The mosque was built in 1935. It has survived air raids during the War in the Pacific as well as the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, and the original building is intact even today. Located in Kitano-Cho foreign district, Kobe Mosque is at the heart of one of the most popular tourist areas of the city. It’s just a 10-minute walk from Kobe-Sannomiya Station.

Kobe Mosque is the first mosque developed in Japan. The solid structure of the building permitted it to stay standing amid the bombings of World War II and to be utilized by the Japanese military as a shield. The mosque survived the Incredible Kobe Seismic tremor in 1995 and housed numerous families that misplaced their homes. The mosque is built in traditional Asian-Turkish style and is elaborately decorated.

The mosque is located in one of Kobe’s best-known tourist areas, the Kitano-Cho foreign district which features many old western-style buildings and known as Kobe Muslim Mosque, it was founded in October 1935 in Kobe and is Japan’s
first masjid. Its construction was funded by donations collected by the Islamic Committee of Kobe from 1928 until its opening in 1935.

The mosque was built in traditional Indo-Islamic style by the Czech architect Jan Josef Švagr (1885–1969), the architect of a number of Western religious buildings throughout Japan.