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The Kobe Foreign Settlement was founded in 1868 after the Tokugawa Shogunate opened the country to world. Kobe was one of the five international trading ports that opened this time.

The Settlement for Western people was developed by an English architect as one of the first modernized urban areas in Japan. This "city" enjoyed self-government and had an extra-territoriality before recovered by the Japanese government in 1899.

Even now, this area is known as "Kyu Kyoryu-Chi (Former Foreign Settlement)". There still exist some western style buildings and somehow westernized atmosphere.