Edo period ''. Woodblock print by
Utagawa Kuniyoshi at the foot of Kokura castle on the spot where Musashi is said to have lived. The
Ogasawara and
Hosokawa clans were
daimyō at
Kokura Castle during the Edo period (1603–1868).
Miyamoto Musashi, samurai swordsman, author of
The Book of Five Rings and founder of the
Hyoho Niten Ichi-ryū, famous for its use of two swords, lived in the Kokura castle under the patronage of the Ogasawara and Hosokawa clans briefly during 1634.
Meiji period After the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Kokura was the seat of government for
Kokura Prefecture. When the municipal system of cities, towns and villages was introduced, Kokura Town was one of 25 towns in the prefecture, which later merged with
Fukuoka Prefecture. Kokura was elevated to city status as in 1900.
World War II Kokura was the primary target for the "
Fat Man" atomic bomb on August 9, 1945, but on the morning of the raid, the city was obscured by morning fog. Kokura had also been mistaken for the neighboring city of
Yahata the day before by the reconnaissance missions. Since the mission commander Major
Charles Sweeney had orders to drop the bomb visually and not by radar, he diverted to the secondary target,
Nagasaki. The planes, however, did fly over Kokura and were extremely close to executing the mission drop.
Post-war Kokura was merged with four other cities to form
Kitakyushu in 1963. It constituted the Kokura ward of the new city until 1974, when it was divided into
Kokura Kita ward in the north, and
Kokura Minami ward in the south. ==Notable residents==