Kitakyushu

Kitakyushu sits at the northernmost point of Kyushu, its name literally meaning "North Kyushu." It was created in 1963 through the merger of several municipalities built around the historic city of Kokura. As of 2019, roughly 940,978 people lived there, making it the second-largest city in Fukuoka Prefecture and on Kyushu Island, trailing only Fukuoka City. It is one of Japan’s twenty designated cities—three of which are on Kyushu—and is split into seven wards. The city lies along the Kanmon Straits, the narrow waterway separating Kyushu from Honshu, directly across from Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture. A web of transport links, including the Kanmon Bridge and the Kanmon Tunnels (road, rail, and Shinkansen), connects the two cities.

Kitakyushu’s urban employment area is part of the larger Fukuoka-Kitakyushu metropolitan region, which, with about 5.74 million people (2005–2006), is the biggest metropolitan area in Japan west of the Keihanshin region. The city is famous as a major industrial hub, anchored by the historic Yahata Steel Works, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The city was officially founded on February 10, 1963, as a consolidation of five cities: Moji, Kokura, Wakamatsu, Yahata, and Tobata. It became a designated city on April 1 that same year, the first such designation outside the Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya metro areas. At its founding, Kitakyushu had over a million residents and was Kyushu’s most populous city until Fukuoka surpassed it in 1979. Today, the administrative, economic, and transport heart of Kitakyushu is in Kokurakita-ku, the core of the former Kokura city, centered around Kokura Station. That station is served by the San'yō Shinkansen and is the city’s main shopping and entertainment district. The city’s symbol is a flower with the Chinese character for "north" (北) in the middle and five petals, one for each of the original merged cities.

Because of its position on the Kanmon Straits—and thus its proximity to Honshu—Kitakyushu has long acted as Kyushu’s gateway and a transport hub. It is the starting point for Kyushu’s railway and road networks. During the Edo period, it was the northern terminus of the Nagasaki Kaidō, a highway linking Nagasaki (Japan’s only port open to foreign trade under sakoku) with Honshu. Railways began to be built in the 1880s, alongside the development of the ports of Moji and Wakamatsu. Yahata, originally just a fishing village on Dōkai Bay, was chosen for the Yahata Steel Works, which opened in 1901. Its location offered easy access to coal from the nearby Chikuhō region and good sea routes to iron ore from China. This steelworks became the center of Japan’s early steel industry, and the surrounding coast along Dōkai Bay and the Genkai Sea emerged as the focal point of Japan’s pre-World War II industrialization. By 1913, Yahata produced 85% of Japan’s total steel output; its population skyrocketed from 6,652 in 1901 to 100,235 in 1920. In 2015, UNESCO recognized several sites in the city—including the steelworks’ head office—as part of the "Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining."

The five cities that merged to form Kitakyushu developed in competition during Japan’s industrial era, each with its own industrial character. Moji, centered on Mojikō Station, was a hub for international trade and food processing thanks to its railway and sea links. Kokura, an old castle town, was known for its defense industry. Wakamatsu’s railway and port complex handled the largest coal shipments in Japan. Yahata was dominated by steel. Tobata had coal-related industries, textile plants, and fishing. Though they vary in size, each former city still has its own urban center.

Kitakyushu’s role as the heart of Japanese industry made it a target for strategic bombing during World War II. On June 16, 1944, 75 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses were sent from mainland China to bomb Yahata in the first American air raid on the Japanese home islands. Later, on August 9, 1945, Kokura was the primary target for the "Fat Man" atomic bomb. Major Charles Sweeney had orders to drop the bomb visually, but all three attempts failed because clouds and smoke from Yahata—which had been bombed the previous day—obscured the target. Industrial workers also created a smoke screen by burning barrels of coal tar, and electric plant workers released steam. The bomb was ultimately dropped on the secondary target, Nagasaki, at 11:02 JST.

After the war, extensive damage to industrial infrastructure left the region in ruins, and residents suffered from malnutrition. Kitakyushu’s industrial revival came with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, when military demand for steel pushed the Yahata Steel Works into overdrive. In the following years, heavy industries like steel and metalworking drove the city’s development and helped fuel Japan’s post-war economic boom. As in other major Japanese cities, this industrial growth caused severe air and water pollution. In the 1960s, Dōkai Bay was known as the "Sea of Death" due to industrial runoff so toxic that no marine life could survive.