Rokkō Island

Kobe is a long and narrow city wedged between the coast to the south and the Rokkō Mountains to the north. As Kobe's population grew, there was no more space to expand. Kobe's situation was a microcosm of the situation faced by the entire island nation. Japan has an abundance of dense forests and a shortage of livable land. Urban planners in Kobe came up with an ingenious way to solve this problem: move mountains to create new land.[1]

Workers sliced off the tops of some of the heavily wooded local mountains to the northwest of the city. A ten-mile long underground conveyor belt was created to take the reclaimed land to its new home in the sea. A conveyor carried the rock and earth to barges, which dumped the contents two miles out into the bay. The massive undertaking took almost twenty years, from 1973 until 1992, to construct. The 1,400 acres (570 ha) island is shaped like a rectangle.

Rokkō Island is not the first island that Kobe city planners had built. Port Island was completed a decade before Rokkō Island. In 1173, Taira no Kiyomori, a military leader of the late Heian period of Japan, built an island known as Kyogashima.[2]

There are two main forms of public transportation to the island. The Rokko Liner, an automated guideway transit system, runs on an elevated viaduct through the central axis of the island and connects to the mainland. The Rokkō Liner stops at three stations on the island: Marine Park, Island Center, and Island Kita-Guchi. It connects Rokkō Island to Minami Uozaki, Uozaki Station on the Hanshin Line and Sumiyoshi Station on the JR Kobe Line. The Kobe Minato Kanko Bus is another option.

The Harbor Highway is a toll road which links in Sannomiya and Port Island from Rokko Island. The Hanshin Expressway Route 5 Wangan Route heads to Osaka. Limousine buses depart from the Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel to Kansai Airport or to Universal Studios Japan. Ferry boats (Hankyu Ferry and Ferry Sunflower) leave the island every day for Kyushu and Shikoku.

The major business on the island is related to the Kobe-Osaka International Port Corporation which operated both port container terminals, port liner berths and port ferry terminals.[3] Several manufacturing companies also operate on the island including the chocolatier, Morozoff Ltd. The Asia One Center used to house the P&G Japan Head Office. Rokkō Island also features businesses catering to the local residents and tourists including two hotels, shopping, and restaurants.