Kobe’s dream

MAYORS these days are itchy-feet types, forever zipping around the world to drum up business for their cities. Kazutoshi Sasayama of Kobe, who has spent much of this month on a business-boosting tour of America, certainly fits the pattern. His city was once the industrial muscle powering Japan's just-in-time manufacturing economy. But it has stagnated, with high unemployment, ever since it was flattened by a terrible earthquake in 1995. The mayor is selling a new vision of the city as a high-tech, high-value centre for the research and manufacture of medical devices and drugs.