Kōbe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Kansai Region, Japan

Economy | Major companies and institutes

🇯🇵 Kobe is the seventh-largest city in Japan and the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture. It is located on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, on the north shore of Osaka Bay. The city is part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kyoto.

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. 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 (神戸), 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 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. While the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake diminished much of Kobe's prominence as a port city, it remains Japan's fourth-busiest container port. 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. The city is the point of origin and namesake of Kobe beef, as well as the site of one of Japan's most famous hot spring resorts, Arima Onsen.

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Economy The Port of Kobe is both an important port and manufacturing centre within the Hanshin Industrial Region. Kobe is the busiest container port in the region, surpassing even Osaka, and the fourth-busiest in Japan.

As of 2004, the city's total real GDP was ¥6.3 trillion, which amounts to thirty-four percent of the GDP for Hyōgo Prefecture and approximately eight percent for the whole Kansai region. Per capita income for the year was approximately ¥2.7 million. Broken down by sector, about one percent of those employed work in the primary sector (agriculture, fishing and mining), twenty-one percent work in the secondary sector (manufacturing and industry), and seventy-eight percent work in the service sector.

The value of manufactured goods produced and exported from Kobe for 2004 was ¥2.5 trillion. The four largest sectors in terms of value of goods produced are small appliances, food products, transportation equipment, and communication equipment making up over fifty percent of Kobe's manufactured goods. In terms of numbers of employees, food products, small appliances, and transportation equipment make up the three largest sectors.

The GDP in Kobe Metropolitan Employment Area (2.4 million people) is US$96.0 billion in 2010.

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Major companies and institutes Japanese companies which have their headquarters in Kobe include ASICS, a shoe manufacturer; Daiei, a department store chain; Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Shipbuilding Co., Mitsubishi Motors, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (ship manufacturer), Mitsubishi Electric, Kobe Steel, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Sysmex Corporation (medical devices manufacturer) and TOA Corporation. Other companies include the confectionery manufacturers Konigs-Krone and Morozoff Ltd., Sun Television Japan and UCC Ueshima Coffee Co.

There are over 100 international corporations that have their East Asian or Japanese headquarters in Kobe. Of these, twenty-four are from China, eighteen from the United States, and nine from Switzerland. Some prominent corporations include Eli Lilly and Company, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Tempur-Pedic, Boehringer-Ingelheim, and Toys "R" Us. In 2018, April, Swift Engineering USA, an American aerospace engineering firm established their joint venture in Kobe called Swift Xi Inc.

Kobe is the site of a number of research institutes, such as the RIKEN Kobe Institute Center for developmental biology and medical imaging techniques, and Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS, home of the K supercomputer), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) Advanced ICT Research Institute, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, and the Asian Disaster Reduction Center.

International organizations include the WHO Centre for Health Development, an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organization. The Consulate-General of Panama in Kobe is located on the eighth floor of the Moriyama Building in Chūō-ku, Kobe.

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Kobe Tower Panorama 
Kobe Tower Panorama
Image: Adobe Stock vichie81 #104504342

Kōbe is rated Sufficiency by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) which evaluates and ranks the relationships between world cities in the context of globalisation. Sufficiency level cities are cities that have a sufficient degree of services so as not to be overly dependent on world cities.

Kōbe was ranked #994 by the Nomad List which evaluates and ranks remote work hubs by cost, internet, fun and safety. Kōbe has a population of over 1,536,499 people. Kōbe also forms one of the centres of the wider Keihanshin metropolitan area which has a population of over 19,341,976 people.

To set up a UBI Lab for Kōbe see: https://www.ubilabnetwork.org Twitter: https://twitter.com/UBILabNetwork

Kōbe is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network for Design see: https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities

Twin Towns, Sister Cities Kobe has links with:

🇮🇳 Ahmadabad, India 🇮🇳 Ahmedabad, India 🇪🇸 Barcelona, Spain 🇦🇺 Brisbane, Australia 🇰🇷 Daegu, South Korea 🇵🇰 Faisalabad, Pakistan 🇰🇷 Incheon, South Korea 🇫🇷 Marseille, France 🇯🇵 Niigata, Japan 🇺🇸 Philadelphia, USA 🇵🇪 Pisco, Perú 🇱🇻 Riga, Latvia 🇧🇷 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 🇳🇱 Rotterdam, Netherlands 🇺🇸 Seattle, USA 🇨🇳 Tianjin, China 🇨🇳 Wuhan, China
Text Atribution: Wikipedia Text under CC-BY-SA license | GaWC | Nomad

South of: 34.69

🇰🇷 Jangheung 34.684

🇯🇵 Nara 34.683

🇨🇳 Sanyuan 34.683

🇲🇦 Oujda 34.679

🇩🇿 Djelfa 34.668

🇨🇾 Limassol 34.667

🇯🇵 Sōja 34.667

🇮🇷 Qom 34.655

🇯🇵 Okayama 34.651

🇯🇵 Akashi 34.65

East of: 135.195

🇯🇵 Tamba-Sasayama 135.217

🇯🇵 Sanda 135.224

🇯🇵 Sennan 135.267

🇯🇵 Ashiya 135.3

🇯🇵 Iwade 135.317

🇯🇵 Takarazuka 135.333

🇯🇵 Nishinomiya 135.344

🇯🇵 Kinokawa 135.36

🇯🇵 Kaizuka 135.367

🇯🇵 Kishiwada 135.375

West of: 135.195

🇯🇵 Wakayama 135.167

🇯🇵 Fukuchiyama 135.133

🇯🇵 Kyōtango 135.133

🇷🇺 Khabarovsk 135.074

🇯🇵 Miki 134.984

🇯🇵 Akashi 134.984

🇯🇵 Awaji 134.845

🇯🇵 Kakogawa 134.839

🇯🇵 Himeji 134.7

🇵🇼 Ngerulmud 134.627

Antipodal to Kōbe is: -44.805,-34.69

Locations Near: Kōbe 135.195,34.69

🇯🇵 Ashiya 135.3,34.717 d: 10  

🇯🇵 Nishinomiya 135.344,34.734 d: 14.5  

🇯🇵 Takarazuka 135.333,34.8 d: 17.6  

🇯🇵 Sanda 135.224,34.89 d: 22.4  

🇯🇵 Akashi 134.984,34.65 d: 19.8  

🇯🇵 Amagasaki 135.417,34.719 d: 20.5  

🇯🇵 Itami 135.4,34.783 d: 21.4  

🇯🇵 Miki 134.984,34.798 d: 22.7  

🇯🇵 Ikeda 135.43,34.819 d: 25.8  

🇯🇵 Izumiotsu 135.4,34.5 d: 28.3  

Antipodal to: Kōbe -44.805,-34.69

🇧🇷 Tubarão -49,-28.467 d: 19217.3  

🇧🇷 Criciúma -49.372,-28.678 d: 19219.3  

🇧🇷 Viamão -51.023,-30.088 d: 19239.1  

🇧🇷 Rio Grande -52.099,-32.041 d: 19276.7  

🇧🇷 Gravataí -50.983,-29.933 d: 19230  

🇧🇷 Alvorada -51.079,-30.001 d: 19228.5  

🇧🇷 Cachoeirinha -51.083,-29.95 d: 19224.3  

🇧🇷 Porto Alegre -51.229,-30.028 d: 19219.9  

🇧🇷 Canoas -51.183,-29.915 d: 19214.7  

🇧🇷 Sapucaia do Sul -51.146,-29.842 d: 19211.7  

Bing Map

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