Kobe, the international port city, has an over 150 year-long history since opening its port to foreign trade in the Meiji era. Once a foreign settlement that sprawled along the coastline, at the time of its reopening for Japanese residents, it was praised as being the most beautiful city in all the East. Kobe continues to both deepen and broaden its connections to the world to this day, and international charter flights from Kobe Airport commence service just in time for Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai. We asked Project Associate Professor KOSHIRO Kaoru of the Center for Computational Social Science and the Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration, an expert on the history of modern architecture and modern cities and who has organized walk events around Kobe as a part of his research, to speak about the origins of the city of Kobe, the history of the buildings scattered around the city, and its future.
England’s greatest export was cities
How has Kobe become such a stylish city?
Koshiro:
When something is said to be posh or “high collar” in Japan, it signifies that Western and Japanese cultures have converged. It is said that England’s greatest export was cities, spreading the modern city all over the world during its colonial era. Kobe is one of those cities. Because it is located in the Far East, it was seen as the latest feat of urban development when viewed from Europe. This meant that all the accomplishments from other cities, including the failures, are reflected in Kobe’s design. The Meiji era was still abuzz with popular revolution. It’s clear that the people were combining their efforts to successfully create a never-before-seen democratic community in a sort of gutsy social experiment. The foreign settlement at Kobe was rich with merchant-led community and city development.
During Kobe’s 30-year long foreign settlement era, autonomous organizations were also well-maintained. In the Foreign Settlement Council, consisting of the governor at the time, consular officers from each country and citizen council members, discussions were held on urban development. This was a unique endeavor, completely unprecedented in Japan.
The records of proceedings for autonomous organizations at the time were published each month in the newspaper, and opinions were collected from citizens. When an issue arose that required delegation, it was covered in the newspaper, getting citizens involved in the urban development process through the media. Newspapers at the time featured articles that informed citizens of things like broken gutter covers and issued warnings such as restrictions on letting their goats graze immediately after new trees were planted along city streets. This active use of the media was one contributing factor that led to the city looking so beautiful. The variety of cooperative efforts became a huge strength in the end.
In the Taisho era, companies, notably general trading company Suzuki Shoten, were thriving in the center of Kobe, attracting workers from the Chugoku and Shikoku regions. With the second highest population density in Japan just behind Tokyo, there was even a period in which Kobe had the highest population growth rate in the country. Later, after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, many corporations moved their headquarters to Kobe, turning it into a bustling city. It became the center for trade in Japan and saw the birth of the country’s first office buildings, such as the Kobe Shosen Mitsui Building. Skyscrapers of their time, these buildings became the face of the former foreign settlement. There were issues such as overpopulation control, but one could say that following Tokyo’s lead in urban planning and carrying out such well-planned urban development specifically around Sannomiya were also factors as to why Kobe became such a beautiful, fashionable city.
The Showa era was known as an era of (quite literally) bringing the mountains to the sea, with the sand taken from mountains shaved for housing development in places like Suma Ward and Nishi Ward being used to reclaim land to build places like Port Island. Such active urban development led to the city’s nickname of “Kobe Inc.” During the 1980s, however, the formerly active heavy industries gave way to a booming fashion industry. Now known as the “City of Fashion” and the “International Information Capital,” Kobe Harborland and the historical buildings in the area began to gather attention, giving the city a more stylish reputation.
Ideas gathered from the former foreign settlement
What did residents of Kobe learn from foreigners?
Koshiro:
Even today, Kobe inherits the spirit of the Western civic society of the time. Perhaps this ethos of the foreigners’ civic society rooted in the former foreign settlement has taken hold in the residents of Kobe. I feel as though that very spirit leads them to try new things without being held down by old customs and norms.
The settlement area of the business district, which became the stage for commerce, spread along the coast, and the hilly areas like Kitano became the Foreign Residence District. In Yokohama, the two were completely separate under the sentiment that “the foreign settlement was just foreign lands in Japan,” meaning that the two groups never interacted. However, since the Kitano area of Kobe was a mixed settlement, foreigners and Japanese residents lived side by side and had been interacting with each other for ages. In these chaotic times, Kobe was the first city in which foreigners entered Japanese territory.
In another first from Kobe, the Kobe Former Foreign Settlement Building No. 15, now a restaurant, was the first commercial use of an important cultural property. Constructed in 1880, this was the wooden trading firm first constructed after foreigners entered the country, and Kobe is the only place in Japan where a building of its age remains unchanged to this day. The owner of the building thought that it was “meaningless to not use it,” and to have a restaurant, complete with sources of fire, adjacent to an important cultural property was all the idea of the private sector.
Even now you can see many other instances of private sector sensibilities. When a number of fake foreign residences were constructed during a spike in popularity, Kobe was said to be the first to put up historical heritage signs to brand the real foreign residences. In another instance, when drivers couldn’t see the flowerpots lining the streets, Kobe was the first in Japan to have the idea to hang plants from the light posts. I hope they hold on to this urge to incorporate new ideas even into the future.
Park culture and local autonomy started in Kobe
Is there anything that foreigners poured their passion into that still remains today, or anything that has spread country-wide?
Koshiro:
In addition to the Former Kobe Settlement Building No. 15, an important building among the foreign residences is the one of A. N. Hansell, which he designed and constructed himself in 1896 and is now known as the Choueke Residence. Recognized by even the British Royal Family, Hansell worked actively in Kobe. He placed statues of shachihoko (a fish-like creature) on the tops of towers, displayed the mark of the chrysanthemum on the front of buildings, and put sloped roofs near entrance porches. Incorporating influences from Japan and other countries while staying anchored in the British architectural style made his work interesting and even experimental.
It’s fascinating that a brick sewer pipe from the early Meiji era still stands in front of Building No. 15 to this day. At the time, many young engineers came to Kobe, but since they didn’t have much experience, they made bricks strictly how it was written in their textbooks. This turned out to be a success, and the brick sewer pipe stands and is still used to this day. You can really see the passionate work of the foreigners at the time.
Another thing that spread from Kobe to the rest of the country at the time was the concept of parks. In the Meiji era, there wasn’t any land in Japan that was specifically referred to as a “park.” After the port opened, young foreign merchants in their 30s living in Kobe wanted a field to play cricket in the mixed residential area, which became the impetus for creating parks. Hyogo Prefecture did not recognize their request at the time, so the foreigners put pressure on their respective consulates and their embassies in Tokyo, and their pleas eventually reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Negotiations for Kobe’s Nunobiki Park and East Park, located close to the foreign settlement, are tied to an 1873 notice regarding parks from the Council of State.
Many systems related to cities in the early Meiji era were first carried out experimentally in Kobe. Land tax reform, local autonomy, and movements that would lead to urban development by the private sector were first carried out in the mixed settlement in Kobe before spreading to the rest of the country. Methods to gather opinions from citizens were influenced by the civic society of the west. The governor of Hyogo Prefecture at the time, KANDA Takahira, was the one to lead these endeavors. A scholar of Western learning during the end of the Edo period and a liberal economist, Kanda didn’t simply imitate European culture, he had a deep understanding of its concepts.
How do we preserve the history of our cities for the future?
What research were you involved with originally?
Koshiro:
My field of research is in protecting cultural properties like temples, shrines and foreign residences as well as studying the history of modern architecture, like Tokyo Station. When I was studying as an undergraduate at university, the trends of the time gave birth to a new field of study called “urban history,” which didn’t just look at buildings but rather at cities as a whole. Within the scope of urban history, my research focused on “modern urban history,” which puts a focus on how plans for cities are developed. I chose Kobe as the field to conduct my research. Even looking at it from the perspective of world history, it was an interesting time in which Japan and the world were jammed together.
From there it developed, and now I think about how to reflect the histories of regions when designing new buildings or planning new interventions through both research and actual design activity. People in Japan are said to be excessive when it comes to personal rights involving land, like how it shouldn’t matter what you build if it’s on private land. In England, the feeling is that you’re putting up buildings on the queen’s land, so they don’t do anything others wouldn’t either. The real value of a town is how it looks when all its houses are lined up. If more people start just doing whatever they want to do, it will bring down both the brand value and the asset value of the city. There isn’t anyone who can control people like that in Japan. In countries overseas, however, there are cases in which churches fill that role, and lately I’ve been interested as to whether or not we can institutionalize that. I want to make cities with the history of the region embedded right in.
How would it be possible to institutionalize such a thing?
Koshiro:
I’m interested in furusato nouzei (hometown tax) and was thinking that we could use that to fund activity.
For instance, you could take this hometown tax as donations to save a symbolic granite wall that would be torn down during reconstruction of a house, and so on. Now I’m about to start a project with the university and railway companies. As local heritage which have not become important cultural properties have begun to disappear, I hope to propose a way to save them. I want to get high schoolers and college students on my side and to love the region.
Seeing cities as a whole, not in fragments
Why did you go from research on modern architecture to city walks and cultural asset preservation?
Koshiro:
As I continued my research, there were many times where I found myself irritated when a historic building would just disappear. That made me realize that I needed to get out in the field and set a precedent or nothing was going to change.
My research field is fragmented, and as I investigate each different field, I feel the need to integrate research in architecture and urban theory and look at them comprehensively. If the field is fragmented when performing research, there will be many phenomena that we don’t fully understand, so it’s necessary to evaluate cities as a whole.
The city walk events I began in 2017 are now in their ninth year. I do these to communicate the results of my research to the public as a kind of a public service. I plan about 10 per year, and we go around the former foreign settlement, the foreign residences at Kitano, and the foreigner resort area at Maiko. With just the structures in the city, it’s difficult to understand the meaning behind the community formed in the region, the architecture, and the views, as well as the intent of the designers. Thus, I organize this information and communicate it through city walks and lectures.
University architecture is a type of media
There are historical buildings at Kobe University as well.
Koshiro:
The school buildings at Kobe University were designed before the war regime and are so beautiful that you wouldn’t think that they’re university architecture. Just like Hitotsubashi University, a Romanesque style was employed for the buildings, with symbolic designs that have humans, not gods, as their primary design focus. I find it interesting that the style of Kobe University’s architecture took a different approach than that of former imperial universities like the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University. Instead of emphasizing height and verticality to express a more atmospheric look like the former imperial universities, buildings at Kobe University emphasize the calmness and friendliness of horizontality. For ages, architecture has been a type of media, showing the essence and contents of a university. The buildings at Kobe University reflect not majesty, but rather a school atmosphere that centers on people with their arms open to the world. The Main Building on the Rokkodai 1st Campus uses colors that contrast the blues of the sky and ocean, which really makes the beauty of the building stand out. The Idemitsu Sazo Memorial Rokkodai Auditorium and the Library for Social Sciences are also fantastic buildings that contain wide spaces with lots of sunlight.
Expressing the appeal of historic Kobe
What should become of the city of Kobe?
Koshiro:
I feel as though there’s still a lot we can learn from the urban development undertaken by the foreigners in the former foreign settlement. Reading over the proceedings of the Foreign Settlement Council will give us a good idea of the kind of urban development we need to undertake to get people to live here. It’s important that the urban development process makes information available to citizens and involves constant interaction. The spirit of civic society that urges citizens to try new things is alive and well in Kobe even today.
While this is also the reason that the port was opened, the waters around Kobe are deep, and Mt. Rokko sprawls wide in the background, so this closeness of mountain and sea makes for a city with a significant difference in elevation. Moving forward, how can we make use of these geographical blessings? It all depends on how we can express the appeal of these aspects to the world. The Osaka-Kobe area has an extremely comfortable living environment, so I think we should really sell that to get some attention on the area. I hope they’ll keep in mind the history and origins of the city that started in the foreign settlement and continue to be a special city.
Now begins an era of enhancing lives in the region. When I think about how buildings and cities should be, they’ve got to make use of their respective histories and unique traits or they’ll never last. By demonstrating the originality of buildings and cities with history and research on the region in mind, I just know that life in the region will be full of happiness and reasons to live.
Resume
Graduated from the Department of Architecture at Kobe University’s Faculty of Engineering in 2005. In March of 2007, completed the master’s program at Kobe University’s Graduate School of Engineering. In 2014, completed the doctoral program at the same graduate school and received his doctorate in engineering. Has presided over the KOSHIRO Kaoru Architectural Laboratory since 2014. In 2015, became a research support assistant in the Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration at Kobe University. In 2017, became a member of the Multidisciplinary Integration for Resilience and Innovation center of Kobe University’s Organization for Advanced and Integrated Research. In 2018, became a project associate professor at Kobe University’s Center for Computational Social Science and Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration.
