is one of 9 wards of

Kobe Kobe ( ; , ), officially , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. With a population of around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's List of Japanese cities by population, seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Port of Toky ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Population

As of February 1, 2012, it had an area of 30.0 km² and a population of 166,324, with 71,745

household A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...

Attractions

There is a white sandy beach in this ward, which attracts tourists to the

Kansai The or the lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropoli ...

region for sunbathing and popular events during the summer. The beach is also a location in the Japanese literary classics ''

Ise Monogatari is a Japanese ''uta monogatari'', or collection of ''waka (poetry), waka'' poems and associated narratives, dating from the Heian period. The current version collects 125 sections, with each combining poems and prose, giving a total of 209 poems ...

'', '' Genji Monogatari'', and '' Heike Monogatari''. Suma is often referred to as an '' utamakura'' or '' meisho'', and is mentioned frequently in ''waka'', and in Noh,

Kabuki is a classical form of Theatre of Japan, Japanese theatre, mixing dramatic performance with Japanese traditional dance, traditional dance. Kabuki theatre is known for its heavily stylised performances, its glamorous, highly decorated costumes ...

and

Bunraku is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, founded in Osaka in the beginning of the 17th century, which is still performed in the modern day. Three kinds of performers take part in a performance: the or (puppeteers), the (chanters) ...

dramas.

Transport

Nowadays, people mainly live in Myodani, Myohoji and other northern parts of the ward. Myōdani Station is a major station in western Kobe. Sumadera01s2040

Places of interest

* Suma Rikyu Park * Suma Aqualife Park

Notable people

Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer, who served as the Governor of Tokyo Metropolis, Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012. Being the former leader of the Far-right politics, radical right Sunrise Party, later merged with Toru Hashimoto's Japan ...

- Governor of Tokyo * Yone Suzuki - businesswoman, lived in Suma-ku before 1927 * Nobu Jo - social worker, founder of a suicide prevention campaign in Suma

References

External links

* Wards of Kobe {{Hyogo-geo-stub