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Kurume is a city of about 300,000 people on the Chikugo Plain in southern Fukuoka Prefecture, beside the Chikugo River, Kyushu's largest. Once the site of the provincial capital of Chikugo, it is today a regional centre some 40 kilometres south of Fukuoka City.
In the Edo period Kurume was the castle town of the Arima lords of the Kurume Domain, who promoted local industries. During the First World War more than 1,000 German prisoners of war were held here, in the largest such camp in Japan. Its rubber industry grew into Bridgestone, founded here by Shōjirō Ishibashi, and the city is also known for Kurume kasuri cloth and as the birthplace of tonkotsu ramen.
Visitors climb Mount Kōra to Kōra Taisha, walk the castle walls and the shrine of Kurume Suitengū by the river, see the paintings of Aoki Shigeru and Sakamoto Hanjirō at the Ishibashi Culture Center, and finish with a bowl of Kurume ramen.
Kōra Taisha is the great Shinto shrine on the slopes of Mount Kōra in Kurume, the ichinomiya or first-ranked shrine of old Chikugo Province. Its main halls of 1660 and 1661 were given by Arima Yoritoshi, third lord of Kurume, and rank among the largest shrine buildings in Kyushu.
Mount Kōra is the sacred hill east of central Kurume at the western end of the Minō mountains, rising to 312 metres at its main peak. Long a religious and military stronghold, it holds Kōra Taisha, the ancient stone rows of Kōgoishi and a forest of rare striped bamboo protected by the state.
Kurume Suitengū is the Shinto shrine on the Chikugo River in Kurume that heads every Suitengū shrine in Japan, including the one in Tokyo. It honours the child Emperor Antoku, lost in the sea battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, with his mother and grandmother, and was set on its present site in 1650.
Bairin-ji is a Rinzai Zen temple by the Chikugo River in Kurume, founded in 1621 as the family temple of the Arima lords and known for its strict Zen training hall. Five mausoleum buildings of the Arima family are Important Cultural Properties, and its outer garden holds some 500 plum trees.
Kurume Castle stood on a hill at a bend of the Chikugo River in Kurume and was the seat of the Arima clan from 1621 until the Meiji era. Its buildings are gone, but stone walls up to 15 metres high and a moat ring the main bailey, which now holds Sasayama Shrine and the Arima Memorial Hall.
The Ishibashi Culture Center is a park of gardens, museums, a library and a concert hall in Kurume, given to the city in 1956 by Shōjirō Ishibashi, the Kurume-born founder of Bridgestone. Among its buildings is the studio of the painter Sakamoto Hanjirō, moved here from the nearby town of Yame.
The Kurume City Art Museum is the art museum in the Ishibashi Culture Center in Kurume, reopened in 2016 in the 1956 building of the Ishibashi Museum of Art. It focuses on Western-style painters with roots in Kurume, above all Aoki Shigeru and Sakamoto Hanjirō, along with other artists of Kyushu.
Kurume Ramen is the rich pork-bone ramen of Kurume, held to be the origin of tonkotsu ramen. It began with a noodle stall by Nishitetsu Kurume Station in 1937, and its cloudy white soup came about by chance at another stall in 1947, when the broth was left to boil far longer than planned.
Naritasan Kurume Bunin is a Shingon Buddhist temple in Kurume, opened in 1958 as a branch of Naritasan Shinshō-ji near Tokyo. Its white statue of Kannon holding a child, 62 metres tall, has stood since 1982 and can be climbed inside, beside a full-size copy of the Mahabodhi pagoda of India.
Zendō-ji is the head temple of the Jōdo sect of Pure Land Buddhism in Kyushu, in the east of Kurume, founded by the monk Benchō. Its main hall of 1786 is among the largest wooden Buddhist halls in Kyushu, and eight of its buildings from the Edo period are Important Cultural Properties.
The Chikugo River is the largest river in Kyushu, flowing 143 kilometres from the Aso highlands to the Ariake Sea and past the city of Kurume. Nicknamed Chikushi Jirō and known as one of Japan's three wildest rivers, it is lit up each August by the Chikugo River Fireworks Festival.
Kurume Kasuri is the indigo-dyed cotton ikat cloth of Kurume and the old Kurume Domain, woven from threads dyed in patterns before weaving. Said to have been started by a 12-year-old girl, Inoue Den, in the late Edo period, its technique was named an Important Intangible Cultural Property in 1956.
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