In the 12th century,
Taira no Kiyomori renovated the then and moved to , the short-lived capital neighbouring the port. Throughout medieval era, the port was known as . In 1858 the
Treaty of Amity and Commerce opened the Hyōgo Port to foreigners. In 1865, the
Hyōgo Port Opening Demand Incident occurred, in which nine warships from Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States invaded the Hyōgo Port demanding its opening. In 1868, a new port of Kobe was built east of the Hyōgo Port and opened. After the
World War II pillars were occupied by the Allied Forces, later by
United States Forces Japan. (Last one returned in 1973.) In the 1970s the port boasted it handled the most containers in the world. It was the
world's busiest container port from 1973 to 1978. The 1995
Great Hanshin earthquake diminished much of the port city's prominence when it destroyed and halted much of the facilities and services there, causing approximately ten trillion yen or $102.5 billion in damage, 2.5% of
Japan's GDP at the time. Most of the losses were uninsured, as only 3% of property in the Kobe area was covered by earthquake insurance, compared to 16% in
Tokyo. Kobe was one of the world's busiest ports prior to the earthquake, but despite the repair and rebuilding, it has never regained its former status as Japan's principal shipping port. It remains Japan's fourth busiest container port. ==Facilities==