On the flat shore of the Ariake Sea in Kyushu, in the city of Omuta, a set of brick buildings, steel headframes and tidal docks tells the story of how Japan became an industrial power. The Miike coal mine and the port that served it were inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 among the sites of Japan's Meiji industrial revolution, and the centre of Omuta is a few kilometres away, with a city of about a hundred and thirty thousand people spread around it.
Coal here had been dug on a small scale since the sixteenth century, but in the Meiji period the government took control, and in 1889 the Mitsui company bought the mine. The engineer Dan Takuma designed a new port at Miike, completed in 1908, with a lock gate to deal with the Ariake Sea's huge tides, some of the largest in Japan, and a railway to bring the coal from the pits. For decades Miike was one of the biggest mines in the country, and it supplied energy for the new factories and ships. The mine closed in 1997, and since then the buildings have become a heritage site, but the story has a darker side. Prisoners, and in the Second World War Korean, Chinese and Allied prisoners of war, were forced to work here, and in 1963 an explosion at the Mikawa pit killed more than four hundred men, one of Japan's worst mining disasters. The site is a reminder that industrial progress had a human price.
On the bike, the roads of the Chikugo plain are flat and straightforward, with canals, rice fields and pylons, and traffic can be heavy around Omuta and Kurume. The more interesting riding lies further afield, in the mountains of Kyushu to the east, and at the coast near Yanagawa, with its network of canals and boats. Summers are hot and humid, with typhoons from August to October, and winters are mild. At low tide the Ariake Sea retreats for kilometres, leaving a wide mud flat where mudskippers hop around.
Omuta has all services, with petrol stations, supermarkets and many places for ramen and fried chicken. The nearby town of Tamana is a quieter place with hot springs, and Setakamachi-takayanagi is smaller. Visit the museum in Omuta for a clear account of the mine's history, and check opening days before you set out, as some buildings are viewed only from outside.