I am in Kobe today. For me, Kobe is a place filled with memories, as during my childhood summer vacations my father would organize beach volleyball tournaments held near Kobe, and around the same time fireworks festivals were also taking place, so we visited there almost every year. After that, I had fewer opportunities to come, but around the time of the pandemic, I frequently visited again and spent rich moments enjoying the night sea breeze.
Kobe flourished as one of the leading port cities in Kansai, but what drastically changed its history was the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. This earthquake, which struck on January 17, 1995, caused the prosperity the city had built over many years to collapse overnight and forced it to start over from scratch. Moreover, for an island nation like Japan, the most crucial defense bases had always been placed along the coastline since ancient times, and Kobe was no exception. In particular, its location between Settsu in northern Osaka and Harima, surrounded by the massive Rokko mountain range, formed a distinctive geography where people had already lived since the Jomon period. By the Yayoi period, it had become an important hub where cultures, people, and goods from other regions intersected. What is especially intriguing is that not only in the Izumo region but also in this area, numerous large deposits of bronze bells (dōtaku, 銅鐸) have been unearthed. Personally, I see this as evidence that the Kobe bay area once served as a crucial maritime defense hub for the Yamato polity, and that whoever controlled Kobe’s hegemony would have held vital importance for local tribal leaders.