served the foreign community. On the south side, the foreign settlement was built. Look, there's Yamate-cho, and that's the French Hill."
Mr. Akiyama then bustled down the corridor to the VIP room and invited them to sit down. The room was built in an octagonal shapes and lined with blue velvet drapes with gold braids on each side of the windows. The ceiling was a full twenty foot high. As Mr. Akiyama later explained, it had once been very ornate, but after it had been destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake, it had proved too costly to replace.
"Now, there's a story! Kaiko Kinnenkan was destroyed by fire in 1906. So a competition of sorts was held for the design of a new building. It was rebuilt between 1913 and 1917, before being partially destroyed again by the earthquake in 1923. This time, nobody had the original plans from which to make the repairs, so they rebuilt it as closely as they
could. But you'll never guess what happened."
If anybody could guess, they weren't telling.
"The grandson of Mr. Yamada, the original architect, found the plans and returned them to the city in the 1980's. Mr. Yamada had simply taken them home. Reconstruction of the building began in 1988."
Vince looked around the room and asked, "Why is this called the VIP room?"
Mr. Akiyama pealed with laughter again, "If the Emperor comes, not that he ever has, this would be his room. And he would have sat in that chair."
Mr. Akiyama pointed to the armchair that Connie was occupying.
There was only one thing left to do and that was to climb the clock tower. Vince noted that Mr. Akiyama farewelled them at the bottom of the spiral staircase. The stair spiralled around three and a half times and then to climb higher, you had to ascend a further 60 or so steps that went up in irregular patterns. The roof of Kaiko Kinnenkan was green and it was hard to see Tokyo Bay from it now. There was a building going up next door and Vince could see its view being blocked out completely on all sides. The Kaiko Kinnenkan was dwarfed by far more modern structures, but Vince wondered if, with the Japanese tendency to scrap and rebuild architecture, whether any of these new giants would be around in a hundred years time.