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Setonaikai NP, Hyogo
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Japan’s first golf course began here as a 4-hole project: British trader A. H. Groom and friends cleared rock, roots and brush by hand, finishing it in 1901; the 9-hole Kobe Golf Club followed in 1903.
Before refrigerators, villagers harvested natural ice from Rokko’s summit ponds and hauled it to Kobe on the Ice Road. The same ponds later became outdoor skating rinks—an unexpected winter industry on this mountain.
Rokko helped power Nada sake in 3 ways: 9 fast streams across 10 km drove rice-polishing waterwheels; mineral-rich groundwater supplied brewing water; and cold Rokko-oroshi winds favored winter brewing.
Rokko’s pasture began as a Swiss-model dairy project, not a petting farm: after 5 years of grass trials, its first herd in 1956 was just 2 cows and 3 sheep. Kobe Cheese production began there in 1987.
In 1873, 3 foreign residents climbed Rokko with ice axes and spiked boots—an early documented chapter of modern mountaineering on the mountain.
By 1910, Rokko had become an international summer village: a newspaper counted 56 villas—28 British, 12 Japanese, 9 German, 4 American, 2 French and 1 Belgian.
Kobe’s daily mountain-climbing custom grew from foreign residents’ regular walks; Japanese townspeople adopted it, and residents still make dawn climbs through local hiking clubs.
Rokko’s green slopes are a restoration story: Kobe records about 4 million trees planted across roughly 700 hectares between 1902 and 1912, after overuse had left much of the mountain bare.
Though it rises to less than 1,000 m, Rokko sits where plants from 6 regional floras meet; botanists have recorded about 1,700 species across the range.
At Futatabi Park on Rokko, Kobe’s foreign cemetery brings together 2 older burial grounds: 620 tombstones moved from Onohama in 1952, then 1,406 from Kasugano in 1961.
Opened in 1933 at 865 m, Rokko’s alpine garden grows about 1,500 mountain and cold-region plants. In 1984, it achieved Japan’s first successful bloom of kōgane-mizubashō (golden water arum).
Rokko-oroshi is the cold winter wind that rushes down the range—and the familiar nickname of the Hanshin Tigers’ team song. A mountain weather pattern became a baseball anthem.
At Rokko Alpine Botanical Garden, a suspension bridge was named Prince Bridge after Crown Prince Akihito crossed it in 1958; garden records say permission was granted to use the name.
Mount Rokko is actually a chain of mountains stretching about 30 km from Suma to Takarazuka, not a single summit; its highest point, Rokko Saikoho, stands at 931.3 m.
