AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On a quiet street in Old Moji (Kyū-Moji), beside the great vermilion torii of Mekari Shrine, a slender stone stele carved with the words 門司関址 marks one of the most consequential places in ancient Japan. It commemorates the Moji Barrier (Mojigaseki), founded in the second year of Taika, 646, the checkpoint that scrutinised every traveller, horse and ship crossing the Kanmon Strait between Kyushu and the capital, and which served as the gateway to the government seat at Dazaifu. Locals called it the 'first post station of Kyushu.'↗↗↗
The monument is small, free, and easy to miss—but it rewards travellers who like their history layered. Its face carries both a prose account of the barrier and classical waka poems that court nobles composed here on the road between Kyoto and Dazaifu. Standing in the little park, with the Kanmon Strait and the lights of Honshu close by, you are at the exact spot where the sea road to the capital began.↗↗
The First Checkpoint of Kyushu
Long before the steamships and the modern port of Mojiko made this corner of Kitakyushu famous, the same headland held one of the great strategic locks of the ancient Japanese state. As early as 646, the year after the Taika Reforms, officials established the Moji Barrier here to inspect the people, horses and vessels moving through the Kanmon Strait. Because this was the shortest sea route linking Kyushu with the capital—and onward with China and Korea—the barrier was a matter of national security, charged with controlling traffic, registering travellers, and lodging and provisioning the court officials who shuttled between Kyoto and the Dazaifu government headquarters on Kyushu.
