Former Kyushu Imperial University

What Is the Former Kyushu Imperial University Group?

The Former Kyushu Imperial University (旧九州帝国大学, Kyūshū Teikoku Daigaku) buildings are five modern structures dating from 1914 to 1930 at Kyushu University's Hakozaki Satellite in Higashi-ku, Fukuoka City, and were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties in 2023 and 2024.

Four of them, the Faculty of Engineering Main Building, the Headquarters Office Building, the Headquarters Architecture Section Building and the Gatehouse, were registered on 27 February 2023. The Main Gate and Wall followed on 15 August 2024. In the national database all five carry the prefix "Former Kyushu Imperial University", and they were the first buildings owned by Kyushu University to enter the Registered Tangible Cultural Property system. With the gate added, the university announced, every historic structure left at Hakozaki is now on the register.

Kyushu University completed its move to the new Ito campus west of the city in 2018, and most of the old Hakozaki campus is now being rebuilt as a new district. The university kept only its south-eastern corner, where the Former Kyushu Imperial University buildings stand, and in 2021 named it the Hakozaki Satellite. A 2012 working group had surveyed 24 of the roughly 200 buildings on the campus and singled out these five as the most historically significant; everything else was demolished by 2021.

The Five Former Kyushu Imperial University Structures

Listed in the order you meet them walking in from the main gate, the Former Kyushu Imperial University structures are:

• Main Gate and Wall (1914): brick gateposts and a 41-meter wall, moved to their present position in 1924
• Gatehouse (1914): a single-storey brick lodge beside the gate, moved in the same year
• Headquarters Architecture Section Building (1925): a small two-storey brick building with a basement, standing next to the office building
• Headquarters Office Building (1925): the two-storey brick block that housed the university administration for decades
• Faculty of Engineering Main Building (1930): the reinforced concrete lecture and research building facing the office building

The four buildings were registered as models of architectural design, while the gate and wall were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape. Each has its own page describing its construction and what to look for.

How the Former Kyushu Imperial University Came to Hakozaki

Kyushu University grew out of the Fukuoka Medical College of Kyoto Imperial University, opened in 1903 in the Maidashi district. In 1911 a College of Engineering was laid out on farmland at Hakozaki, paid for by the education ministry together with donations from the Furukawa family, Fukuoka Prefecture and Fukuoka City, and Kyushu Imperial University was founded as Japan's fourth imperial university. The shoreline, the university notes, once ran roughly where National Route 3 is today.

The turning point came in December 1923, when the engineering college's brick main hall burned to the ground. Coming in the same year as the Great Kanto Earthquake, the fire convinced the university that future buildings should be earthquake- and fire-resistant reinforced concrete.

While the main hall was being replaced, two brick buildings were put up in 1925 as temporary laboratories. Because they were meant to become the university headquarters later, they were built to last. These are today's Headquarters Office Building and Headquarters Architecture Section Building. When the new Faculty of Engineering Main Building opened in 1930, the university administration moved into them from the medical campus at Maidashi, and Hakozaki became the center of the Former Kyushu Imperial University.

The Architects Behind the Former Kyushu Imperial University

All five structures of the Former Kyushu Imperial University were designed under Kurata Ken, head of the university's own architecture section (the gate is described as very probably his work). In its early years Kyushu Imperial University kept an in-house design office staffed by graduates of Tokyo Imperial University's architecture department, and Kurata led it for many years, working with younger engineers such as Sakabe Yasuji and Ohara Setsuzo.

Professor Hori Yoshiki of Kyushu University has drawn attention to how the two main buildings face each other across a courtyard. The office building follows the historicist brick tradition that goes back to Tatsuno Kingo, while the engineering building draws on what Kurata saw on a study tour of Europe and America, shaped by Ohara's hand. Their main entrances sit on a single axis, so a conservative brick building and an early Showa design face one another only five years apart.

Visiting the Former Kyushu Imperial University Buildings

The nearest station to the Former Kyushu Imperial University buildings is Hakozaki-Kyudaimae on the Fukuoka City Subway Hakozaki Line. From Exit 2 it is about a 6-minute walk to the side entrance on the Shindo road and about 10 minutes to the main gate. From JR Hakozaki Station on the Kagoshima Main Line, leave by the west exit (the Hakozakigu Shrine side) and walk past the Hakozaki 3-chome and Kyudai Seimon Iriguchi intersections to the gate, also about 10 minutes. The Nishitetsu bus stop Hakozaki Matsubara is about 10 minutes away on foot.

The grounds are open to pedestrians only. Cars cannot enter, so use a nearby pay car park, and cyclists are asked to dismount and push. Redevelopment work continues on the surrounding land, so entrances and paths may change.

The one interior regularly open to the public is the permanent exhibition room of the Kyushu University Museum on the third floor of the Faculty of Engineering Main Building. Closed for renovation from July 2025, it reopened on 16 May 2026 and is open on weekdays from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., closed on weekends, public holidays and university closure days, with free admission (checked September 2026). No public openings are announced for the Headquarters Office Building, the Architecture Section Building or the Gatehouse, so they are seen from outside.