History
Fukui rounds out the Hokuriku region’s southern edge, and carries two reputations that have little to do with each other: it’s Japan’s center of dinosaur paleontology, and it’s also one of the country’s most consistently well-regarded places to actually live.
Fukui and the wider world
Fukui’s deepest international influence runs through religion rather than tourism. Eiheiji, founded in 1244 by the monk Dogen, became one of the two head temples of Soto Zen Buddhism — a lineage that, transmitted through later teachers over the following centuries, eventually reached the West directly: Shunryu Suzuki, a Soto Zen priest trained in this same tradition, moved to San Francisco in 1959 and founded the San Francisco Zen Center, becoming one of the most influential figures in bringing Zen practice to American audiences. Eiheiji itself, still an active training monastery today, is one genuine root of what a great many Westerners now recognize as “Zen.”
More recently, Fukui’s dinosaur fossil beds — among the richest in Asia — have drawn ongoing joint research expeditions with paleontologists from Canada, Mongolia, and elsewhere, and the resulting Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum has become an internationally recognized research institution in its own right, not just a tourist attraction.
Neighbors: Fukui and the rest of Hokuriku
Fukui is the southernmost of the three Hokuriku prefectures (with Toyama and Ishikawa), and its history is somewhat more entangled with the Kansai region to its south than its northern Hokuriku neighbors — Fukui’s southern Wakasa area historically supplied Kyoto with seafood via routes still nicknamed the “Saba (Mackerel) Kaido.”
Getting there and getting around
Fukui Station is a Hokuriku Shinkansen stop as of the line’s 2024 extension, cutting travel time from Tokyo to roughly 3 hours. Eiheiji and Tojinbo are both reachable by local train or bus from Fukui City.
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