Hakata Culture: New ginger, Hakata champon, and Hojoya hajiki!

One sure sign that autumn is coming soon to Fukuoka-Hakata is the Hojoya festival. With the Hakata Gion Yamakasa and the Hakata Dontaku, it is one of the three most important festivals in the area. The Hojoya festival is said to have originated in the year 720 at the Usa Hachiman-gu Shinto Shrine in Oita to commemorate the war dead. Since then, the festival has been an event for honoring the living. It is held in Fukuoka every year from September 12 – 18 at the Hakozakigu Shinto Shrine in Higashi Ward. The main path of the shrine is lined with op... More...

Hakata Culture: Cine-la—another important asset

Located in the Momochihama section of Sawara Ward, the Fukuoka City Public Library consists of three sections: a library, a city archive, and a film archive. The library has 1.2 million volumes, a wide selection of weekly publications, and 44 national and 18 international newspapers. The city archive holds microfilms of materials dating from the Meiji period. But the film archive is worthy of particular note. There the library collects and stores valuable movies from throughout Asia with the objective of becoming a film archive for the continent.... More...

Hakata Culture: Hakata's Special Summer Sweet

Fukuoka is reputed to be the birthplace of manju in Japan. Shoichi Kokushi, the founder of the Shoten-ji Buddhist Temple near Hakata Station, studied in China during the Sung Dynasty and brought what he learned back to Japan. One of the things he learned was the recipe for manju. More recently, another famous Japanese confection made only in the summer was created here — Hakata Minazuki. It was developed by the New Fukuoka – Hakata Wagashi Development Society. The latter was formed by members of the Fukuoka City Wagashi Union which is this y... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka Tower: Easy as 123, 234

The Fukuoka Tower in the Seaside Momochi district of Sawara Ward has become the symbol of Fukuoka City and its most famous landmark. All a photographer has to do is fit the tower, the nearby dome, and the seashore into the same shot and natives and out-of-towners alike will instantly recognize the site as Fukuoka. The tower was built in 1989 for that year’s Asia-Pacific Exposition, commonly referred to as Yokatopia, to commemorate Fukuoka City’s 100th anniversary as a municipality. The idea of moving the broadcast tower for NHK and the comme... More...

Hakata Culture: Signs of Summer

The Fukuoka Jo Gakuin Junior and Senior High School, a school for girls commonly known as Mission by the locals, is an institution rich in history and is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. The original establishment was founded in 1885 by missionary Jenny Gheer in Fukuoka’s Inaba-cho, now known as Tenjin 2-chome. It moved to Tenjin-machi in 1888 to occupy the only building with Western-style architecture in Fukuoka. The school is famous for being the first to introduce sailor-style uniforms in 1921. The headmistress at the time, Elizabe... More...

Hakata Culture: Fukuoka City Ranked as #1 Regional City

The main article in the March 15 issue of fashion and design trend magazine Brutus, published by Magazine House, is titled “Anti-Tokyo? Cool Local!”, and ranks the 50 most appealing regional cities in Japan. Edging out such well-known cities as Kyoto, Sapporo, Naha, and Kanazawa for the top spot on the list was the city we call home—Fukuoka City! On the panel of judges was Tokyo native Uichi Yamamoto, famous as the man who launched the café boom. He designed Comment Allez Vous, a café facing the Naka River, and Haruqui, a Japanese-style café... More...

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...
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