Nogeyama Zoo, Zoo in Nogeyama Park, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan
Nogeyama Zoo is a free municipal zoo in Nogeyama Park, Nishi-ku, Yokohama, with over 100 species and more than 1,000 animals, among them red pandas, chimpanzees, Humboldt penguins and a reptile house. Its low entrance building has a pale tiled facade and a wide grid of glass panes; the Japanese name のげやまどうぶつえん appears on a curved white wall at the left.
Nogeyama Zoo opened on 1 April 1951 as Nogeyama Amusement Park; the amusement rides closed in 1964 and the animal facilities continued as a zoo, made free by mayor Asukata. It was the first zoo in Japan to breed leopards (1952), blackbuck (1953), dromedary camels (1954) and sloth bears (1965), and in 1972 the second in the world to breed Andean condors. Yokohama City ran it directly until 1 April 2008, when the Yokohama Green Association took over.
The zoo's name comes from Nogeyama Park, where it opened in 1951 as the Nogeyama Amusement Park; the rides closed in 1964 and the animal facilities continued as a zoo. Since 2020, Hinodecho Station on the Keikyu Main Line has carried "Nogeyama Zoo" as a secondary station name.
The zoo lies in Nogeyama Park, about 10 minutes on foot from Hinodecho Station on the Keikyu Main Line and about 15 minutes from Sakuragicho Station. City bus line 89 stops at Nogeyama Dobutsuen-mae. It closes on Mondays, or the next day when Monday is a holiday, and stays open every day in May and October.
The zoo's pedestrian bridge, Noge no Tsuribashi, is a cable-stayed walkway designed by industrial designer Sori Yanagi, who also created the zoo's signage. The former polar bear house now displays a life-sized bear model and keeps the enclosure as it was, letting visitors see inside a space normally hidden.
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