Great Hanshin earthquake were from Kobe. Among major cities, Kobe, with its population of 1.5 million, was the closest to the epicenter and hit by the strongest tremors. This was Japan's worst earthquake in the 20th century after the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, which claimed more than 105,000 lives. Most of the largest earthquakes in Japan are caused by subduction of the Philippine Sea Plate or Pacific Plate, with mechanisms that involve either energy released within the subducting plate or the accumulation and sudden release of stress in the overlying plate. Earthquakes of these types are especially frequent in the coastal regions
1923 Great Kantō earthquake water demon triggers the 1923 earthquake. The josei manga "Akatsuki no Aria" (by Michiyo Akaishi) features the earthquake in volume 8. Several places frequented by the protagonist Aria Kanbara, like her boarding school and the house of the rich Nishimikado clan that she is an illegitimate member of, become shelters for the wounded and the homeless. Aria's birth mother is severely injured by debris and dies few later, and this triggers a subplot about Aria's own heritage. In the 2013 animated film by director Hayao Miyazaki, "The Wind Rises", the protagonist Jiro Horikoshi is traveling to Tokyo by train to