This incident inspired the well-known Studio Ghibli film Grave of the Fireflies and the book by Akiyuki Nosaka on which the film was based. Eventually, it was bombed again with incendiary bombs by B-29 bombers on March 17, 1945, causing the death of 8,841 residents and destroying 21% of Kobe's urban area. ĭuring World War II, Kobe was bombed in the Doolittle Raid on April 18, 1942, along with Tokyo and a few other cities. The history of the city is closely tied to that of the Ikuta Shrine, and the name "Kobe" derives from kamube ( 神戸, later kanbe), an archaic name for those who supported the shrine. Kobe, as it is known today, was founded on April 1, 1889, and was designated on September 1, 1956 by government ordinance. This nishiki-e (colored woodcut) shows a foreign steamboat entering Hyōgo Port shortly after its opening to the West in the late 19th century. ![]() The city is the point of origin and namesake of Kobe beef, the home of Kobe University, as well as the site of one of Japan's most famous hot spring resorts, Arima Onsen. Companies headquartered in Kobe include ASICS, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and Kobe Steel, as well as over 100 international corporations with Asian or Japanese headquarters in the city, such as Eli Lilly and Company, Procter & Gamble, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Nestlé. While the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake diminished much of Kobe's prominence as a port city, it remains Japan's fourth-busiest container port. Kobe was one of the cities to open for trade with the West following the 1853 end of the policy of seclusion and has since been known as a cosmopolitan and nuclear-free zone port city. Kobe became one of Japan's designated cities in 1956. Its name comes from Kanbe ( 神戸, an archaic title for supporters of the city's Ikuta Shrine). Kobe did not exist in its current form until its founding in 1889. 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. The earliest written records regarding the region come from the Nihon Shoki, which describes the founding of the Ikuta Shrine by Empress Jingū in AD 201. The Kobe city centre is located about 35 km (22 mi) west of Osaka and 70 km (43 mi) southwest of Kyoto. It is part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kyoto. It is located in Kansai region, which makes up the southern side of the main island of Honshū, on the north shore of Osaka Bay. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. Kobe ( / ˈ k oʊ b eɪ/ KOH-bay, Japanese: officially 神戸市, Kōbe-shi) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan.
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