Yamamoto-Dori, Kitano-Cho, Kobe City

Kobe Kitano-cho Yamamoto-dori: A Hillside of Foreign Merchant Houses

On the south-facing slope below Mount Rokko, in the Chuo Ward of Kobe, stands a neighborhood where European and American houses share the streets with Japanese homes from the same decades. The district covers 9.3 hectares of Kitano-cho and Yamamoto-dori, and in 1980 the national government selected it as an Important Preservation District for Groups of Traditional Buildings. The local name for these foreign residences is ijinkan, literally "houses of people from abroad." Many of them carry a weathervane, a brick chimney, or a bay window that looks out toward the harbor below.

The area is unusual among Japan's preservation districts. Most protect post towns, castle towns, or farming villages. This one was selected as a port town, and the architecture reflects a brief, concentrated period when foreign traders, diplomats, and their families built homes here at the turn of the twentieth century.

How a Farming Hillside Became a Foreign Quarter

Kobe opened to foreign trade on the first day of 1868, following the agreements made after the port of Hyogo was committed to opening in Keio 3 (1867). A foreign settlement was laid out along the coast, on flat reclaimed land east of the old Ikuta River. Kitano, up the hill, was still farmland.

That changed in the 1890s. As roads were cut into the hillside (the yamate, the slope above the settlement), residents of the foreign quarter began moving up the slope. The reasons were practical: the high ground caught the breeze, looked down over the bay, and lay within walking distance of the settlement below. Western-style houses went up first, joined before long by the Japanese-style residences of wealthy Kobe families. The mixed result gave the neighborhood the cosmopolitan character that survives today.

Survival was not guaranteed. Before the war the hillside held more than two hundred Western buildings. Air raids, postwar redevelopment, and the gradual decay of aging timber thinned their number. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January 1995 took several more. What remains is a fraction of the original quarter, which is part of why the district was protected when it was.

Why the District Was Selected

The path to protection began with a survey of the area in fiscal 1975, supported by national funds. Kobe passed an urban-landscape ordinance in 1978, designated the area as a city preservation district in December 1979, and the national government followed on April 10, 1980, selecting it under the criterion for a group of traditional buildings excellent in design as a whole.

The city has identified 33 Western-style buildings and 7 Japanese-style buildings from the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods as the designated traditional structures, though other historic residences stand within the district as well. Two of the Western houses carry the higher status of national Important Cultural Property. Both are open to visitors, and they make the clearest introduction to what the neighborhood was built for.

The Weathervane House (Former Thomas Residence)

The building most people picture when they think of Kitano is the Kazamidori no Yakata, the "Weathervane House." A German trader named Gottfried Thomas had it built around 1904 as his family home, working with the German architect Georg de Lalande. The design is rooted in Neo-Baroque, with touches of Jugendstil, the German strand of Art Nouveau, worked into the interior.

Look closely and the walls change material as they rise. The basement is faced in granite, the first floor is brick, and the second is half-timbered. This is the only brick-built ijinkan in Kitano, which is part of why it reads as heavier and more solid than its painted-timber neighbors. At the southeast corner a tower rises above the roofline, and the rooster-shaped weathervane on top has become the emblem of the whole district.

The house was designated a national Important Cultural Property in January 1978 under the name Former Thomas Residence, and Kobe opened it to the public that December. It came through the 1995 earthquake with cracks in 154 places along the brickwork, repaired over the following year and eight months. After a long closure for seismic reinforcement, it reopened to visitors on July 18, 2025.

The Moegi House (Former Sharp Residence)

A short walk away is the Moegi no Yakata, painted a soft yellow-green that gives it its name (moegi is the color of fresh young leaves). It was built in 1903 for Hunter Sharp, the American Consul General in Kobe, to a design attributed to the British architect Alexander Nelson Hansell, who also worked on the Harris Science Hall at Doshisha University.

This is a colonial-style house in clapboard-clad timber, two stories tall. Two bay windows of different shapes flank a central brick chimney, and the second-floor veranda gives a clear view down to Kobe Port. Inside, the entrance hall opens onto a deep staircase, and the fireplaces, mantelpieces, and tilework reward a slow look.

Sharp left Japan in 1908. The house changed hands several times before Kobayashi Hideo, president of the Kobe Electric Railway, acquired it in 1944 and lived there into the late 1970s. It became an Important Cultural Property in 1980 under the name Kobayashi Family Residence (Former Sharp Residence). For years it was known as the "white ijinkan," but a dismantling repair begun in 1987 revealed its original pale green, which was restored when the work finished in 1989. The furnishings on display belonged to the Kobayashi family.

Walking the District

Beyond the two designated treasures, the streets hold a row of houses now open as small museums or cafes. The Uroko House (former Hariyer Residence), the Yamate Hachiban-kan, and the House of Fragrance (former Wolhin Residence, styled as a Dutch house) each charge separate admission. Several historic buildings have found new uses: one early-twentieth-century residence now operates as a coffee shop, a quiet stop on a steep walk.

The slopes are real, so comfortable shoes help. The reward for the climb is the same one the foreign residents came for in the 1890s, namely the view back down over Kobe toward the water.