Canal City Hakata (Former Kanebo Mill) about 60 years ago and today

History of Canal City Hakata (Former Kanebo Mill)

The Naka River is the river that divides the city of Hakata in two. Fukuoka, opened as a castle town, lies on the west bank, and Hakata, a merchant town that has continued since the Middle Ages, lies on the east bank; the two differ in the origin of their names and in the character of their towns. This location is placed on that east bank, around where the river meets the city streets. In height, the side closer to the river is slightly higher. The western measuring point, at 5.9 m, comes out highest, and the east, away from the river, drops to 4.5 m. The center at 5.3 m, the north at 4.9 m and the south at 4.8 m line up in between, and the spread of the five values is only 1.4 m. It is not a difference you can feel with your body, but it is an order of heights that looks like a trace of landforms where sediment carried by the river piled up along the bank.

A spinning mill needs large amounts of both water and labor. Land on a bank that can draw river water, and that also adjoins a town where workers live, meets both at once. On the land between the river and the town, one wide site was taken in, surrounded by a fine pattern of town blocks. The town blocks on the Hakata side are a fine chain of lots with narrow frontages, and the way of dividing land built up as a merchant town remains as it is. The factory site came to sit inside that fine mesh as a single large lot of a foreign shape. The frame of this location takes in that site, the railway running to the east and the city streets surrounding both.

A frame where fields fill the right half

When you open the 1945-50 aerial photograph, the frame has two faces, with the Naka River as the boundary. The sea and a pier appear in the upper left corner, and from there the Naka River comes down in a large meander through the center left of the frame. The west side of the river is a city area where the roads run in something close to a grid and the roofs are packed tightly. In contrast, the right half and the lower right of the frame are an expanse of fields where strip-shaped lots line up facing the same way, and you can see clearly where the edge of the city area stops. Even in a coarse-grained black-and-white frame, the border between farmland and roofs alone can be followed without hesitation.

On the east bank of the river, at a spot slightly lower left of the center of the frame, a lot appears where long, narrow buildings are lined up neatly. It differs from the fine roofs around it in both size and arrangement. The buildings face the same way only inside the enclosure, and it takes up an area that jumps over one cell of the town-block mesh. A little below the center of the frame, several large white rectangular roofs can also be seen.

A frame filled with roofs

When you switch to 1961-69, the image quality improves by a step, and surfaces of roofs cover most of the frame. Roofs spread into the right half too, which was fields in the previous era, but bright square lots remain in groups along the right edge and around the middle of the bottom of the frame, and you can read that the edge of the city area is still inside the frame. Among the spreading roofs a bundle of lines appears. Many thin lines run in parallel, widest in the middle, and converge one by one toward the north and south ends. In 1963 the station moved to its present position and the passenger and freight yards were placed together in this area, and this shows up directly as a shape in the photograph. The wide lot on the east bank of the river has a clearer outline than in the previous era and can be read by contrast with the fine roofs around it. West of the river the roofs are packed even more densely, and only the white lines of the roads remain as a mesh. It is an era in which the port, the railway and the city area all grow fatter at the same time within the same frame.

Color comes into the frame from the 1974-78 photograph. The color leans toward blue-green, and the water surfaces of the Naka River and the port run as bands of the same blue-green. The bundle of sidings at the station stands out as a white, bright band and becomes the most eye-catching shape on the right side of the frame. In the lot on the east bank of the river, a group of large gray roofs and, south of it, square surfaces the color of soil appear side by side. Wide unpaved surfaces are left between the roofs, which is how a site for making things is used. In the city area, buildings notably taller than the rest begin to mix in among the fine roofs.

The era when a bright surface remains

In the 1987-90 photograph, the colors become deeper, and the Naka River appears as a band muddied brown. Blue metal sheets become noticeable on the roofs of the city area, and the color shows that rebuilding has progressed. In this era the east bank of the river catches the eye most. At the position where the gray roofs were grouped in the previous era, a long, narrow bright gray-white surface stretches diagonally. There are no outlines of buildings, and only the tone of the surface remains. Among the eras provided, this is the only one in which a surface with the roofs gone appears over this much area.

After that blank, the former site was rearranged into blocks built around a canal. It is a layout that surrounds an artificial waterway with buildings and drops stepped plazas and walkways down toward the water surface, and it opened in 1996 as Canal City Hakata. Because one large lot became vacant without being divided, the positions of the waterway and the plazas could be decided before the land was cut up by roads. It is a design that put the water first. The railway side moved too. In the 1980s the subway was extended to Hakata, and Gion Station was placed near this location.

Blocks around a canal

When you advance to the latest photograph, many large box-shaped buildings line up in the lot on the east bank of the river, and the size of their grain clearly differs from the fine roofs around them. The outlines of the buildings do not line up straight but draw gently curving lines. Around the station, large white roofs and high-rise buildings are added, and the tracks run vertically to the east of them. Bridges cross the river at short intervals, and the water surface is tinged with green.

On the other hand, there are things that do not shift even when overlaid on the 1945-50 frame. The shape of the Naka River's meander, the outline of the pier in the upper left and the direction in which the railway runs vertically through the frame are in almost the same position in every era. The one lot on the east bank of the river and the right half that was fields have had their contents replaced in a big way. The lines that set the skeleton of the town have not moved. However, these two replacements followed different paths. Urbanization brought by the arrival of the station and its yards filled the right half, while in the one lot on the east bank the contents of a single site were replaced by another use. Two kinds of change appear side by side in the same frame.

Land values can be followed from 1995 at a residential site in Kamigofuku-machi, Hakata Ward. The distance to the location is 502 m. Starting at 240,000 yen per square meter, the value sank to 135,000 yen in 2012, and with that as the bottom, it is 317,000 yen in 2025. That is about 2.4 times the bottom, and in the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji) it rose further to 343,000 yen, so in the series up to the 2026 publication, 2026 is the highest year. The decline stopped more than ten years after the former site's opening as a town, and it was only from then on that the value turned upward. It is low land with little relief, and close to the river as well. The City of Fukuoka's hazard map draws as zones how far flooding is assumed to reach.