It was centered around Kokura Castle in what is now Kitakyushu, Fukuoka and was ruled by the fudai daimyō Ogasawara clan for much of its history.

Mōri Katsunobu and his son Katsunaga sided with the Western army at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and were forced to surrender their holdings.

It was during this era of the Hosokawa clan that the duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirō took place on Ganryu Island, which was then part of Kokura Domain.

In the same year, Tadatoshi's brother-in-law Ogasawara Tadazane from the Akashi Domain in Harima Province was transferred to Kokura with a fief of 150,000 koku in northern Buzen.

Since Ogasawara Tadazane's mother was the daughter of Matsudaira Nobuyasu and thus the great-great-granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the clan was entrusted with holding the gateway to Kyushu, and played the role of Kyushu Tandai, monitoring the various powerful Tozama daimyō who ruled most of the island.

In 1758, the fourth daimyō, Ogasawara Tadafusa, established the han school Shieisai, a literary and military training ground for retainers of the domain, within Kokura Castle.

Peasant uprisings continued to occur into the Bunsei era (1818-1830) During the Bakumatsu period, reforms of the domain administration began under the karō Shimamura Shizuma and Kouno Shiro.

especially along the Kanmon Strait, and the recruitment and training of agricultural workers to serve as auxiliary troops also began.

In this year, Chōshū Domain on the opposite side of Kanmon Strait shelled foreign ships, leading to the Shimonoseki War.

The daimyō of Kokura Shinden Domain resided permanently in Edo and were not subject to sankin kōtai.