Kobe is the capital
city of Hyo-go
Prefecture and
a prominent port city in Japan with a population of about 1.4
million.
The city is located
in the Kansai
region of Japan and is part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area. Kobe is classified
as one of Japan's seventeen designated cities.
Originally known by
the name O-wada Anchorage, earliest written records regarding
the region come from the Nihon
Shoki, which describes
the founding of the Ikuta
Shrine by Empress
Jingu in 201
A.D.
For most of its history
the area was never a single political entity, even during the
Tokugawa
Period, when the
port was controlled directly by the Tokugawa
Shogunate.
Kobe did not exist in
its current form until its founding in 1889. Its name comes from "kanbe",
an archaic title for supporters of the city's Ikuta Shrine. Kobe
became one of Japan's designated cities in 1956.
Kobe was one of the
first cities to open for trade with the West following the end
of the policy of seclusion and has since been known as a cosmopolitan
port city. While the 1995 Great
Hanshin Earthquake
diminished much of Kobe's prominence as a port city, it remains
Japan's fourth busiest container port.[5] Companies headquartered
in Kobe include ASICS, Kawasaki
Heavy Industries,
and Kobe
Steel, as well
as over 100 international corporations with Asia or Japan headquarters in the city
such as Procter
& Gamble and
Nestlé.
The city is the point
of origin and namesake of Kobe
beef as well as
the site of one of Japan's most famous onsen resorts, Arima Onsen.
read
full wikipedia reference about Kobe, Japan
OTHER POPULAR DESTINATIONS
IN JAPAN
Chiba
Fukuoka
Hakone
Hiroshima
Kanazawa
Kansai
Kobe
Kyoto
Miyazaki
Nagasaki
Nagoya
Nara
Narita
Okinawa
Osaka
Sapporo
Tokyo
Yokohama
home page / Asia / Japan
