Yokohama and Kobe have much in common. Busy ports, both have swanky shopping streets named Motomachi, Chinatowns, Western-style houses on the hill and monument-dotted former foreign settlements. Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Some think so.

However, comparisons between the cities seldom include their tallest yardsticks, their towers. How do Yokohama's Marine Tower and Kobe Port Tower stack up to each other?

The Marine Tower, built in 1961 to commemorate the centennial of the opening of Yokohama's port, is the older structure. It rises 106 meters. Kobe Port Tower was built two years later and stands 2 meters higher. Did its designer intentionally eclipse the rival port's tower? A representative of the Kobe Port Tower office thinks not. "They weren't that consciously competitive," he claims.

Even eclipsed, the Marine Tower can stand tall. Its observation deck is 100 meters above the ground; Port Tower's is at 91 meters. But the Marine Tower's principal claim to fame appears in a Guinness Book of World Records displayed on the observation deck: It is the world's tallest lighthouse. Its red-and-green lights, sweeping 360 degrees every 20 seconds, guide mariners as far away as 40 km. Visitors may enter its light room on Nov. 1, Lighthouse Day, or by previous appointment.

Marine Tower looks like the lighthouse it is, but Kobe Port Tower resembles nothing so much as a tsuzumi hand drum, the base and observation deck being the two drumheads and the steel pipes resembling strings that lace them to the hourglass-shaped body. So Port Tower takes the design prize.

In fact, it took three. Upon its completion in 1963, it won prizes from the Architectural Institute of Japan, the Building Contractors Society and the Illumination Engineering Institute of Japan. The architects and builders were hailing the first structure in the world to use a pipe framework; the engineers acknowledged a superb light sculpture.

Below this stylish building, the Rokko Mountains border Kobe, truncating the north horizon, while mountains to the west frustrate those seeking a glimpse of the Pearl Bridge over the Akashi Straits. But inside, constellations spangle the observation-deck ceiling. Twin sets of upholstered chairs invite couples to linger. The illuminated panels at the four points of the compass come with recorded commentary, but no one seems to press the buttons -- the voice might spoil the mood.

The panorama from Yokohama's Marine Tower takes in Japan's greatest natural wonder: a distant Mount Fuji. On a hazy winter day, the snowcap floating above invisible slopes resembles a legless ghost in a Maruyama Okyo painting.

Beneath the tower is Yokohama, Chinatown's vermilion and gilt is conspicuous in the sunlight. South lies the Miura Peninsula. From the tip of the Honmoku Peninsula as far as Daikoku Island, red-and-white gantry cranes ring the shoreline like gigantic beasts at a watering hole. To the east, tankers, freighters and container ships glide through the Uraga Straits -- the same waters which saw the return of Comm. Matthew Perry in February 1854, come to collect the reply of Japan's rulers that would end the country's isolation and open it to the world. Northward in the blue distance rise Shinjuku's skyscrapers.

Early evening is the best time to climb both towers. Having savored the day view, linger until the sun sinks behind mountains and watch as city and harbor lights multiply, even as the alpine glow fades. Kobe Tower climbers can watch the city's light show: the Ferris wheel at Harborland; the light-strung ferries slipping their moorings; even the flashing buoys around the future site of Kobe Airport cast their spell. From Marine Tower, observers see the glow of Chinatown's main drag and the skyscrapers of Minato Mirai pulsating with red aircraft-warning lights. Beyond, though, lies the swath of the wooded Bluff, in which loom the dark outlines of the Osaragi Memorial Museum and Christ Church.

In a series of travel essays, writer Ryotaro Shiba characterized Yokohama as a dark place and Kobe as a bright one. The source of this difference, he said, lay in the cities' different histories. Yokohama came of age during the bloody demise of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The port of Kobe, opened in 1869, was born almost at the dawn of the civilization and enlightenment of Meiji.

Perhaps Shiba was right. Port Tower gives a good view of the bright lights that spell out "Kobe: 2002" and flash the city's emblem and an anchor from the upper slopes of Mount Rokko. Such bright self-advertisement, one feels, would not be Yokohama's style.