Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum (HAT Kobe)

The Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum, formally known as the Disaster Reduction and Human Renovation Institution (DRI), stands in the HAT Kobe district on the Higashinada waterfront and was established in 2002 as a comprehensive documentation and education centre dedicated to the Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 17, 1995. That earthquake, measuring magnitude 7.3, killed 6,434 people, left 300,000 homeless, and caused an estimated 10 trillion yen in damage — Japan's worst urban earthquake disaster until the 2011 Tohoku event. The museum occupies a two-building complex and is divided into four exhibition zones. The first zone recreates the physical experience of the earthquake through a full-scale diorama of a collapsed Kobe street, complete with buckled asphalt, tilted telephone poles, and damaged building facades photographically accurate to the actual destruction. The second zone documents the emergency response, the scale of human loss, and individual survivor testimonies through multimedia installations that are emotionally powerful even for visitors with limited Japanese language comprehension. A third zone examines how communities rebuilt and what engineering and urban planning lessons were implemented during Kobe's reconstruction. The fourth zone is interactive and focused on disaster preparedness — practical guidance on earthquake survival that applies globally and is particularly relevant for first-time Japan visitors. The nearby Meriken Park still preserves the original broken wharf pylons from the earthquake as an outdoor memorial, free to visit in combination with the museum. The DRI draws school groups, government planners, and international visitors studying disaster risk reduction, and for general tourists the diorama and survivor testimony sections are the most affecting portions of the visit.