Ibusuki City

Pit houses are rebuilt in the site park.

Hashimuregawa Site, pit houses

01 ／ Yamagawa Stone

Yellow stone from around Fukumoto, Yamagawa,was used for successive lords' gravestones.

Yellow stone found around Fukumoto in Yamagawa, Ibusuki, is called Yamagawa stone. Soft, easy to work and resistant to weathering, it has long been used as building stone, including for the gravestones of successive lords of the Kagoshima domain. Recent research has shown that it was carried widely, as far as the Ryukyu Islands, the city board of education writes.

Found around Fukumoto, Yamagawa
Carried as far as the Ryukyu Islands
2025 exhibition by the city board of education

02 ／ Miyagahama Port Breakwater

A crescent-shaped stone breakwater was builton a shore with no safe berth for ships.

The breakwater at Miyagahama Port is stone, 220 m long, built in Tenpo 5 (1834), with a stone lantern and mooring posts. The inscription the city introduces says the shallow sea had no safe place to moor ships, that the domain lord had it built, and that work begun in December of Tenpo 4 was finished the following July. It became a nationally Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2008.

Stone, 220 m long
Tenpo 5 (1834)
2008: national Registered Tangible Cultural Property

03 ／ Unagi Pond and Unagi Jizo

In a village beside a crater lake,a day is said to open the gates of hell.

Unagi district, on the northeast shore of Unagi Pond, has many steam vents and is likened to hell. It is said that on the 16th of January, May and September the lid of the hell cauldron opens and the spirits of the dead come and go, and people visit the Unagi Jizo hall on the Unagi pilgrimage. January draws the most visitors. The Unagi kiln site was designated a city historic site in 2025.

16th of Jan, May, Sep
Unagi Pond: crater lake about 5,700 years old
Unagi kiln site: city historic site, 2025

Living here

In 2006, three towns became one city.

about 40,000 people

On the mouth of Kagoshima Bay, the city was formed on 1 January 2006 from the former Ibusuki City, Yamagawa Town and Kaimon Town. The gateway is Ibusuki Station on the JR Ibusuki-Makurazaki Line, a 10-minute walk from the Hashimuregawa Site. Chiringashima lies to the east and the 924 m Mount Kaimondake to the southwest, and the city has natural sand-steam baths.

People living here: 39,011people
Area: 148.82km²
Households: 17,790households
Rent (average for rentals): 32,773yen
Healthcare: 9 hospitals ／ 35 clinics

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

Population from 2010 onward (municipal boundary changed).2006-01-01 に新設合併（山川町・開聞町）。2010年調査から市域が変わっている。

Children waiting for childcare: —15 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

Borders 2 municipalities.

Ibusuki City in Japan31.253°N 130.633°E

Territory of Ibusuki City

Boundaries: National Land Numerical Information (N03)

North to south

16.6km

南九州市, 鹿児島市

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

Ibusuki City isthis kind of town.

01The Hashimuregawa Site is a multi-layered site from the Jomon to Heian periods; about 2 ha are kept as a historic-site park with four pit houses rebuilt. The city board of education writes that it proved for the first time in Japan, by stratigraphy, that Jomon pottery is older than Yayoi pottery
02In Minato, the city writes that in 1798 the Hamasaki family built a guest room inside its house to serve as a villa for the Shimazu lords, and a monument praising the deeds of the eighth Hamasaki Taheiji stands in the Inari Shrine grounds
03In Yamagawa stand Tokko Shrine, which enshrines Maeda Riemon, said to have brought sweet potatoes back from the Ryukyus, and the site of a factory that made salt with hot-spring heat for about 20 years from around 1943

If something caught your eye, ask the town itself.

Ibusuki City official site ↗Wikipedia ↗