Posted by A few years ago my wife and I went to Kokura for the day. It`s a big industrial city now and actually it has been since the industrial revolution back in the Meiji Period.
Before that, it was a beautiful castle town right at the tip of northern Kyushu overlooking the very important Kanmon Straits. On the other side of the straits sits another important trade town named Shimonoseki.
During the medieval period the region was called Buzen. Notable rulers of Buzen were the Ogasawara clan and the Hosokawa, who were also the rulers in Kumamoto. Legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto was a guest of the Hosokawa for many years and lived in both Kokura and Kumamoto.
Great pics… haven’t yet made it to Kokura (or Kitakyushu – both are on my list!)… it’s also notable of course as the town which escaped the bomb which ended up at Nagasaki, due to cloud cover on the day in question. Some of these pics would have looked a little different perhaps were it not for those fortunate clouds.
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Thankyou for your time to reply. Yes, the city of Kokura was lucky, yet Nagasaki unlucky. Although, if you see both Hiroshima and Nagasaki today, they are both very beautiful. Kyushu island is a great place to visit, still relatively unknown, which is good.
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The Wasshoi Hyakuman Natsumatsuri brings all the festivals together for a grand parade and finale near City Hall in Kokura Kita ward. Kitakyushu was formed by the merging of Kokura, Yahata, Wakamatsu, Moji, and Tobata. As a result, the city began, on its tenth anniversary, to combine these local festivals into one. On the h anniversary, it was renamed Wasshoi Hyakuman because the city population had reached one million.
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