Kokura Station North Exit about 60 years ago and today

History of Kokura Station North Exit

Leave Kokura Station by the Shinkansen exit, and beyond the street in front of the station you see the large roof of an exhibition hall and a stadium with grass, and the water of the port begins right beyond that. The north side of the station is flat land held between the tracks and the sea, and its height hardly changes toward the sea. While the castle town on the south side has piled up streets and rows of houses over hundreds of years, the land on this side has an outline cut squarely from the sea by straight seawalls, and the things on top of it have been replaced many times. In the 1945-50 photograph, just after the end of the war, this band hardly appears, and the state between the port and the tracks can be seen from 1961-69 on.

Between the port and the tracks

For the width of the frame, the land on the north side of the station is surprisingly thin. A bundle of tracks crosses the center of the frame from left to right, and above it there is only a little depth before the water. On the left the Murasaki River flows from south to north into the sea, and on the west side of the river mouth a large group of factories with rows of red-brown roofs occupies the shore. On the shore to the right round storage tanks stand in a row, and farther right the tracks open like a fan to form the wide surface of the yard. The band north of the station is a section closed off on the left and right by the river and the factories, the tanks and the yard, with the port to the north and the tracks to the south, enclosed on all four sides.

The story of the band begins when the station came to this position. According to the history of Kokurakita Ward, Japanese National Railways' Kokura Station moved to its present location in 1958. While the town layout continuing from the castle town spreads on the south side of the station, the north side was the back of the station, and in the photographs of the 1960s the port's quays and vacant land face each other. It is fair to say it was a station whose front and back were clearly divided. The expression of that back side begins to change after the Shinkansen reached this station.

The layers of railway kept piling up after that. In 1975 the Sanyo Shinkansen opened, and in 1985 the urban monorail Kokura Line began running. The side that had been the back of the station joined the fronts seen by people getting on and off.

A missing photograph and a photograph of the port

In the 1945-50 photograph, the upper two-thirds of the frame is gray and missing. Neither the north side of the station nor the port can be seen in this era. Only the southern third is photographed. At the left edge the river runs down in a large arc, and on its west bank long, narrow buildings of the same shape line up in many rows. From the center to the lower right a wide white road runs diagonally, with a fine fabric of houses filling the surroundings. In the middle of the bottom edge there is one oval running track, and to the right a corner can be seen where small buildings line up regularly facing the same direction. All of these are places away to the south of the station, and this photograph holds no material for telling the story of the band to the north.

The 1961-69 photograph takes in the whole of the band. The bundle of tracks widens at the station and, curving south as it goes right, connects to the surface of the yard. Just north of the station there is a single, isolated white, flat rectangular open space, strikingly bright among the built-up blocks around it. North of it the water of the port cuts deeply into the land, and straight quays and jetties divide the water. Many small boats float on the water, and the top edge is all sea. Round storage tanks line the shore at the upper right, and at the upper left the large buildings of factories press right up to the water's edge. West of the river on the left, a square section enclosed by a moat appears dark. It is thought to be the castle grounds of Kokura Castle, and according to the history of the City of Kitakyushu, the main keep was restored in 1959. In the middle of the bottom edge two oval running tracks stand side by side.

Above the tracks, in 1974-78, a long, narrow white roof extends far to the right from the station. It is thought to be the roof of the platforms of the Sanyo Shinkansen, which opened in 1975. The water of the port appears blue-gray and the factory roofs red-brown, and the rectangular open space north of the station is still empty, bare brown earth. The notch of the port on the station side and the shape of the quays are almost the same as in the previous era, and the storage tanks at the upper right also remain. In the middle of the top edge, square land juts out where there was water in 1961-69, with long buildings with red roofs on it. The ovals at the bottom edge have decreased to one, and a large building stands where the other one was.

The open space is replaced by buildings

The first thing to move greatly on the band was the open space that had been empty. According to materials of the City of Kitakyushu, the West Japan General Exhibition Center was built in 1977, after which the city set up the Kitakyushu International Conference Center in 1990 and the Kitakyushu International Exhibition Hall in 1998, and the three came to be operated as one. Buildings for exhibitions and conferences gathered on the north side of the station, and the land that had been the back of the station changed into a place for drawing people from far away. In March 2017 Mikuni World Stadium Kitakyushu opened in a place facing the port.

At the position of the rectangle that was white and empty in 1961-69, large buildings with flat roofs and tall buildings stand in rows in today's photograph. At the water's edge north of them a stadium, green grass surrounded by stands on all four sides, appears clearly, fitting right beside the notch of the port. The quays and jetties on the station side match those of the old eras, but on the opposite shore at the top edge the land that jutted out in 1974-78 continues. The round storage tanks at the upper right still stand in a row, and the factory group at the upper left also keeps its red-brown roofs. The castle section on the left is wrapped in the green of trees, and the line of the moat can also be made out. In the middle of the bottom edge, where the oval running track was, a large white oval roof sits. On the right a large building with a silver roof has been added on the shore at the back of the port, and beyond it the bundle of tracks runs off to the east. The direction of the tracks and the position of the port's notch are unchanged from 1961-69; the buildings on the band and the land added on the opposite shore have been replaced instead.

Even as the character of the band changed, its long, narrow shape held between the sea and the tracks has never changed. The change is only in what sits on the band: its contents were replaced from the buildings and vacant land along the quays to exhibition halls and a stadium. The period during which the open space stood empty is long in the photographs too, and through the two eras of 1961-69 and 1974-78, a surface of bare earth in front of the station remained. That single vacant lot can be read as what later gave room to assemble the north of the station all together with large buildings. It is low flat land touching the sea, and the assumed flooding in heavy rain or storm surges is shown on the hazard map published by the City of Kitakyushu.