Building and donating the Ishibashi Cultural Center

Throughout his life, Ishibashi Shojiro devoted himself to the development of Kurume City in Fukuoka Prefecture, which was both his hometown and the birthplace of Bridgestone. The achievements of the Ishibashi Cultural Center are testimony to Shojiro's commitment to the cultural advancement of the regional community.
In 1945, Kurume was the target of an air raid that destroyed two-thirds of the city, as a result of which many of the residents were forced to live in temporary shelters. Shojiro later wrote of Kurume in the period directly after the war, "Having a thriving business on its own was nothing but an unhealthy diversion, and I was truly alarmed when I thought of the effect on the minds of young people."
During his travels through Europe and North America in 1953, Shojiro was deeply impressed by Western culture, and on his return he resolved to build a cultural center to promote the cultural advancement of Kurume.

The Ishibashi Cultural Center continued to expand in the years that followed, with the opening of a cultural hall and cultural auditorium (1963), the construction of a Japanese garden (1970-72), and the opening of the Ishibashi Museum of Art, Asian Gallery (1996), and with premises of around 60,000 square meters, it currently serves as the main center for local culture in Kurume.
The nucleus of the Ishibashi Cultural Center is the Ishibashi Museum of Art. It exhibited artwork by leading modern Japanese Western-style painters who were originally from Kurume or other parts of Kyushu, such as Aoki Shigeru, Sakamoto Hanjiro, and Fujishima Takeji. It has been handed over in October 2016 to Kurume City with the arrival of the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Ishibashi Cultural Center, and has reopened with a new name "Kurume City Art Museum."