Oki Town

Semi-artificial canals, over 1,000 years

Hori (creeks), Ishimaruyama Park

Photo by Lumi iori (CC BY-SA 4.0)

01 ／ Kawamatsuri (river festival)

As rice planting nears, crossed bamboo is set upin the hori to pray against drowning.

A rite held just before rice planting, when fresh water is let into the hori. Bamboo tied in a cross is stood in the hori, and decorations such as warazuto (straw wrappers), gourds and bamboo tubes are hung from it. The decorations differ from district to district; a 2017-18 survey confirmed the rite in 51 places across 22 districts.

Selected by Fukuoka Prefecture as an intangible folk cultural property requiring record-making measures (March 2016)
Held in 51 places across 22 districts (2017-18 survey)
In most districts held from early April to late May (survey report)
Held at Samuraijima-shimo on April 29, 2026 (Koho Oki, June issue)

02 ／ Hishi (water chestnut)

The "chestnut of the hori," boiled and eaten,is picked from a hangiri tub-boat.

In autumn the water chestnut (hishi) bears fruit wrapped in a hard shell with sharp horn-like points. The flesh is milky white, and it is boiled and eaten as the "chestnut of the hori." The town gives the harvest season as about September to October and says that people can be seen picking the nuts from a hangiri on the creeks.

Harvest season about September to October (town)
Boiled and eaten as the "chestnut of the hori" (Fukuoka Prefecture)
In the hori of Ishimaruyama Park too, people can be seen picking them from a floating hangiri (Fukuoka Prefecture)

03 ／ Kamimutaguchi Gion Shishimai (lion dance)

The lion dancers purify themselves in the Hanamune River (花宗川)at dawn, then go house to house to bite heads.

Held every year on the second Sunday of July in the Kamimutaguchi district. At dawn the parishioners purify themselves in the Hanamune River and receive a blessing at Mishima Shrine (三島神社); then two lions, one red and one black, visit houses one by one, biting residents' heads to pray for good health. It is said to have begun around the middle of the Meiji era.

Every year on the second Sunday of July (town)
Two lion heads, red and black, each worked by two parishioners (town)
Suspended in 1965 (Showa 40) and revived in 1981 (Showa 56) (town)
Carried on by the Kamimutaguchi Shishimai Preservation Society (town)

Living here

About an hour from Fukuoka by Nishitetsu, on flat land 4 to 5 m above sea level.

about 10,000 people
Rural district town

In the southwest of Fukuoka Prefecture, almost in the middle of the Chikugo Plain, the town borders Kurume, Chikugo, Yanagawa and Okawa. Hatchōmuta Station (a 3-minute walk to the town office) and Ōmizo Station on the Nishitetsu Tenjin Omuta Line are here, and the whole town is nearly flat farmland 4 to 5 meters above sea level. Its area is 18.44 square kilometers.

People living here: 13,820people
Area: 18.44km²
Households: 4,772households
Rent (average for rentals): —
Healthcare: 1 hospital ／ 12 clinics

Area and habitable land at the same scalee-Stat B1101 / B1103

Children waiting for childcare: —4 nurseries and similar
Home purchase subsidy: —
Average annual temperature: —

These 3 items are waiting on a nationwide data source. We do not fill them with estimates.

Shape

Surrounded by 4 municipalities, and almost entirely flat.

Oki Town in Japan33.210°N 130.440°E

Territory of Oki Town

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

7.1km

久留米市, 大川市, 筑後市, 柳川市

Travel times per leg are not published by the municipality, so they are not shown.

Oki Town isthis kind of town.

01The town's hori (creeks) are semi-artificial waterways with a history of over 1,000 years; their total length is about 214.7 km and total area about 254.4 ha, about 14% of the town's area (per the 2004 hori register). Creek Village Ishimaruyama Park (クリークの里石丸山公園) is a nature observation park that preserves and develops, as far as possible in its natural state, an agricultural cultural heritage built by earlier generations; it is a 1-minute walk from Ōmizo Station on the Nishitetsu line.
02The Fukuoka Prefecture Igyo Kaikan (福岡県い業会館, 1936), a nationally registered tangible cultural property, was built as the office of rush-industry associations and is still used as a union office. The Oki Recycling Center "Kururun" (おおき循環センター「くるるん」) uses food waste, night soil and johkasou sludge within the town as an energy resource and an organic fertilizer. The Samuraijima itahi (侍島板碑), a town-designated tangible cultural property made in 1533 (Tenbun 2), is the oldest itahi stone tablet in the town.
03A town of Mizuma District almost in the middle of the Chikugo Plain, long known as one of the prefecture's leading rice-growing areas and a leading producer of rush (igusa) and rush products in Japan. The strawberry "Amaou" is the town's top farm product, and facility-based mushroom farming of enoki and shimeji is also thriving.

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Oki Town official site ↗Wikipedia ↗