A Writer's Guide to Kobe

Kobe's main city library stands in Ōkurayama Park. On the second floor you'll find the Kobe Furusato Bunko of local history and the 1.17 Bunko of Great Hanshin earthquake materials. Reading Room 3 in the annex has 36 bookable seats with Wi-Fi. An English floor guide is available, though services are mainly in Japanese.

The Sannomiya branch is on the second floor of KIITO. Its Nest Booths and alcove seats suit a long stretch of reading, and groups can use the study rooms. Terminals for the Kobe Shimbun and Nikkei databases sit in the Co Reading area. Take the Port Loop bus from Sannomiya to the KIITO stop. The library works mainly in Japanese.

Anyone may enter Kobe University's libraries and make photocopies there, and visitors 15 and over can register to borrow. Closed-stack books are paged at the counter. At the Social Sciences Library, evening and weekend stack requests need an advance application. The library's English site leads to its digital collections, including the Earthquake Archive.

The haiku poet Yamaguchi Seishi's own book collection is kept here, and you can search it in the university catalogue. Visitors with photo ID can use the library on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and closed-stack items need a prior application. Haiku groups can apply to rent the memorial hall for meetings. Call first. Everything works in Japanese.

World's End Garden sells used modern literature and poetry, overseas literature and Western-language books, with design and art besides. The shop is five minutes' walk from Hankyu Ōji-kōen Station. It has no regular closing day.

Hanamori Shorin, near JR Motomachi Station, buys and sells used books in a wide range of subjects, along with old household goods. It grew out of the Tonka Shoten. The gallery space shows photography and picture-book art. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

1003 is a small independent bookshop in Room 504 of the Tōhō Building, about ten minutes' walk south of JR Motomachi Station. It sells used and new books along with little-press publications. Since moving here from Motomachi in 2020, it has kept up a calendar of author talks and reading groups.

Ryusen Shobo is a family-run shop selling new books. It was founded in Sannomiya in 1953 and now sits in the Tarumi Center Street arcade, about three minutes from the east exit of JR Tarumi Station. Staff post a recommended book every day. The shop sells signed books, especially by the novelist Tsutsui Yasutaka, and holds a weekly reading session for children.

Sobi opened in Suma in 2024 as a small bookshop that also makes coffee. Books are shelved by context, so poetry may sit beside philosophy. Three times a month the shop runs Books and Questions, where up to seven people discuss a question with no set answer.

The Creative Lounge is free and sits just inside the entrance of KIITO, a converted silk-inspection building near the port. Sixteen desk seats are set aside for remote work, and KOBE Wi-Fi is free. The Sannomiya Library is upstairs, and KIITO CAFE is on the same floor. The lounge closes Mondays, and the site is mainly in Japanese.

ANCHOR KOBE is a membership business lounge on the 15th floor of the Kobe Sannomiya Hankyu Building. Kobe City opened it, and the Kobe Shimbun and Deloitte Tohmatsu run it. Desks line the windows, and the community lounge looks out on the Rokkō mountains. Drop-in use is cashless. Monthly plans include one for students, and the site is in Japanese.

Nishimura began here in 1948, and the group's flagship occupies a North German half-timbered building with 164 seats over three floors. It is open from morning into the late evening. It closes the last Monday of each month. The website is in Japanese.

KIITO CAFE seats 35 in the former Kobe raw-silk inspection building, and some of its tables were made from the old inspection equipment. The lunch menu runs to curry and omurice, with cake and coffee after. It closes Mondays. The menu is in Japanese.

SONE has served dinner with live jazz since 1969, in Kobe, which the club calls the birthplace of Japanese jazz. Live sets begin each evening, and you can order a course dinner or à la carte. It is open year-round except over the New Year holidays.

The museum devoted to the graphic artist Yokoo Tadanori has a glass-walled café with an outdoor terrace. Lunches lean on vegetables, in sandwiches and curry. Ask, and your food comes on Yokoo-designed tableware, which the museum shop sells. World's End Garden is near the same station.

The Motomachi roastery opened this second café in 2025 inside the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art. You can use it without a museum ticket. It keeps museum days, Tuesday to Sunday.

Kobe Bungakukan, the city's literature museum, occupies a former Kwansei Gakuin chapel. Its changing exhibitions take up writers connected with Kobe, among them the novelist Shima Kyoko. Admission is free. It closes Wednesdays, and the exhibits are in Japanese.

Ashiya, on Kobe's eastern border, has kept a museum for the novelist Tanizaki Jun'ichirō since 1988. It mounts exhibitions on Tanizaki and his work, including The Makioka Sisters, and runs a beginners' course in reading aloud. Some literature lectures read English texts. Researchers can ask to see the collection. Programs are mainly in Japanese.

Writers in Kyoto is a membership group of English-language authors who live or work in Kyoto or have some connection to it, and it has held author readings in Kobe. Members help each other with book launches and readings. The group publishes anthologies and a quarterly newsletter. It works in English.

SWET has gathered people who write, edit and translate English in relation to Japan since 1980. It is based in Tokyo, but its networking events run online as well as in person, so a writer in Kobe can join a talk shop or a writers' salon. It keeps the SWET-L mailing list and publishes the Japan Style Sheet, a guide for writers, editors and translators.

Kobe University's Digital Archive puts part of its Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake Disaster Materials Collection online. The Newspaper Clippings Collection, gathered by RIEB, runs from the late Meiji era through the Second World War in images and full text. Special collections include documents on the opening of the Port of Kobe, and the Kernel repository holds articles, theses and research data. The interface is in English and Japanese. Reuse terms are listed item by item.

RIEB has been Kobe University's research institute for international economics and international management for more than half a century. One of the co-editors of The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development works here. It hosts the RIEB Seminar and the Kanematsu symposia, and its English-language Discussion Paper Series is posted online. The Integrated Center for Corporate Archives keeps the Kanebo Collection database.

The Japan Foundation's fellowship brings scholars from outside Japan for humanities or social-science research related to Japan, comparative work included. Researchers with a PhD or equivalent experience can come for a short visit or a long stay, and doctoral candidates can spend four to twelve months finishing a dissertation. Applicants arrange their own affiliation with a host institution in Japan. The guidelines are in English.

The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development is a peer-reviewed Taylor & Francis journal of theoretical and applied work on international economics and economic development, especially where trade and development meet. One of its co-editors is based at RIEB, Kobe University. Preparing an article for The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development

Each year the City of Kobe gives culture prizes in scholarship and the arts. The Culture Prize goes to individuals and groups whose work has contributed notably to Kobe's cultural life, and the Culture Encouragement Prize goes to promising emerging individuals and groups. A third award recognizes long-sustained work. Candidates are nominated on the city's form, and you may nominate yourself.

Writers in Kyoto runs this English-language competition, and anyone anywhere may enter. Entries are unpublished short pieces of up to 300 words, prose or poetry, with a clear connection to Kyoto. Judging is blind. Prizes include the Kyoto City Mayoral Prize, and the top three pieces may appear in a WiK anthology.

The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts fund this fellowship, and the International House of Japan runs it. Each year a few U.S.-based artists spend three to five months in Japan. Literature is one of the eligible disciplines. Fellows can live anywhere in Japan.

The Kobe Shimbun, Hyogo's daily newspaper, runs reader literary pages. Readers send in haiku, tanka and other verse, along with essays and fiction, and a panel of selectors picks work to print. Each year the selectors choose a Best Prize in each category.

Editors For Students gathers funding, awards and writing support for students at The University of Osaka.