The capital of Hyōgo Prefecture, Kōbe is the fifth-largest city in Japan, thirty kilometres west of Osaka on the north shore of Osaka Bay, stretching onto the lower slopes of Mount Rokko.
Part of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kōbe conurbation, the city has a population around the 1.5 million mark but did not officially exist until 1 April 1889.
Hyōgo Port was opened to foreign trade at the same time as Osaka on 1 January 1868 and had earlier links to the outside world as one of the ports from which imperial embassies to China departed. During the Kamakura Period, it was an important hub for trade with China and other countries.
Much of the shipping activity is centred on Port Island and Rokkō Island, reclaimed islands developed to give the port room to expand.
Sannomiya Station is the central transport hub, with Kōbe Station to the west and ShinKōbe Shinkansen Station to the north.
Kōbe has two subway lines, with the Kaigan Line running along the coast and the Yamate-Seishin Line towards the mountains.
The city is the point of origin of Kōbe beef, a noted centre for saké production thanks to nearby mountain water, and the site of one of Japan's most famous hot spring resorts, Arima Onsen.
The Great Hanshin Earthquake (17 January 1995) killed thousands of people, rendered over two hundred thousand homeless, flattened tens of thousands of buildings, destroyed much of the city’s transport infrastructure and diminished much of Kōbe's prominence as a major port though it remains Japan's fourth busiest port for container shipping.
Kōbe's recovery from the 1995 quake is celebrated every December with the Luminarie, where the city’s commercial centre is decorated with illuminated metal archways.