Mojiko Retro about 60 years ago and today

History of Mojiko Retro

The flat land of Mojiko lies on the Kyushu side, around where the Kanmon Strait is narrowest. When you open the aerial photographs of this location, the left half of the frame is sea all over, and the city area on the opposite shore appears only slightly in the upper left corner. The remaining right half is mountains, and the flat land is squeezed like a band between the sea and the slopes. The port town was placed here not because the flat land was wide, but because it had a narrowness convenient for bringing ships alongside. The flat land that was lacking was made later by people, adding the shore out toward the sea.

A port where the mountains press toward the sea

If you measure the height of the land, the thinness of this band shows directly. It is only 3.4 m at the center of the location, 4.6 m to the east and 2.5 m to the west. But toward the south it jumps to 24.5 m, telling you that the flat land ends and the slope begins. And the measuring point to the north has no value. The north is already over the sea, and there is no ground to measure the height of. The fact that one of the four directions is missing expresses the outline of this land better than anything.

It was at the end of the 1880s that the port was designated by the state as a port for shipping out coal, and harbor construction and reclamation began from there. Landing piers and quays jutted out toward the sea, behind them port warehouses called transit sheds were built, and tracks were drawn in right up to the doors of the warehouses. In 1914 a wooden station building was built, and transfers between the railway and ships gathered at this one point. Travel to and from Honshu was carried by ferries crossing the sea, and the station was the entrance on the Kyushu side.

When a railway tunnel passing under the seabed came through in 1942, the necessity of transferring began to fade. The people and cargo that had gathered at the port to wait for ships gradually became able to manage without passing through the port.

A shore lined with transit sheds

The black-and-white 1961-69 photograph shows a trading port still at work. Countless ships are scattered on the sea, with thin wakes drawn beside white hulls. Large ships at anchor offshore mix with small boats that have just left the shore, and wherever you look on the water something is floating. In the upper left corner the seawall and city area of the opposite shore come in slightly, showing that the width of the strait ends at the left edge of this frame. Toward the top of the sea a band of bright color extends sideways, looking like a streak of shallow water.

On the shore side, rows of transit sheds occupied the water's edge. In the center of the frame, at the boundary between the sea and the city area, many buildings with long, narrow large roofs line up in parallel facing the same direction. Just north of them small boats are packed tightly with their bows toward the shore, and farther north one jetty juts out into the sea. From the south of the warehouses a bundle of tracks spreads like a fan, traces the edge of the city area in a curve and runs off to the south. These are the lines where loaded freight cars changed places with ships.

The right half is mountains, and roofs cling to the slopes between hills of dark woods. Narrow roads tracing the slopes wind around in many layers, taking a shape completely unlike the straight land divisions of the flat land. Toward the bottom of the frame there is a horizontal switch, and the tone is brighter only below it. This is because surfaces taken on different days have been joined, and if you read them as the same darkness you will mistake the shading of the mountains.

The year a bridge was built

In the 1974-78 color photograph, the newcomer that catches the eye most is at the top edge. In 1973 a bridge was built. The long girders of the bridge crossing the strait cut across the upper edge of the frame, and the approach road on the Kyushu side is drawn into the foot of the mountains. At the same position in 1961-69 there were only the water surface and a cape, so if you switch eras the difference is clear at a glance.

On the shore, a single large black ship lies long alongside the quay in front of the warehouses. The outline of the ship looks bigger than the buildings, showing that cargo handling is still going on. The bundle of tracks has clearly increased in number since the previous era and can be read as a band of parallel lines. Red ones begin to mix among the roofs as well. On the mountain side, the housing on the slopes extends upward, and bright lots made by cutting the woods and a brown oval sports ground appear. The lower right corner has turned a purplish color, and this too is a surface from a different day.

A sea without ships

The first thing you notice in today's photograph is that the sea has become quiet. The ships have disappeared from the sea. Instead of the ships that filled the water surface, only one boat trailing a thin wake is offshore. It is the sea after the port's role moved to another shore.

The row of warehouses at the water's edge is gone too. The lot that the long, narrow large roofs occupied together has been replaced by finely divided buildings, bands of green that look like lawns and wide paving. The water surface of the inlet cut into the shore and the landing piers remain, and their surroundings have been arranged so that people can walk around them. In 1995 this area was put together as a tourist district in a way that makes use of the old buildings that were left. The disappearance of the warehouses and the narrowing of the blocks are traces of that reorganization. On the shore at the lower left there is one lot of reddish-brown bare ground, which looks as if the soil is in the middle of being moved.

Even so, the bundle of tracks still remains. In the lower middle of the frame, the lines that once spread like a fan are in the same position while decreasing in number, threading between the wide paved surfaces. The jetty to the north and the quay to its south can also be confirmed in almost the same shape as in 1961-69. In the upper right of the frame many white round tanks line up, and that shore keeps its face of handling freight. The outline of the mountains hardly moves whichever era you switch to. The roofs on the slopes have increased, but the shapes of the hilltops and the lines of the valleys are the same.

For land values, a record from 1983 to 2026 remains at a residential area in Kiyotaki, about 440 m away. In the first year it was 70,600 yen per square meter; it peaked in the record up to the 2026 official land prices (Chika Koji) at 85,500 yen, which continued for eight years from 1993 to 2000, kept falling from there, and is 48,700 yen in 2026. The striking feature of this location is that the lowest value up to the 2026 publication comes in 2026, at the end of the record.

The blocks sit on a band a few meters high that touches the sea. The hazard maps of the City of Kitakyushu and Fukuoka Prefecture show how far water is assumed to reach, divided finely by zone. If you check the zone you stand in before walking the port, the way you read the photographs changes too.