Twilight view of Kobe, from a point near Shin-Kobe station

is a district of Chūō-ku,

Kobe-shi Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whi ...

, Hyogo,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. Today, it is the biggest downtown area in the city. The district takes the name from Sannomiya Shrine, a branch of

Ikuta Shrine is a Shinto shrine in the Chūō Ward of Kobe, Japan, and is possibly among the oldest shrines in the country. History According to '' Nihon Shoki'', it was founded by the Empress Jingū at the beginning of the 3rd century AD to enshrine the ''ka ...

. Before the 1920s, Sannomiya was just an edge of the city. The major downtowns were Motomachi and

Shinkaichi is a district of Kobe, Japan. It is one of the major downtown areas in the city. The name of Shinkaichi means "newly opened area". It was named so because the district was really newly developed after moving the Minato-gawa (river) from this a ...

, which are west of Sannomiya. However, after Sogo

Department Store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appe ...

moved to the place in front of

Sannomiya Station , or simply , is located in the heart of Kobe, Japan. This station is the main railway terminal of Kobe. Lines Sannomiya is served by the following railway lines and stations: * Hanshin Electric Railway ( Main Line) - Kobe-Sannomiya Stati ...

from Motomachi in 1933, the area started to develop rapidly. Sannomiya is also a hub of many transportation systems in Kobe.

JR West , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, and i ...

, Hankyu Railway,

Hanshin Electric Railway is a Japanese private railway company of Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group that links Osaka and Kobe. It also owns the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. The first character for Kobe (神戸) and the second character for Osaka (大阪) combine to form the ...

Kobe Municipal Subway The is a rapid transit system in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Like other large Japanese cities, Kobe's subway system is heavily complemented by suburban rail. In addition, two people mover lines also serve the Kobe area: the Port Island Line ...

, and

Kobe New Transit is the third-sector semipublic company that runs Port Island Line ("Port Liner") and Rokkō Island Line ("Rokkō Liner") automated guideway transit (AGT) systems in Kobe, Japan. When opened in 1981, the Port Liner was the world's first fully aut ...

use Kobe-Sannomiya Station as their core station in the area. The

Kobe Incident The , also known in Japanese as the and in English as the Bizen affray or Bizen affair, was a diplomatic incident between Imperial Japan and several Western powers, caused by a skirmish on February 4, 1868 between Bizen soldiers and foreign sai ...

in 1868 occurred in this district, in front of Sannomiya Shrine.

See also