小倉と門司港を歩くWalking Kokura and Moji Port

Today I am once again moving between Kokura and Moji Port in Kitakyushu. Although I had passed through the area several times by car, this was my first time actually walking through the city itself. Kokura, which has now been merged into Kitakyushu City, feels like one of the few remaining places in Japan that still barely preserves traces of old Japan, which have all but disappeared elsewhere. In fact, heading about an hour west from here brings you to Hakata, Kyushu’s largest city. But when compared to the various cities I have visited across Japan, Hakata, while compact, gives the impression of being overly crowded, whereas Kokura feels even more compact, with very few high-rise buildings, and the population size seems to settle into what could be called “just right,” creating an atmosphere very different from other regions.

As I travel across Japan, what I notice most is the accelerating flow from declining birthrates to a super-aging society, into which Japan was the first in the world to plunge. In reality, prefectures such as Akita, Iwate, and Aomori, often listed as the top “disappearing cities,” are not so much “sparsely populated” as they are essentially “vanishing,” and this trend is spreading to other regions as well. I felt a similar atmosphere recently in Tokushima and Wakayama. Kokura too once thrived as a city of over one million people, but now its population has fallen below that threshold, with demographic decline becoming a major concern, just as in other regions. Even so, when thinking in terms of “an appropriate size for a city,” particularly from the perspective of “the Japanese sense of personal distance,” Kokura seems to have maintained the most suitable scale for living. When I actually talk with people in the city, even among the younger generations, there is still a sense of mental spaciousness, a kind of inner margin, which translates into smiles and cheerfulness, making me feel that the richness of the Japanese spirit, now lost in most urban areas, still remains here uniquely.

The reason I came to Kokura was because an old friend loved this city and repeatedly recommended it to me. After actually visiting, I understood his words well. Kokura has preserved landscapes, warmth of people, richness, and smiles that have rapidly disappeared across Japan over the past twenty years, and perhaps it is the only city left in Japan to maintain such charm. However, what I have felt while traveling through Kitakyushu, as well as Fukuoka and Oita, is that the pace of change, as more people with different ways of living come and go, has outrun what the towns' systems can absorb. While tourism and the welcoming of newcomers expand rapidly, rules and directives are often decided far from the lived sense of the people who live here, and the words “diversity” and “coexistence” come first. The young people of the area are bewildered by this. Diversity and coexistence are not things one declares; they grow quietly when different people live in the same place and keep their differences. The frustration with systems that put anyone ahead of the people who live here is becoming strongly apparent even in regions like Kokura that still preserve a sense of richness.

Originally, Kokura had a history as a key gateway through the Kanmon Strait into the Seto Inland Sea, but modern-day Kokura seems to me like a place where “the richness of heart that is being lost” still breathes. In other words, Kokura today can be read as an indicator of where Japan’s cities are heading. In major metropolitan areas like Tokyo, Osaka, and even Kyoto, such traits have already vanished: a surge of tourists arrives without a well-regulated system in place, and the lives of people who live there are pushed to the back, so their bewilderment grows by the day. Since this current may reach Kokura as well, it will surely lead to major social change.

Yet what I noticed on this visit is that, compared to other Kyushu cities, Kokura moves at a gentler pace, and the distance between people feels just right. This makes it feel comfortable for those who live here, and I personally felt that way during this trip. How Kitakyushu, a region with a long history of mingling with countless cultures, changes from here may well influence the future of Japan’s cities. Kokura is one of the places where richness remains in urban life, and through interaction with its residents it may offer a chance to recover what has been lost. But how many years this will last remains uncertain. In fact, the city is clearly at a turning point: beyond the obvious aging of its population, shuttered shopping streets just outside the city center are undeniable signs of decline.

Going forward, will Kokura become an indicator reflecting the decline of cities, or will it generate a new current that lights the way for the nation as a whole? In any case, the time for a major decision does not seem far away. As I look across the Kanmon Strait toward Yamaguchi and Moji, seeing people walking in the wind and ships passing through, I am reminded of the peaceful scenery of old Japan. Yet at the same time, with a typhoon having suddenly developed this morning off the coast of Kagoshima and now predicted to sweep across Japan, I cannot help but feel that in our current era, unsettling changes may emerge suddenly and without warning.

Before a town changing this fast, there are people who do not know what to hold on to. At the same time, those who have newly arrived and those who have long lived here, each carrying their own culture and history, stand in the same wind off the same strait. Opposites existing together in one place, this tension and this possibility, intertwined with global currents, will bring profound change to Japan, I feel, as I look at Kitakyushu.

The calm Kanmon Strait is now wrapped in an uneasy stillness before the coming typhoon.