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Establishment[edit]
View of the city from Mount Sarakura, with the Kanmon Straits in the background.
The city of Kitakyushu was established on February 10, 1963, as an agglomeration of the five cities of Moji, Kokura, Wakamatsu, Yahata, and Tobata. It was elevated to the status of designated city on April 1 of that year, becoming the first such city outside of the Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya metropolitan areas. At the time of its foundation, it had a population of more than one million people, and until it was overtaken by the city of Fukuoka in 1979, it was Kyushu's most populous city. Kitakyushu's current administrative, economic and transport hub is located in Kokurakita-ku, the heart of the former Kokura city. It is centred around Kokura station, which is served by the San'yō Shinkansen high-speed railway, and is Kitakyushu's main shopping and entertainment district. The city's symbol mark is a flower with the Chinese character "north" (北, kita) in the middle and five petals representing the each of its constituent cities.
Because of its proximity to the Kanmon Straits, and by extension, the Japanese main island of Honshu, Kitakyushu has long served as the gateway to Kyushu, and as a transport hub. Kitakyushu is the starting point for Kyushu's railway and road network. In the Edo period, Kitakyushu was the northern terminus of the Nagasaki Kaidō, a highway linking Nagasaki, the only port in Japan open to foreign trade under the policy of sakoku, with Honshu. During the Meiji period, railways were constructed from the 1880s, along with the ports of Moji and Wakamatsu. Yahata, located on the Dōkai Bay, was originally nothing more than a fishing village. Its proximity to coal deposits in the surrounding Chikuhō region, and good sea links to sources of iron ore in China, led to it being chosen as the site for the Yahata Steel Works, which opened in 1901. This was the hub of Japan's nascent steel industry, and the surrounding area on the coast of the Dōkai Bay and Genkai Sea emerged as the focal point of Japan's pre-Second World War industrialisation. By 1913, Yahata was responsible for 85% of Japan's total steel output; the city's population grew from 6,652 in 1901 to 100,235 in 1920. In recognition of the area's contributions to Japan's industrial history, several historical sites in the city, including the head office of the steel works, were recognised by UNESCO in 2015 as part of the "Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining".
The five cities that now constitute Kitakyushu developed in competition with each other during Japan's period of industrialisation, and each carried its own unique industrial profile. With its railway and sea links, Moji, centred on Mojikō station, was a hub for international trade and food processing. Kokura, an old castle town, was known for its defence industry. Wakamatsu's railway and port complex served as the largest coal shipment hub in Japan. Yahata was dominated by the steel industry. Tobata was home to coal-related industries, textile plants, and a fishing industry. While they vary in size, each of the former cities retains its own urban centre to this day.
Second World War[edit]
Further information: Bombing of Yahata
Kitakyushu's character as the heart of Japanese industry made it a target for strategic bombing during the Second World War. 75 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses were despatched from mainland China to attack Yahata on June 16, 1944, in the first American bombing of the Japanese home islands. Kokura was the primary target of the nuclear weapon "Fat Man" on August 9, 1945. Major Charles Sweeney had orders to drop the bomb visually. All three attempts failed when he was unable to identify the target clearly due to clouds and smoke from Yahata, which had suffered air raids on the previous day. Additionally, a smoke screen was created by industrial workers burning barrels of coal tar and/or electric plant workers releasing steam. The bomb was ultimately dropped on the city of Nagasaki, the secondary target, at 11:02 JST.
Post-war[edit]
Yahata Steel Works in 2014
Extensive damage to industrial infrastructure during the war left the region in ruins, with residents suffering from malnutrition. Kitakyushu's industrial revival would come with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, when military demand for steel put production at the Yahata Steel Works into overdrive. In the following years, Kitakyushu's development continued to be driven by heavy industry, such as steel and metalworking, and these industries helped drive Japan's post-war economic boom. Like in other major Japanese cities, industrial development in Kitakyushu resulted in severe air and water pollution in the post-war period. In the 1960s, the Dōkai Bay was known as the "Sea of Death" due to severe water pollution caused by industrial runoff, which meant that no living organisms were present in its waters. Eventually this issue was overcome after activism by civic groups, such as the Tobata Women's Association, which resulted in public-private co-operation to curb pollution.
As heavy industries like steel began to decline in the 1970s due to factors such as the two oil shocks and tighter environmental regulations, Kitakyushu reoriented its economy toward the service sector. While steel and other industries continued to play a central role in Kitakyushu's economy, the number of people employed in these sectors sunk during the latter half of the twentieth century: over the period from 1965 to 1988, 27,713 jobs were lost in the iron and steel sector alone. With its history of overcoming pollution, Kitakyushu pivoted towards a new role as a centre for green industry, and now proclaims itself an "environmental city". The municipal government established the Kitakyushu Film Commission to attract the film and television industries to the city, promoting a further diversification of its economy. After a restructuring of the Yahata Steel Works by Nippon Steel, part of the complex was redeveloped into a theme park called Space World, which opened in 1990. This project aimed to improve the city's image, and promote tourism.
As a nexus of land and sea transport, Kitakyushu's tertiary (service) sector exceeded neighbouring Fukuoka's in scale until the end of the 1960s, and the regional branches of most Japanese companies, such as newspapers, banks, and trading firms, were located in the city. At the time, Kitakyushu was the economic heart of Kyushu. It was its largest industrial city, and home to vibrant secondary and tertiary sectors. This would change, however, with the modal shift from railway to air transport. Kitakyushu had no airport capable of handling large jet aircraft until the opening of Kitakyushu Airport in 2006; Fukuoka, on the other hand, has long been home to a major airport within its city limits. Businessmen travelling from Tokyo head offices to Kyushu now found Fukuoka a more convenient locale; when the San'yō Shinkansen opened with Hakata as its terminus in 1975, Fukuoka's status as an economic centre was elevated even further. As an example, the Yomiuri Shimbun moved its regional headquarters in western Japan from Kitakyushu to Fukuoka in 2004. While the regional branches of the Asahi and Mainichi newspapers have retained their corporate registration in Kitakyushu, actual operations have been moved to offices in Fukuoka.
The city was subject to decades of Yakuza-related violence and crime, to the point that it became known in Japan as "the city of never-ending conflict" (修羅の国, shura no kuni). A member of the Kudo-kai group threw a hand grenade into a crowded Kokura nightclub in August 2003, an incident that sparked a concerted effort to root out the violent groups and suppress criminal activity in the city. The number of criminal offences committed in Kitakyushu peaked in 2002, with 35,280 cases recorded in that year; by 2023, action taken by the local authorities brought the number of cases down by 87%, with only 5,109 recorded.
Kitakyushu's population peaked at 1,680,000 in 1979; even at the height of the bubble economy during the late 1980s, its population had started to decline slightly. With the Kitakyushu industrial area's decline in significance, the move towards a service economy, transfer of branch offices to Fukuoka, and the increasing concentration of people in areas with advanced educational facilities such as Fukuoka, Keihanshin, and Tokyo, Kitakyushu's population has continued to fall. In 2020, the city's ageing rate reached 30.6%, the worst of any designated city in Japan, and population decline is becoming a serious issue. However, suburbs such as Kanda and Yukuhashi have seen population increases, and there has been some growth in the urban centre of Kokurakita-ku. Furthermore, in 2023 and 2024, the number of businesses moving to Kitakyushu exceeded those who chose Fukuoka, and its startup rate rose to the highest across Japan.
