Misumi West Port, one of the Meiji period’s three biggest port construction projects, opened in 1887 as a port city that merged a design by Dutch hydraulics engineer Anthonie Rouwenhurst Mulder with the stoneworking techniques of the Japanese. Its stone wharf, reaching a total length of 756m, was cutting-edge in its time, and even today, the port retains all the beauty it possessed in its heyday.
In particular, Misumi West Port was prosperous as a prominent trading port in Kyushu, exporting coal from the Miike Coal Mine, and in July 2015, it was designated a World Cultural Heritage site for being a component of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution.