Co-op Kobe (), officially known as Consumer Co-operative Kobe, is a

consumers' cooperative A consumer cooperative is an business, enterprise owned by consumers and managed democracy, democratically and that aims at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of its members. Such cooperatives operate within the market economy independently of t ...

based in

Kobe Kobe ( ; , ), officially , is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. With a population of around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's List of Japanese cities by population, seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Port of Toky ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. It was founded in 1921 by

Toyohiko Kagawa was a Japanese Evangelicalism, Evangelical Christian pacifism, Christian pacifist, Christian reformer, and labour activist. Kagawa wrote, spoke, and worked at length on ways to employ Christian principles in the ordering of society and in coo ...

, and was later merged with Nada Consumer Co-operative. Now, with over 1.2 million members, it is the largest consumers' cooperative in the world.

External links

* http://www.coop-kobe.net/ * http://jccu.coop/eng/aboutus/history.php {{japan-stub Consumers' cooperatives Cooperatives in Japan Organizations based in Kobe Organizations based in Hyōgo Prefecture