Hakata Culture: Experience Fukuoka Via Fuku-Tabi

“Tabi” means travel in Japanese, and Fuku-Tabi is a new tour program that enables participants to experience the delights only Fukuoka and Hakata have to offer. The tours are not packages offered by a travel agency, but programs planned by people at the destination the travelers will be visiting, an approach that has become popular in recent times. They include such experiences as the chance to sample traditional foods or the daily cultural life of a district, including sites off the beaten path or famous locations known only to the locals, who a... More...

Hakata Culture: The story of the Gold Seal

Most of the business cards used by the municipal employees of Fukuoka City are printed with a shiny mark. Whenever they distribute the cards, the recipients invariably ask if that mark represents is the gold seal. That’s right—the gold seal is Fukuoka City’s only national treasure, and it is formally referred to as the Kan no Wa no Na no Kokuo. It was discovered on the Shikanoshima in Hakata Bay in February 1784 by someone engaged in agricultural work. To be precise, the seal surface is a rather small 2.347 centimeters square, and the seal on the... More...

Hakata Culture: A lot happens on January 7

January 7 is known as Nanokashogatsu, and it has long been the date for the custom of eating the “seven wild herbs of spring” to cure any illness. These seven herbs are water dropwort, shepherd's purse, cudweed, chickweed, nipplewort, lapsana, turnip, and daikon. Years ago, these herbs grew wild near people’s homes, and turnip and daikon were cultivated in gardens. The custom of eating these herbs arose because they were the first to sprout in the new year and were therefore thought to be filled with energy. In addition, people would have ha... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka’s Christmas Lighting

The streets of Fukuoka come alive in December with the decorative lighting the city puts up for Christmas. It festoons local commercial facilities and tourist spots, starting with the department stores and popular speciality shops in the Tenjin district. This month’s column will describe sites that help you to fully embrace the Christmas spirit. The primary sites for the city’s Christmas lighting are Kego Park, near the Mitsukoshi Department Store, and the tree-lined Watanabe-dori, the main street of Tenjin. The We Love Tenjin Association org... More...

Hakata Culture: Shichi-go-san and Poppo-zen

The shichi-go-san festival takes place on November 15th and honors the Japanese custom of celebrating a child’s growth at the ages of three, five, and seven. On that day you’ll see formally dressed children with their parents and grandparents at most Shinto shrines throughout the country. The festival began as a custom in samurai families during the Edo period, but it became more widespread after the Meiji period. Here in the commercial district of Hakata, it is customary to hold the o-zen suwari, during which an auspicious day is chosen for... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka City Retrospect

Fukuoka City was established on April 1, 1889, which means it is celebrating its 120th anniversary as a municipality this year. The Fukuoka City Museum is now holding an exhibit that offers a retrospective look of the city’s history over those 120 years. Hakata was a much smaller city in 1889, and its territory covered only parts of the current Chuo and Hakata wards. The population at its founding was 50,847. The other Kyushu cities that officially become municipalities that year were Kurume, Saga City, Nagasaki City, Kumamoto City, and Kagoshima... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale

Opened in 1999, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum is one of only a few museums in the world to systematically collect and exhibit modern and contemporary Asian art. The inspiration for this museum and the Triennale came with the Asia Art Exhibition that had been held every year since 1979 when the Fukuoka Art Museum opened in Ohori Park. Asian works of art, grounded in distinctive cultures and traditions, have attracted great interest recently, but it was the Fukuoka Art Museum that took notice of the art 30 years ago. Local governments throughou... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka City’s First Swimming Beaches

All of us enjoy sea bathing with friends and family during Summer vacations. The best beaches for swimming in Fukuoka that come to mind are Nokonoshima, Ikinomatsubara, and Obaru in Nishi Ward, and Shikanoshima and Katsuma in Higashi Ward. When did beach swimming become a popular recreation? The practice is said to have originated in Great Britain in the 18th century when a doctor established a seaside resort as a method for treating illness. In Japan, the records show that sites for sea bathing were created for medical treatment in Okayama Pref... More...

Hakata Culture: The Yamakasa Happi

It’s no wonder that everyone who sees the Hakata Gion Yamakasa festival thinks it’s terrific. Older men clad in business suits who seem so tired of life, and young people too, seem to become suddenly transformed when they don the happi coat. More than the loincloth, the hand towels whose colors and patterns denote different roles, the geta and tabi, and the kakinawa hanging from the waist, the happi coat makes the difference for the men. Two types of happi coats are used. One is called the mizu happi, and is worn by those who actually pull t... More...

Hakata Culture: Kabuki Comes To Town

Hakata-za is a big favorite not only of Fukuoka City residents, but its popularity has spread throughout Kyushu and extends to the rest of the country. Located in Shimokawabata-cho in the city’s Hakata Ward, the theater presents a diverse range of performances from kabuki to musicals, and these offerings change every month. The facility was planned with the objective of revitalizing the once-flourishing artistic sector in Hakata. It was built by the city and is operated by a largely private-sector company in which major regional corporations and ... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka City by Numbers

Did you know that a new municipal directory is published every year to coincide with the start of the business year on April 1? It presents an overview of the most up-to-date statistical data on Fukuoka City. It’s also placed on the Fukuoka city website. This month, I’ll profile the city using these new figures.The city’s population keeps growing every year, and as of October 1, 2008, it stood at 1,437,718 people in 684,717 households. The females outnumber the males; there were 749,668 women to 688,050 men. Fukuoka is a relatively young city for... More...

Hakata Culture: The Fukuoka Asian Art Museum

The world’s first museum dedicated to Asian art Ten years ago, on March 6, 1999, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum opened in the Hakata Riverain Center Building, next to the Hakata-za playhouse. It is the first art museum in the world to systematically collect and display modern Asian art. The collection includes nearly 2,300 pieces in various styles from 21 countries and territories in Asia, and the quality of its collection makes the museum a world-class institution. Asian art is currently attracting the world’s attention, but there has be... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka’s First Foreign Scholars

It’s not unusual today for people in junior high school or high school to travel to foreign countries for study, but do you know who the first people in Fukuoka were to study abroad? The first overseas trip for educational purposes occurred in March 1867 at the tail end of the Edo period, after the Shogunate lifted restrictions on travel outside the country. Viewers of the NHK drama Atsuhime might be quite knowledgeable about this time period. In those days, Fukuoka and Kuroda-han suffered from a fiscal deficit. Kuroda Nagahiro, the feudal lor... More...

Hakata Culture: Anthologizing Fukuoka's History

In the Edo Period an ancient “kin'in” or golden seal which symbolized a diplomatic relationship between Japan and China was discovered in Fukuoka. The seal, which has been made a National Treasure, tells us that the history of Fukuoka/Hakata is the history of interaction between Japan and Asia itself. There have been ties between Fukuoka and foreign countries from ancient times to the present, during every historical period and every government, and traces of this interaction remain in the city. The history of the city is a valuable community... More...

Hakata Culture: Strolling through Daimyo

I decided to write about the Daimyo district when I heard that this month’s issue would focus on Daimyo fashion. After all, I wrote about the Daimyo community for my master’s thesis, so I know a bit about the subject. Still, that was five years ago, in 2003. In those days, young people used to flock to the Daimyo district. So many people from throughout Kyushu were there on weekends it was as if they were holding a festival. In the five years since then, a lot of vacant lots have appeared as shops and buildings have closed their doors. It’s becom... More...

Hakata Culture: Geisha to Grace Hakata-za's Stage

The Japanese term for the office in which geisha are hired is kenban. These offices are located all over the country, but the recent decline in the number of geisha has resulted in fewer requests for their services. The first kenban in Hakata opened in 1889, and by the early 20th century there were five of them here. During this heyday there were over 2,000 registered geisha in Hakata, but now there are only 21, ranging in age from their teens to their 80s. The work of a geisha involves more than just appearing at private parties. The year ... More...

Hakata Culture: Sadaharu Oh – Oh-tsukaresamadeshita!

Fukuoka Softbank Hawks manager Sadaharu Oh broke into the Japanese major leagues with the Yomiuri Tokyo Giants in 1959 and retired as a player in 1980 after hitting 868 home runs. The kanji for his last name is truly fitting: it means “king”, and he is known throughout the world as a king among players. Oh went on to manage the Giants, and he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1994. That same year, Rikuo Nemoto, the Hawks’ manager at the time, proposed that Oh be his successor. I’ve heard that Oh struggled with the decision to live in Fukuoka a... More...

Hakata Culture: Fielding Foreign Tourists' Questions

The number of overseas travelers visiting Fukuoka is soaring. In 2007, 719,970 people came from abroad through Fukuoka Airport or Hakata Port to visit the city. This is an increase of 15% from the previous year, continuing a four-year trend of double-digit growth. Over those four years, the number of foreign tourists has roughly doubled from a total of 365,151 in 2003. Particularly worthy of note is the rise in the number of South Korean tourists. To deal with the heavy influx, Fukuoka City opened a call center service providing tourism informati... More...

Hakata Culture: Background on Fukuoka's Asian Month

Residents of Fukuoka understand just how close we are to other Asian cities. Travelers from Fukuoka can fly to Shanghai in roughly the same amount of time it takes to Tokyo, and Seoul and Osaka are almost equidistant. That’s why I use my mileage points to visit Asian cities rather than domestic destinations. High-speed jet foils sail daily to Busan in South Korea, which signed a sister city agreement with Fukuoka City in February 2007. Fukuoka's geographical proximity to the Korean Peninsula and the Chinese mainland have allowed the city to long ... More...

Hakata Culture: Asian Tourists Present Opportunities and Challenges

Overseas tourists are visiting Fukuoka in increasing numbers every year. Fukuoka Airport now has 17 regularly scheduled international routes with 316 flights a week. These air routes link us to 16 cities overseas, primarily in China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. Including Japanese, a total of approximately 2.2 million travelers used the airport in the 2006 business year. Furthermore, in 2007 about 844,000 travelers, both Japanese and foreign, used the Port of Hakata terminal to board ferries and high-speed jetfoils to Busan, South Kor... More...
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