Downtown Hiroshima in 1927
The Chugoku Shinbun has shared this recently rediscovered 1927 postcard showing Hiroshima’s busy Kamiya-cho intersection.
The postcard shows a little two-story building in the center of the intersection with people waiting for their tram below and what looks like machinery for changing the points on the upper floor. We assume the road running behind the hut is “Densha-dori” (heading east towards Hiroshima Station). The trees you can see on the left mark the edge of where the grounds of Hiroshima Castle extended to in those days.
The image comes from a postcard, one of a full set of 16 black and white “Hiroshima’s Famous Places” picture postcards, discovered, in almost mint condition, by Hiroshima University professor Masamichi Tanaka at his family home in Mihara. The postcards were purchased by Professor Masamichi’s father in 1927 at the The Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall (the function of the A-bomb Dome prior to the A-bombng in 1945) on a school trip.
Below is a photo of the intersection today, from a different angle.
The current location of the glassy Daiichi-seimei bulding on the right is where the building with the Japanese sake signboard above a store seen above the tram on the left side of the 1927 image.
