The porcelain washbasins in the suites of Seven Stars in Kyushu are credited to Sakaida Kakiemon XIV, a Living National Treasure and the fourteenth head of an Arita pottery dynasty that goes back to the early Edo period. He died on 15 June 2013. The train he helped furnish carried its first passengers four months later.
That gap explains a good deal about the train. When JR Kyushu commissioned Japan's first modern cruise train, it did not import a European idea of luxury and fit it into a Japanese carriage. It went to the island's own workshops: porcelain from Arita in Saga, wooden lattice from the furniture town of Okawa in Fukuoka, and textiles from Hakata. Seven Stars works as a moving catalogue of Kyushu craft, and the people who made it are as much a part of its history as the engineers.
Not a hotel rating
People often assume the name borrows the language of hotel stars, a claim of something above five-star luxury. It does not. JR Kyushu chose it for two plain facts. Kyushu has seven prefectures, and the train has seven coaches. The star itself turns up all through the interior. According to CNN's account of the train, gold stars decorate the ceiling tiles, are carved into the table lamps and are coloured into the stained glass.
The train entered service on 15 October 2013, operated by Kyushu Railway Company and run as circular tours that start and finish at Hakata Station in Fukuoka. It was the first of Japan's modern generation of luxury sleeper trains. The overall design was overseen by the industrial designer Eiji Mitooka, who had shaped JR Kyushu's trains for decades.
An engineering frame built for one train
Under the craftwork, Seven Stars is a carefully adapted piece of standard Japanese rolling stock. The milestones of its construction are well documented:
- 2 July 2013: the dedicated diesel locomotive, DF200-7000, is delivered from Kawasaki Heavy Industries in Kobe to JR Kyushu's Oita depot. It was based on the JR Freight Class DF200, modified for Kyushu and finished in deep maroon.
- 18 July 2013: four coaches arrive from Hitachi's factory at Kudamatsu in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The others were built at JR Kyushu's own Kokura Works in Kitakyushu.
- 15 October 2013: the train enters revenue service.
- October 2022: a partial renewal, timed to the train's ninth anniversary, is unveiled at Hakata Station.
The seven 77-series coaches use body shells derived from the 817 series electric multiple unit and run on bogies from the 787 series. As built, the train had a lounge car, a dining car and five sleeping cars. The last of these held two deluxe suites, with an observation window across the very end of the train. The whole train cost about 3 billion yen to build. Sources disagree slightly on the original capacity. Contemporary rolling-stock records give 28 passengers in 14 suites, while JR Kyushu's own figures at the time of the renewal speak of reducing capacity from 30.
Mitooka's brief: nostalgia, not imitation
Mitooka has been open about where he started. He looked first at the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the obvious European benchmark. He then deliberately moved away from it. His intended passenger was an older Japanese traveller who had spent a lifetime treating Europe and America as the great journeys, and who might now want to rediscover Japan in Japanese, with Japanese food served in the Japanese way. Speaking to CNN, he summed up the approach: "Everything is unique and custom-made for the train."
The result mixes East and West in a way Mitooka compared to a mandala. The panelling uses teak, walnut and maple. The windows are framed like paintings so that the passing landscape becomes the artwork. Small paintings by Mitooka himself hang along the corridors. He also argued that the seat mattered more than almost anything else, because a passenger who is comfortable in the chair forgives a great deal. Readers who know how George Pullman or the makers of the Lalique glass and marquetry of the Wagons-Lits era approached a carriage will recognise the instinct. The difference is that almost every specialist Mitooka called on worked within a few hours of the line.
Arita: a dynasty in the washroom
Arita, in Saga Prefecture, has made porcelain since the early seventeenth century, and the Kakiemon line is its most famous name. The family traces its enamelled style to the first Sakaida Kakiemon in the early Edo period. Sakaida Kakiemon XIV, born Sakaida Masashi in 1934, took the name in 1982 after the death of his father, and was later designated a Living National Treasure for overglaze enamel porcelain.
Every suite on Seven Stars has its own washroom, and the porcelain fittings are attributed to him. Travel accounts add that each basin carries a different design, so no two suites share one. Some accounts describe the basins as among his last works. That is consistent with the dates, since he died in June 2013 while the train was being completed, but we have not found a primary source that confirms it, so it is best read as attribution rather than settled fact.
Okawa: three centuries of lattice without nails
The second great craft on board comes from Okawa, a river town in southern Fukuoka Prefecture long known as a furniture-making centre. Okawa kumiko is a joinery tradition of roughly 300 years. Thin slivers of wood are cut and fitted, without nails, into geometric patterns set within small triangular frames. The ACROS Fukuoka cultural foundation counts more than 200 traditional designs. It notes that the cuts demand tolerances of a few micrometres and that some panels use tens of thousands of separate parts. Once assembled, a finished screen is said to be as strong as a solid board.
Okawa artisans made the kumiko for Seven Stars. The most visible piece is in the lounge car, where a kumiko panel is lit from behind so that the lattice glows against the dark wood. Kumiko was traditionally a craft of sliding doors and transoms in houses and temples. On the train it serves a theatrical purpose. The workshops that restore heritage carriages in Europe guard their marquetry skills in much the same way.
The 2022 renewal: the train becomes a gallery
When JR Kyushu renewed the train in October 2022, it gave Kyushu craft more space, not less. The second car became a salon with a tea room, where passengers taste teas from different parts of the island. The third car gained a gallery shop selling Hakata textiles from Fukuoka City, Arita porcelain and other traditional handicrafts from across Kyushu. At the same time the operator reduced capacity to 20 passengers, a choice to give more attention to fewer guests.
The renewal confirmed what the original design had suggested. Seven Stars is a showcase as well as a means of travel. Introducing Kyushu to the world was part of the train's stated purpose from the start, and the crafts are how it does so. The food follows the same principle and draws on seasonal regional ingredients, a theme we explore in luxury train gastronomy around the world.
Travelling with the craftsmen today
Seven Stars still runs from Hakata on circular tours of the island, so the Kakiemon porcelain, the Okawa lattice and the Hakata textiles can be seen where they were meant to be seen, in use, with the Kyushu countryside framed in Mitooka's windows. Our Seven Stars in Kyushu page sets out the journey itself, and it begins most naturally with a few days in Fukuoka, where Hakata weaving is still practised and Okawa and Arita are close by.
For travellers who want to compare traditions, the Eastern and Oriental Express takes a different approach to Asian craft in its interiors, and our guide to the Orient Express trains compared shows the European models Mitooka started from. A broader survey is in the world's greatest luxury train journeys, and every train we cover is listed under our trains.
