It began in the early Showa years with one man's business. Abe Akira bought fresh fish at the Ohama market and sold it off a handcart, and that operation was called Akira Market. Shops gathered on the adjoining land and several separate markets formed.

Trade sank during the war and revived the moment it ended. The individual markets eventually combined and took the name Yanagibashi Rengo, the Yanagibashi union, and a formal cooperative was established in 1992.

The arcade is about a hundred meters long and holds around thirty-five shops, which is small enough to walk end to end in a couple of minutes and dense enough that you will not.

Fish, produce, meat, pickles, kamaboko, tea, mentaiko, wagashi. Professional cooks buy here and so do people who live nearby, which is the mix that earned it the name kitchen of Hakata. It has been feeding the city for over a century, and it survived a war and the disappearance of its founder's handcart to do it. Lately the shops have put out large photographs on their price cards and menus in several languages, for visitors who cannot read the handwriting. A hundred meters of covered street, with a hundred years packed into it.