The Yuasa Souvenir Shop was founded in 1897 to manufacture and sell products decorated with sea shells. The building with its impressive arch windows was built in 1936. It is typical of “billboard architecture” in which western-style decorations are applied to the front of a wooden building. Shinzaburo Yuasa, the founder, remembering the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, wanted to build a building robust enough to withstand earthquakes so he took carpenters to Yokohama to copy a trading company building there.