Osaka then and now
The city keeps an account of places where it can say what stood there before. These are the accounts, oldest first. The city prints old photographs with them; we do not hold those, so this page is the text.
Before 1900
鉄橋の高麗橋
In the Edo period Koraibashi was the starting point of the highways of western Japan. The bridge completed here in September 1870 was the first iron bridge in Osaka. Glass lanterns stood on the newel posts and the iron piers themselves were admired, so it was nicknamed Kurogane-bashi, the iron bridge, and drew sightseers. In 1876 the milestone marking the origin of road distances in Osaka Prefecture was set up here. The iron bridge served for sixty years and was replaced in 1929 by a reinforced concrete arch, whose railing posts carry bronze giboshi finials. A small plaza at the east end now holds a stone recording the bridge's history, and the milestone marker as well.
造幣局と外輪船
In April 1871 the Mint began striking coins with Western machinery that was advanced for its day, and became a forerunner of modern industry in Japan. The front entrance of the casting house stood on the left, and the Western-style buildings facing the Okawa, where paddle steamers passed, astonished people. The works and offices were rebuilt in three stages from 1929 and finished in 1938. From 1883 the avenue of cherry trees inside the grounds was opened to the public; that walk-through, the Toriinuke, has been a sign of spring in Osaka ever since and still draws crowds. The Mint became an incorporated administrative agency in 2003.
天保山の燈明台
In the Edo period, silt dredged from the bed of the Ajikawa was piled up to form a breakwater, and that mound was called Tempozan. At the end of the shogunate a battery was placed here for a time when Russian warships appeared. After the port opened, a square wooden lighthouse designed by the British engineer Richard Brunton was built and lit in 1872. Tempozan Pleasure Garden opened in 1888 and the area became a resort; the lighthouse was rebuilt as a wooden hexagon in 1894 and stayed lit until 1910. Tempozan Park opened in 1957. The hill, once about 20 m high, now stands 4.53 m and is known as the lowest mountain in Japan.
初代の大阪駅
The railway between Osaka and Kobe opened on 11 May 1874, and the line to Kyoto on 5 September 1876. The first Osaka station was a two-storey red brick building in Western style, elegant for its time, with a garden and pond at the entrance; people called it Umeda Stensho. In 1901 a new station was built slightly to the east, on the present site, and the old site was used for railway facilities until 1939, when the Osaka Central Post Office moved there. That post office, a seven-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete building designed by Yoshida Tetsuro of the Ministry of Communications works section, was long one of the faces of the station forecourt; a plan to rebuild it together with the adjoining block is now under way.
凌雲閣
Tall buildings were a rarity in the Meiji period. Answering Minami's Chobokaku, in April 1889 a nine-storey wooden tower 39 m high opened in Kitano Chayamachi as the Ryounkaku amusement centre. Built as an octagonal cone, its observation deck was known as the Nine Storeys of the North, and it stood in Yurakuen, a pleasure garden with a pond and hillocks. In 1906 the site became Umeda Higashi Elementary School, which ran until it was merged away in 1989; a stone and a panel marking the Ryounkaku stood by the gate. Since 2011 a land readjustment scheme has been under way on the old school grounds and the land beside it, widening the east-west road.
桜の宮水源地
The view is of the Sakuranomiya waterworks as first built, seen from the west bank of the Okawa; the intake below the embankment survives. The works were completed in 1895 and Osaka's municipal water supply began. When the Kunijima works opened on the new Yodogawa in 1914, Sakuranomiya was closed, and the site took the city tram depot at Miyakojima in 1922 and a government railway freight yard on the Yodogawa in 1927. The tram depot closed in 1969 and the freight yard in 1982. On the freight yard site, a competition-designed housing project produced towers of 12 to 41 storeys, finished in 1992, and the tram depot site became Osaka City General Hospital in 1993.
江之子島の初代市庁舎
Even after the city of Osaka was founded in 1889, a special provision left its business in the hands of the prefectural governor. When that provision was abolished, the first Osaka city hall was built in December 1899 just north of the prefectural offices. It was a temporary two-storey wooden building of about 830 square metres, but the city offices leaving the prefectural building and standing on their own mattered a great deal. Money was short and a permanent hall kept being deferred; in 1912 the city built a wooden hall in Dojima and moved there. A fourteen-storey apartment block with a Mazda dealership now stands on the site.
1900s
堂島川北岸の控訴院
The grand building on the Dojimagawa is the second Osaka Court of Appeal, completed in March 1900. It replaced the 1890 building, which burned down, and it too burned in the great fire of Kita in 1909. So in 1916 a three-storey Renaissance-style brick courthouse with a tower at its centre was built, long known and liked as the Red Brick. It was replaced in turn, and in 1974 the present eleven-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete building, shared by the Osaka High, District and Family Courts, was completed with a large forecourt.
築港大桟橋
The great pier of Osaka Port, 454 m long, came into use in August 1903. Traffic was slow at first, but trade grew with the First World War boom of the Taisho years and the pier contributed much to the rise of Greater Osaka. It was wrecked by the Muroto typhoon of 1934; a breakwater was then built, and in 1944 a central mole 350 m long replaced the great pier, only to be devastated by war damage, earthquake and storm surge. The harbour radar later set up on the rebuilt mole is gone, and in 1997 the entrance to the Sakishima tunnel was built here. The sunset seen from the central mole is famous now, and on the water a little to the north stands a mermaid statue, given as part of a cultural exchange with the port of Copenhagen.
日本銀行大阪支店と淀屋橋
The Bank of Japan's Osaka branch moved in January 1903 from Okawacho, now Kitahama 4, to newly built premises on its present site in Nakanoshima. Designed by Tatsuno Kingo in brick and stone, it is marked by the dome at its centre. The branch was later kept rather than replaced: a new six-storey wing and the conservation work on the old building were finished in 1982. Yodoyabashi, in the foreground, was swept away by the great Yodogawa flood of 1885 and restored the next year as a 9 m wide bridge on iron columns with timber girders, aligned then in a straight line with Oebashi. It was widened and made iron in 1911 for the city tram, and when Midosuji opened it was replaced in 1935, after a public design competition, by a granite-faced steel-framed reinforced concrete arch 36.4 m wide. With the bank it gives Nakanoshima its solid, formal face. Both the bank and the bridge are designated Important Cultural Properties.
福崎焼却場
A refuse incinerator built in 1903 at Fukuzakicho on the lower Shirinashigawa. It was small and never went much beyond experimental burning, but the experience led to the Kizugawa incinerator, which could handle large volumes, and Fukuzaki closed in 1916. As of 2011 the site holds the Sugimura Fukuzaki warehouse and the distribution and goods centres of manufacturers.
天王寺公園
On the site of the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition of 1903, the higher ground on the east opened in December 1909 as Tennoji Park, the city's second park, and was extended over the lower ground on the west in 1912. The exhibition's art museum, Japanese garden, greenhouse and Western flower beds were kept as park facilities, and the municipal zoo opened on the west side in 1915. Early in the Showa era the Sumitomo family gave the city Keitakuen and Chausuyama, and the municipal art museum opened in 1936. A car park was built under the park in 1987, and in 1990 admission was charged as part of a refit.
1910s
明治の渡辺橋
Rebuilt in 1908 for the city tram's north-south line, this bridge carried the tram road for twenty years, until 1927. The building at the east side of the south end is the Osaka Post and Telegraph Office. In 1927 the bridge was replaced by an ornate neo-Renaissance crossing 27 m wide with a steel arch at its centre. Ground subsidence followed, and in 1966, along with Higobashi, it was rebuilt as a 29 m wide steel plate-girder bridge to suit the subway works. The post and telegraph office site became the Shin-Asahi Building in 1958, holding the Festival Hall and the Osaka Grand Hotel; as of 2011 that in turn was being rebuilt as the 39-storey Nakanoshima Festival Tower.
堂島の2代目市庁舎
The second city hall, completed on Dojimahama-dori in May 1912. Money being short, it was a temporary two-storey wooden building of 5,398 square metres, and it held the city assembly chamber for the first time. In 1921 a proper city hall was finally built on Nakanoshima and the offices moved there. On the old site, a four-storey reinforced concrete Osaka Central Telephone Office was built in 1927. It later became the Osaka Toll Telephone Office, and the eight-storey NTT Telepark Dojima No. 1 Building stands there now.
桃山病院
Momoyama Hospital opened in April 1896 as a permanent infectious diseases hospital. On the left of the picture is the main building put up in 1912, on the right the laboratory and other rooms built in 1907; the facilities were modernised from then on. A modern wooden building replaced them in 1921, but after what the Great Kanto Earthquake did to Tokyo, a complete rebuild in reinforced concrete was finished in 1937. Momoyama Citizens' Hospital was founded in 1946. In 1993 both hospitals were merged into the Osaka City General Medical Center, and under the Fudegasaki district scheme the site now holds high-rise flats, a hot-spring fitness club, sports facilities and a children's playground.
船場尋常小学校
Toseki Elementary School, founded in 1872, and Nakasemba Elementary School, founded in 1873, merged in 1885 and became Semba Ordinary Elementary School in 1887. The picture shows the new building of 1915, whose modern look was much talked about. The school was merged into Aijitsu Elementary in 1942. In 1965 the municipal Azuchimachi car park was built on the site, nine floors above ground and three below, with room for 450 cars. In 2001 it was rebuilt again as a complex holding the fifteen-storey Viale Osaka and Kosha Heights Azuchimachi together with a three-level underground car park.
旧大阪府庁舎
The Osaka prefectural office completed in July 1874 at Enokojima, on the east bank of the Kizugawa, was an imposing two-storey Western building of brick finished in lime mortar, and was nicknamed the Enokojima Government. The business of the newly founded city of Osaka was also done here, and both wings were added in 1916. After the prefectural offices moved to Otemae in 1926, the building became the prefectural industrial promotion hall, and most of it burned in the air raids of 1945. Rebuilt, it was renamed the Industrial Technology Research Institute in 1973 and the General Industrial Technology Research Institute in 1987, and moved to Izumi in 1996. The site was sold by competition and flats are being built; part of the old prefectural building's remains is to be preserved. The former institute buildings at the right of the foreground now house the prefectural Enokojima Art, Culture and Creative Center.
朝日新聞社
The Osaka Asahi Shimbun building, a four-storey reinforced concrete work in early modern Renaissance style with a clock tower, was completed in 1916. It was pulled down in 1965 to be rebuilt, and the thirteen-storey Asahi Shimbun Building was finished in 1968, a pioneer of the multi-level road in that the Hanshin Expressway runs through it. Now, together with the Festival Hall across Yotsubashi-suji, it is being rebuilt as twin towers 200 m high, aimed at completion in 2018.
鉾流橋
Hokonagashibashi takes its name from the hoko-nagashi rite of the Tenjin Festival. Built in 1918 as a timber and iron bridge linking Nishitenma and Nakanoshima, it appears here with the Central Public Hall, finished the same year, behind it. In 1929 the first city planning programme replaced it with a Gerber steel girder bridge and widened it to 11 m. The railings and lamps were later removed for wartime metal collection, and the bridge stayed in its makeshift postwar state until repair work in 1980 dressed it to sit well with the Central Public Hall.
本庄公設市場
Public markets were meant to ease the cost of living and improve the retail system, and Osaka set up four of them before the rice riots. Honjo public market opened in April 1919 along with the Karahori, Chikko, Nishinoda and Kizu markets. In 1974 it was rebuilt as a twelve-storey block with the Housing Supply Corporation's Nakazaki Corpo flats on the upper floors. The market itself has since been reborn as a new market of a supermarket and shops, known as Nabel.
1920s
北市民館
Opened in June 1921 on the east side of the Tenroku crossing, a four-storey reinforced concrete building: a public settlement house for the welfare of the neighbourhood. Under the practical management of its first director, Shiga Shinato, it became the base of Osaka's municipal social work. Its ivy-covered walls later made it a landmark. In 2001 the site was built jointly with the Osaka Municipal Housing Supply Corporation and private operators as the municipal Housing Information Center. It connects directly to Tenjimbashisuji Rokuchome subway station and holds the Housing Information Plaza, the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, and a centre for advice on raising children.
大阪市庁舎
In 1921 the third Osaka city hall was completed on Nakanoshima and the offices moved from the wooden hall in Dojima. Chosen by open competition, it was a five-storey reinforced concrete building in modern Renaissance style with a tower, and citizens knew it well for many years, until age and lack of space forced a rebuild. The first stage, on the site of the annex, was finished in 1982; work then began on the site of the old hall, and the second stage was inaugurated in January 1986. The new hall, chosen through a limited design competition, is eight storeys of steel-framed reinforced concrete, and its granite facing follows the old building. Yodoyabashi in the foreground, an iron bridge finished in 1911 for the city tram, was replaced in 1935 with the present reinforced concrete arch, chosen by public competition, when Midosuji was built; it is an Important Cultural Property.
市営堀川住宅
Rising demand for housing in the early Showa years and inflation that drove up building materials made landlords hold back from building, and the housing shortage grew serious. Municipal housing answered this: between 1919 and 1926 the city built 1,285 units on six sites. Horikawa municipal housing was built in 1922 as 194 two-storey wooden units, but most were destroyed in the air raids of 1945 and temporary housing was put up. In 1989, along with the redevelopment of the Ogimachi district, the land was consolidated and rebuilt as the fourteen-storey Ogimachi municipal housing, and the remaining plots were taken into Ogimachi Park.
鐘淵紡績淀川工場
The Kanegafuchi Spinning Yodogawa mill, opened in Tomobuchicho in 1918, occupied a huge site including company housing and was the largest factory in the ward. With the postwar slump in textiles it was suspended in 1974, moved to the Nagahama mill, and closed entirely in 1982. The site has been turned into a large residential district: Bell Park City, about 3,600 units including two 36-storey towers, together with the public corporation's Riverside Tomobuchi estate, the Tomobuchi Corpo, municipal Tomobuchi housing, and Tomobuchi elementary and junior high schools.
大軌ビルディング
The terminal building of the Osaka Electric Tramway, completed at Uehonmachi 6-chome in 1926. From the basement to the third floor it held the Mikasaya department store, which became the company's own Daiki department store in 1936. It was renamed Kankyu, then Kintetsu Department Store Uehonmachi in 1948, then Uehonmachi Kintetsu Department Store in 1969. In 1973 an extension was completed as the twelve-storey Uehonmachi Terminal Building, and in 1985 the 21-storey Miyako Hotel Osaka opened as well. In 2010, timed with the opening of Uehonmachi YUFURA to the south, with shops, offices and the Shin-Kabukiza theatre, a full renovation of the department store was completed.
大阪中央電信局
The Osaka Central Telegraph Office, completed in 1927, was a five-storey reinforced concrete building designed by the architect Yamada Mamoru and marked by its curved roof storey. It later became the Osaka Central Telegraph Office of the public telecommunications corporation and was pulled down around 1966. In 1970 the corporation's Fukushima telephone office was built on the site; after the corporation was privatised, it is now the third NTT Telepark Dojima building.
市立大阪商科大学
In March 1928 the municipal higher commercial school was raised to Osaka University of Commerce, and the Osaka City Institute of Economic Research was set up the same year. From 1929 it opened departments of trade, finance and management, and the first department of municipal administration in the country. The Karasugatsuji campus, built in 1911, was cramped, so in 1933 new buildings were put up at Sugimotocho and the university moved there; it became Osaka City University in 1949. On the old site the Osaka Teishin Hospital opened in 1942, becoming the corporation's Teishin Hospital when the public telecommunications corporation was founded in 1952. It was rebuilt as a nine-storey hospital in 1990 and renamed NTT West Osaka Hospital in 1999.
心斎橋筋商店街
The shopping street that stands for Osaka. Until the early Meiji period the stretch north of the north end of Shinsaibashi prospered, but from the middle of Meiji the centre of trade moved south. The picture shows Shinsaibashisuji in the early Showa years; the east-west road in the foreground is Suomachi-dori, and the tall Daimaru department store can be seen at the back on the left. An arcade was later put over the street and it became the most advanced shopping street in the city centre. The present suspended arcade was completed in 1990. Suomachi-dori was widened in 1935 and is now nicknamed Europe-dori, with its streetscape tidied up to match.
水晶橋と大阪控訴院
Suishobashi was not originally a bridge at all: formally it is the Dojimagawa movable weir, completed in March 1929 to help clean the river. It is a wide pedestrian-only bridge 9 m across, and when it was refitted in 1982 it was made a bridge in law as well; from the following year it has been lit at night, giving Nakanoshima part of its evening look. The red brick Osaka Court of Appeal behind it, completed in 1916, was shared with the district and summary courts, and at this time there was no high revetment, so river and bank formed one space open to the water. Subsidence and storm-surge damage then brought the present revetment, and the underside of Suishobashi now sits lower. The court was renamed the Osaka High Court and rebuilt in 1974 as the new eleven-storey building shared by the Osaka High, District and Family Courts.
道頓堀通と角座
Four hundred years after the first playhouse stood here, Dotonbori has been the heart of Osaka's Minami and a great entertainment quarter lined with theatres. At its centre were the five Dotonbori theatres: Naniwaza, Nakaza, Kadoza, Asahiza and Bentenza. The Kadoza, on the right of the picture, is known for being the first to use a revolving kabuki stage, in 1758. It burned in the war, was rebuilt as a cinema, reopened as a variety theatre in 1958 and closed in 1984. In 1986 it was rebuilt as the mixed-use Kadoza Building; the cinema that reopened there closed in 2007, and the basement variety theatre B1 Kadoza closed in 2008. The Kadoza Building has since been demolished too.
1930s
拡幅後の御堂筋・梅田新道
Building Midosuji was, tram roads aside, the first arterial street laid out inside the city. Its point was not better traffic but the making of a pleasant urban space. The view looks north from the Do Building; from the front of the Umeda Hankyu Building seen at the back to the north end of Oebashi is the first completed stretch of Midosuji, finished in 1927, and the street trees planted were planes, not ginkgos. In 1970 Shin-Midosuji branched off to the right from this point and opened. The Umeda Hankyu Building is now being rebuilt as a tower, with the Osaka Ekimae third and fourth buildings to the west and the Phoenix Tower and others to the east.
建設進む天守閣
The steel frame all but assembled, the keep beginning to show its full shape. A special method was used so that the keep's weight, estimated at 11,000 tonnes, put almost no load on the stone base, and this drew attention in architecture as well. Osaka Castle's keep was built from citizens' donations, its Toyotomi-era appearance reconstructed with reference to the folding screen of the summer siege of Osaka and other sources; the eight-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete keep was completed in November 1931. As it aged, a full refit known as the Heisei great repair was carried out, with seismic strengthening, renewal of the exterior and a new wheelchair lift, completed in March 1997.
中央卸売市場
Water and land transport decided that Osaka's central wholesale market be built at Shimo-Fukushima, but the planned site was crowded with houses, schools, a copper-rolling works and warehouses, and negotiations went hard over residents' opposition and compensation. The market opened in 1931 on 12 hectares, and in scale and equipment it was the finest in the East. It was badly damaged in the war but its facilities went on being strengthened and extended. From 1990, starting with the administration block, a rebuilding programme was begun; three stages of work were completed in October 2002 and the market was greatly renewed.
大阪歌舞伎座
The Osaka Kabukiza was a modern theatre of seven floors seating 3,000, with a huge round window on its front. Its opening run in October 1932 was a great east-west kabuki programme, with Nakamura Ganjiro, Fukusuke and Kaisha joined by Ichimura Uzaemon from Tokyo, and it set the city talking. Besides kabuki it had an ice rink on the sixth floor. When the Shin-Kabukiza opened on Midosuji in 1958, the Kabukiza closed, was converted, and reopened as the Sennichi Department Store, which was pulled down after the disastrous fire there in 1972. Printemps Namba opened in 1984, changed its line of business and closed in 2000, and Bic Camera opened in 2001.
高島屋百貨店
Takashimaya opened its Osaka store in 1898, and after the Shinsaibashi branch and the Nagahori store it moved in 1930 into the Nankai Building, the Nankai Electric Railway's Namba terminal; in 1932 the whole seven-storey building was finished and the store opened in full. It has held the position facing Midosuji as the Takashimaya of Namba ever since. It was refitted in step with the opening of Namba CITY in 1978-80 and the rebuilding of Namba station, and in 2011 the nine-storey east wing offices were converted to selling space, enlarging the store.
難波駅前の地下鉄工事
Cut-and-cover subway work drove in steel sheet piles 20 m long, and the noise and vibration were tremendous. The picture is of the extension between Shinsaibashi and Namba, begun in 1933 and opened in October 1935. Midosuji opened in 1937, completing the road and subway artery running north-south through the city centre. Buildings then lined Midosuji, and the street keeps changing: the Nangai Kaikan on the right of the picture, opened in 1953, was rebuilt as the Toho Nangai Building in 2006, and the Shin-Kabukiza on the left, designed by the architect Murano Togo and opened in 1958, closed in 2009 though as of 2011 it still keeps its distinctive run of undulating gable eaves.
大江橋の建設
A design in the southern European medieval manner, forming a pair with Yodoyabashi, with balconies built out over the piers. Work was going steadily ahead on a stately bridge of reinforced concrete arch construction faced in granite. Oebashi, like Yodoyabashi, had its design chosen by public competition, and it was completed in April 1935. In 1965 the Hanshin Expressway loop was built above it along the Dojimagawa, and the houses gave way to office blocks, but Oebashi is as it was when finished, and in 2008 it was designated an Important Cultural Property together with Yodoyabashi. The water of the Dojimagawa has grown cleaner, keeping something of the character of Osaka as a city of water.
地下鉄梅田駅地上入口
The subway running fast beneath the road was planned as transport Osaka's future could not do without, and half a century later it is the mainstay of the city's traffic, exactly as intended. The Umeda station entrance in the picture, taken not long after the line opened in 1933, faces south; at the same spot today the entrance to the Whity Umeda underground mall in front of the Shin-Hankyu Building faces the opposite way, north.
架け替え後の四つ橋
Yotsubashi is the collective name for four bridges that stood where the Nishiyokobori and Nagahori rivers crossed: Uwatsunagi, Shitatsunagi, Yoshinoya and Sumiya. With Nishinagahoribashi on the west side, where the city tram ran, they were rebuilt in 1927-28 under the first city planning programme. In this 1934 picture, work has begun on the Electricity Science Museum across the water and the construction tower can be seen. Yotsubashi, familiar to the people of Osaka since the Edo period, disappeared when the Nishiyokobori was wholly filled in in 1971 and the Nagahori in 1973. The old Nishiyokobori under the Hanshin Expressway viaduct is a car park, the old Nagahori road became Nagahori-dori, and a memorial stone to the Yotsubashi site now stands in the green strip along it.
木津川焼却場
Completed in 1916 as a large-scale refuse incinerator, at which point the Fukuzaki plant and the Nagara plant of 1907 were both closed. Blast furnaces were added in 1918 to strengthen the plant, and the residue was disposed of on reclaimed land in the port. The picture shows the fourth incinerator, built in 1929. With the completion of the Taisho plant at 300 tonnes a day in 1980, Osaka achieved a system in which all combustible refuse was incinerated. A crushing facility was completed in 1988, so bulky waste is crushed before burning.
地下鉄心斎橋駅
Each subway station was designed in a different style, down to the chandeliers and the colour of the wall tiles. Trains ran as a single car at first, but the platforms were planned to take ten-car formations, and the escalators struck people as luxurious. Shinsaibashi was a temporary station when the line opened in May 1933; the permanent station in the picture opened in 1934. The Midosuji line now runs ten-car trains, and the Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi line's Shinsaibashi station, opened in 1997, connects here.
天満青物市場
A thriving vegetable market on the north bank of the Okawa between Tenmabashi and Tenjimbashi, sung of even in a lullaby. When the central wholesale market opened in 1931 it became a private distribution depot; a rebuilt depot with a steel frame and slate roof was finished in 1935, and in wartime it served as a branch of the central wholesale market, until it burned in the air raids of 1945. In 1949 it moved to the site of the former Toyobo Tenma mill as the Tenma wholesale market, and the old site was later laid out as Minami-Temma Park.
大川町線（土佐堀通）
The Okawacho line, laid out along the Tosaborigawa west of Yodoyabashi under the first city planning programme, with a tree-lined pavement and a green belt. Along it can be seen the Mizuno building in the left foreground, the Sumitomo Bank head office and the Daido Life building at the Higobashi crossing. The city tram that ran here has since been abolished and the Tosaborigawa revetment has been raised. The buildings have changed greatly too, with the twelve-storey Sumitomo Building of 1962, once called the New Sumitomo Building, and the nineteen-storey Daido Life Osaka head office rebuilt in 1993.
大丸とそごう百貨店
Daimaru and Sogo were both leading old houses of Shinsaibashisuji. Facing Midosuji, Daimaru completed a seven-storey extension on the Midosuji side in 1933, designed by the architect William Merrell Vories, and Sogo completed a new eight-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete building in 1935, designed by the architect Murano Togo. Contrasting in design and colour, the two department stores competed in splendour and made a new urban scene. Sogo's Osaka store closed in 2000 and was pulled down in 2003; a fourteen-storey Sogo Shinsaibashi main store was built in 2005 in an attempt at revival, but it closed again in 2009, ending Sogo's history in Shinsaibashi. It was sold to Daimaru and is now the north wing of the Daimaru Shinsaibashi store.
新大阪ホテル
The city's first Western-style hotel came out of the early Meiji years, when the Jiyutei Hotel, a lodging for foreigners in the Kawaguchi foreign settlement, opened a branch on Nakanoshima in 1881 and later became the Osaka Hotel. As the merchant city grew, a hotel of real standing was called for, and in January 1935 the New Osaka Hotel was born, eight storeys of steel-framed reinforced concrete, spoken of as the guest house of western Japan. It closed in 1973 and was demolished; the site now holds the thirteen-storey Sumitomo Nakanoshima Building, put up in 1977.
道頓堀の夜景
The night view of Dotonbori stands for Minami and appears more often than any other in the many songs about Osaka. The Dotonbori March, which begins with red lights and blue lights, was written in 1928. Chief among those lights is the Glico sign. The first Glico neon tower went up beside Ebisubashi on the Dotonbori canal in 1935. On the 33 m tower the trademark runner and the Glico name stood out, and it became a landmark of Minami at once. It was taken down in the war for its metal and rebuilt in 1955, and since then, redone several times, it has been indispensable as the symbol of the Dotonbori scene.
御堂筋ガスビル付近
The Osaka Gas Building, known as the Gas Building, was completed in 1933: eight storeys of steel-framed reinforced concrete designed by the architect Yasui Takeo, and liked as a work of modernism. The run of deep eaves, the outlines of the windows and the great curved surface at the south-east corner give the exterior its character. In wartime the lifts, handrails and window frames were given up for their metal, and the white outer walls were said to have been painted black as camouflage. To extend the Osaka Gas head office, a north wing designed by the architect Sano Shoichi was added in 1966 as one building with the old, and it keeps its presence among the blocks of Midosuji.
城北公園
After the new Yodogawa was cut in the Meiji period, the riverbed at a meander of the old Nakatsugawa was left as open ground with a great deal of water on it, and work went ahead to use it as a park; 9.5 hectares opened as Shirokita Park in May 1934. At the time about a third of the grounds was pond, and the park held a teaching garden, allotments, a greenhouse and a fishing pond. Part of the pond was filled in during postwar refitting and extension, but the original pond was used for a large iris garden laid out in 1964, and the park has gone on being improved and is well liked.
大日本紡績津守工場
The Dai Nippon Spinning Tsumori mill opened in May 1909 in Tsumori village, Nishinari county, as the Amagasaki Spinning Tsumori mill, and became the Dai Nippon Spinning Tsumori mill on merger in 1918. It was damaged in the air raids of 1945 and closed in 1952. The site then held the Tsumori purification plant of the Osaka coastal industrial water association, later a public enterprise body, the Nishinari industrial water purification plant, and the Nichibo Riverside Pool, which lasted until 1968. Osaka Prefectural Nishinari High School opened here in 1974 and Nishinari Park in 1987. The industrial water purification plants were closed by the end of the 2006 financial year.
市立美術館
The municipal art museum was planned in the Taisho years and was to be built on the grounds of the Sumitomo family's Tennoji Chausuyama residence, given to the city. Work began in the 1927 financial year, but finances and the Muroto typhoon stretched the schedule, and it was completed and opened in May 1936; the opening exhibition was that of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy. Under the main building, three floors above ground and two below, is an attached art research institute. It was completely refitted in 1979, an underground exhibition room was added in 1992 beneath the forecourt at the main entrance, and in 2005 ramps and other works were carried out under a barrier-free town-making programme.
大阪大学工学部
The Faculty of Engineering of Osaka University at Higashinoda began as the Osaka Higher Technical School, which moved from Nakanoshima in 1921, became Osaka Technical University and then in 1933 the Faculty of Engineering of Osaka Imperial University; in 1947 it became the new Osaka University. The picture shows the main building rebuilt in 1936. When the university moved to Suita, the engineering faculty followed to the Suita campus in 1971. The site now holds the NTT West Osaka training centre and the municipal Higashi High School, which moved here in 1979.
完成した御堂筋
Midosuji, 4,027 m long and 43.6 m wide from in front of the Hankyu Umeda station to in front of the Nankai Namba station, was completed along its whole length in May 1937, four years after the subway opened. Four rows of ginkgo trees, smart street lamps, fast and slow carriageways separated by green belts: running north-south through the city centre, Midosuji became the symbol of modern Osaka. The picture shows the stretch north of Nagahori-dori. In 1970 the arterial roads of the centre were made one-way, and Midosuji now runs southbound only.
完成した御堂筋とビル群
A view north from near Koraibashi-dori on Midosuji. The tallest building in the centre is the seven-storey brick Nippon Life head office No. 1 building, completed in 1931, with No. 2 in front of it, and the Osaka city hall visible at the back on the left. Tiled merchant houses can still be seen, yet the scene of a modern Osaka business district is already taking shape. In 1938 No. 1 was rebuilt and the first stage of a seven-storey reinforced concrete main building was completed. The outer walls were faced in granite in 1954, the brick No. 2 was rebuilt in 1959 as a nine-storey south wing, and in 1962 an extension on the north side completed the whole white and solid main building.
電気科学館
To mark ten years of municipal electricity and to raise scientific knowledge and spread the use of electricity, the municipal Electricity Science Museum was completed at Yotsubashi in March 1937. Its displays used the newest technology and its planetarium, projecting the movement of the stars onto a dome, was a great draw. On the ground floor was a showroom of electrical goods called the City Tram Shop. When a new municipal science museum was to open on Nakanoshima in 1989, the Electricity Science Museum closed; it then served as a temporary library from 1992 to 1996 while the municipal central library was rebuilt, and was demolished in 1998. A hotel called White Dome Plaza has been built on the site.
大阪市電気局庁舎
The Osaka municipal electricity bureau building, completed at Sakaigawa in Nishi ward in March 1930: a solid five-storey reinforced concrete block. In 1942 the bureau's power distribution business was transferred to Kansai Haiden, and in 1945 the bureau was renamed the transport bureau, so the building became the transport bureau offices. Later, under the Iwasakibashi district land readjustment scheme centred on the Osaka Dome, it was decided to replace the ageing building: a new seventeen-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete transport bureau headquarters was built beside it in 2004, and on the old site an eight-storey reinforced concrete fire bureau headquarters with the Nishi fire station was built in 2007.
中央公会堂
A neo-Renaissance building rich in ornament, with red brick walls, a domed roof and round windows. It was completed in November 1918 through the gift of the stockbroker Iwamoto Einosuke. Since it opened, the Central Public Hall has been the stage for many events that stand in the history of modern Osaka. As it aged there was talk at one point of pulling it down, but permanent preservation was decided in 1988 and a public subscription was raised. Conservation and renewal work, to make it more usable as a hall, with seismic strengthening, barrier-free access and the restoration of parts altered since construction, was completed in 2002. It came back as a symbol of Osaka's culture and has been designated an Important Cultural Property.
四つ橋文楽座
The Yotsubashi Bunrakuza was a puppet theatre opened in 1930 in the rebuilt former Chikamatsuza. Of reinforced concrete with an early modern exterior, it seated about 850 between the boxes on the first and second floors and the seated stalls. It burned in the air raids of 1945 and was revived in 1946, but in 1956 the company moved its base to the Dotonbori Bunrakuza, later renamed the Asahiza. The Bunraku Association was then founded and bunraku came to be supported by government and business, and in 1984 the National Bunraku Theatre opened at Nipponbashi. As of 2011 the site of the Yotsubashi Bunrakuza holds an office building and a car park.
1940s
津守下水処理場
On the results of the Ichioka experimental plant, city-planning sewage works were begun in 1931 for the urgent central districts, and in 1940 the Tsumori plant in the middle of the city and the Ebie plant in the north were completed. Sewage that had until then been discharged straight into the rivers through pipes was now treated before release. More recently, under a PFI scheme drawing on private funds and technology, digester gas produced in treating the sludge is used as fuel to generate electricity, covering part of the plant's own power, and planting inside the grounds is being carried out as well.
廃墟の大阪陸軍造兵廠跡
Ruins overgrown with summer grass. The Osaka Army Arsenal, known by its old name the Osaka Artillery Arsenal, was a vast base of army weapons works, and it was destroyed by concentrated bombing on 14 August 1945. The works had run since 1879; in 1940 it was renamed from the Army Arsenal Osaka Works to the Osaka Army Arsenal. Requisition was lifted in 1948, clearance of the ruined buildings began, and from 1958 the land started to be laid out as part of Osaka Castle Park, the Sugiyama district. The work was completed in 1970, and the trees of the citizens' wood have now grown beyond recognition.
旧大阪陸軍造兵廠の戦災跡
On 14 August 1945 the Osaka Army Arsenal, the Osaka Artillery Arsenal, was heavily bombed by American B-29 strategic bombers and the huge weapons works on 118 hectares was destroyed. In 1952, after requisition of the arsenal site was lifted, the area was sold off and factories and warehouses were built, while the laying out of Osaka Castle Park went ahead. The Osaka Business Park plan was then pursued over 26 hectares of it: land readjustment began in 1976 and superblock street layouts were prepared. With the opening of Osakajokoen station on the loop line and Osaka-jo Hall in 1983 and the opening of the Osakajo Shimbashi bridge behind it, Twin 21 and the Fujitsu and New Otani buildings were completed in 1986. The KDDI, Yomiuri TV, Castle Tower, Sumitomo Life, IMP, Crystal and Tokio Marine buildings followed.
1950s
天王寺・阿倍野ターミナル
A view of the forecourt of the national railway's Tennoji station; on the right are the Kintetsu Abenobashi station and its department store. In 1962 the eight-storey Tennoji Station Building was completed and the Tennoji Station Department Store and the Miyako Hotel Osaka opened. In 1965 the Abeno footbridge linking the station building and Kintetsu was completed, and in 1970 it was made a loop around the crossing. The station department store was refitted in 2009 and renamed Tennoji Mio Plaza in 2011. In 2013 the Abeno footbridge was rebuilt in a shape drawn from the letter a of Abeno, and in 2014 the Kintetsu building was replaced by the tall mixed-use Abeno Harukas.
大阪ガス岩崎橋工場
The Osaka Gas Iwasaki works opened in 1905, and the gas made here was sent through the city. At the back left of the picture the transport bureau offices and the city tram's Kujo depot can also be seen. The Iwasaki works later became a supply station. In 1992 it was decided to build a multi-purpose dome in the Iwasakibashi district, and basic works went ahead through land readjustment across the Osaka Gas, Kansai Electric and transport bureau areas. In March 1997 the all-weather Osaka Dome was completed and opened, and it holds professional baseball and events of every kind. Shops and other facilities followed, along with the Dome City Gas Building, the transport bureau offices and the fire bureau offices; after the Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi subway line, the Hanshin Namba line opened here in 2009.
地下鉄の延長
Work on extending subway line 1, suspended during the war, was resumed: Tennoji to Showacho opened in 1951 and Showacho to Nishitanabe in 1952. Short of materials and money, the builders left the roof of the tunnel for later, so it was called the open-air subway. In 1958 the cutting along Abikosuji was roofed over, and in 1960 Nishitanabe to Abiko opened. In 1987 the 5 km extension from Abiko to Nakamozu was completed and a depot was opened at Nakamozu in Sakai.
焼跡に出現した飛行場
In 1945 a military airfield was laid out on the war ruins of Utsubo, and after the war the whole burnt plain west of Yotsubashi-suji was requisitioned by the occupation forces and used as a landing ground for light aircraft with a runway of about 700 m. Requisition was lifted in 1952, and the airfield site was laid out as a park under unemployment relief works; in October 1955 Utsubo Park opened with flower beds, fountains, a ground, tennis courts and play equipment. The Utsubo Tennis Centre, with a centre court seating 5,000, was built in 1995, and a rose garden was laid out in 1996.
市電今里車庫
The Imazato city tram depot opened in 1927, at the height of the tram system. It closed in 1969 when Osaka abolished the trams altogether, and in 1972 the site became the municipal bus Higashinari garage. It was rebuilt in 2010 as an eight-storey complex holding the transport bureau's Higashinari bus depot and technical office together with the Higashinari Ward Citizens' Centre and Higashinari Library. The citizens' centre has a large hall seating 600 and a small hall, as well as practice rooms and studios.
第一生命ビル
The Dai-ichi Life building in front of Osaka station was planned at twelve storeys with an eaves height of 41 m, but that needed a special permit under the building law of the time, so work started on nine floors and was more or less finished in 1952. The permit came through straight after, and the twelve-storey building was completed in 1953: the first high-rise built by special permission under the 31 m limit of the day. It was rebuilt in 1990, and the nineteen-storey Osaka Dai-ichi Life Building now stands almost opposite Osaka station, with an open public space on the east of its site.
西成区役所
As the ward grew and its business increased, the wooden ward office needed replacing. The picture shows the Nishinari ward office completed in 1954, the first reinforced concrete ward office built after the war. It was later replaced in turn as it aged, and in 2004 a new eight-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete Nishinari ward office was completed. The new building is a complex holding the ward office, the health and welfare centre, a home-care service centre and the bicycle park for Kishinosato station.
市立工業研究所
The municipal industrial research institute was opened in November 1916 at Kitano Ushimarucho in Kita ward, to carry out scientific research on industry and advance industrial technology, but it moved to a new building at Kita-Ogimachi in 1923 because Osaka station was being enlarged. It let firms use its equipment as they needed and took on commissioned research, contributing much to the industry of Osaka with its many small and medium firms. In 1982 it moved to new buildings at Morinomiya; on the old site, to make good use of public land, a land trust scheme combining it with the former transport bureau hospital site produced Ogimachi Kids Park, holding Kids Plaza Osaka and Kansai Television, opened in 1997.
大阪市編入を祝う「みおつくし」
On 3 April 1955, to mark being taken into the city of Osaka, the children of Kaminambu elementary school gathered in the schoolyard and formed the miotsukushi, the city's crest. This was at Kami-Minami school in Kami village, one of six neighbouring towns and villages merged into the city, and it shows plainly how much the annexation had been looked forward to. For Osaka too the 1950s were a time of rapid urban growth, and in the Kami district many municipal housing blocks were built from this period, so the annexed towns and villages saw great change as well.
杭全町踏切
To keep road traffic safe and clear congestion, the main level crossings in the city were taken out of grade. The picture is of the Kumatacho crossing on the national railway's Kansai main line, with a steam locomotive still running. In 1967 the Kansai main line between Tennoji and Hirano was raised onto a viaduct, and the Kumata crossing, famous for never opening, finally disappeared. In 1968 a loop footbridge was put up at the five-way Kumata junction just to the south, greatly improving things for motor traffic; more recently, though, the five-way junction has raised problems of inconvenience and danger for people on bicycles.
中島大水道
The Nakajima Great Drain was dug in 1678 by the villagers of the twenty-two villages of Kita-Nakajima themselves, who could bear no more repeated floods and poor drainage. It passed from the water users' association to the city in 1943. The great channel later lost its function and its water grew foul, so it was filled in or culverted, and the land has been used for the Tokaido Shinkansen and the Juso bypass among other things. A memorial stone to the Nakajima Great Drain now stands beside the Shinkansen viaduct at Nishiawaji 5-chome.
博愛社
Hakuaisha was founded in 1890 and moved to its present site in 1899, carrying on social work of many kinds: child protection first of all, and also a school, an infant home and a home for mothers and children. This chapel of the Holy Redeemer Church was designed by the architect William Merrell Vories and completed in 1936. In 1952 it became a social welfare corporation with its headquarters here, and it gradually expanded; today it runs a children's home, a nursery, a special nursing home for the elderly, a care house and a care support centre.
府立北野高校
Kitano High School grew out of the Ogakko, a school of Western learning founded in 1873, which changed through Osaka Prefectural Middle School and Dojima Middle School, then moved to Kitano Shibatacho in 1902 and stood long at Kitano as the prefectural Kitano Middle School. In 1931 it moved to Juso Minaminocho, the site of the prefectural Shutokukan, and under the school reform of 1948 it became the prefectural Kitano High School. New school wings were completed in 1962 and 1980, and rebuilding work was completed in 2003.
鐘淵紡績中島工場
The Kanegafuchi Spinning Nakajima mill opened in 1899 in what was then Nishinakajima village, Nishinari county. It escaped war damage and after the war was extended with new buildings and run as an integrated spinning and weaving mill. With the later slump in textiles it was reduced and closed. On the eastern part of the site, a large development of about 800 flats, Evergreen Yodogawa, was built from around 1975; on the western part came the Housing Supply Corporation's Awaji Corpo and the municipal Higashi-Awaji No. 2 housing from 1978, and in 1993 the municipal women's centre north branch, Creo Osaka Kita, and the Higashiyodogawa sports centre opened.
淀川キリスト教病院
Yodogawa Christian Hospital was opened in 1955 as the Yodogawa Christian Clinic at Awaji, where medical provision was then poor. It became Yodogawa Christian Hospital in 1960, and as it was extended again and again, the scattering and ageing of the buildings of its various departments became a problem. Facilities also had to move because of a city planning road scheme, so rebuilding began in 1982; a new hospital by extension and renovation was completed in 2002, and further new facilities have opened since.
市電都島車庫
The Miyakojima city tram depot was built in 1922 on the site of the Sakuranomiya waterworks, together with a transport office and a substation, and burned in the air raids of 1945. It reopened on a smaller scale the next year but was closed in 1969 when the trams were abolished. In 1993 the eighteen-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete Osaka City General Medical Center opened on the site. The centre was formed by merging the existing municipal Momoyama Hospital, Momoyama Citizens' Hospital, Shirokita Citizens' Hospital, maternal and child centre and children's health centre, and is a core hospital with advanced specialist functions.
湊町駅
Minatomachi station opened in 1889 as the terminus of the Osaka Railway, later the national railway's Kansai main line. Its freight role then grew large, but as tonnage fell, freight handling was ended in 1985. From then on, a development project covering about 17.5 hectares centred on the old yard made use of its direct link to Kansai International Airport. Minatomachi was renamed JR Namba, and under a grade-separation scheme it opened in 1996 as an underground station in the OCAT building, a combined transport centre. The quarter was named Renaissa Namba; besides OCAT at its core, Minatomachi Riverplace with a proper concert hall, shops and flats have been completed.
大阪大学南校
The old-system Osaka Higher School opened in 1922 and a three-storey reinforced concrete building was put up. In 1949 it was taken into Osaka University as the south campus of the general education division, and in 1960 it was merged with the north campus. On the south campus site, more than 800 dwellings of five to seven storeys were built between 1962 and 1965 as the Housing Corporation's Hannan estate. It was rebuilt in 2009: the east side became the eight- to thirteen-storey Sunvelier Abeno Hannan estate, and the west and south of the old grounds were sold by open tender.
難波駅前の地下街建設
Construction of the Namba Underground Centre began in 1956, with the Nangai Kaikan on the left of the picture, and it was completed and opened in December 1957: Osaka's first proper underground shopping street. Umeda, Abeno and others followed one after another. The Namba Underground Centre itself was extended south in 1974, closing every shop for a hundred days for a full refit, and reopened renamed Nan Nan Town. In 2006 it was renewed throughout and reopened as NAMBA Nannan.
市立大学付属病院の新館
The hospital attached to the medical vocational school grew after the war into the municipal medical college hospital. In 1955 it became the hospital of the medical faculty of Osaka City University, and in April 1956 a new wing of seven floors above ground and two below, later the north wing, was completed. A cancer centre followed in 1961 and a seven-storey second new wing, later the east wing, in 1968. For rebuilding, the main, south, north and east wings were demolished in turn, and in 1993 an eighteen-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete hospital opened. Osaka City University became a public university corporation in 2006.
西淀川区役所
The Nishiyodogawa ward office was completed in 1957 as a three-storey reinforced concrete building on the corner of the Utashimabashi crossing. As it aged it was rebuilt, and in 2005 a new office of six floors above ground and two below, of steel-framed reinforced concrete, was completed as a complex holding the Nishiyodogawa Library, a waterworks bureau service station and an emergency supply store. The new building has a sunken garden as its forecourt, connected to Mitejima station on the JR Tozai line, which opened in 1997, and it serves as a place for residents to rest.
城北市民病院
Shirokita Citizens' Hospital opened in December 1953 as the core hospital of the north-east of the city, and from 1977 it also ran round-the-clock emergency care, but with the reorganisation of medical facilities it was merged into the General Medical Center in 1993. In 2002 a complex was built on the site holding the northern branch of the health centre for older people, the Asahi indoor pool and the Shirokita citizens' learning centre; the upper part of the eight-storey building is the Housing Supply Corporation's Kosha Heights Takadono.
港区の盛土工事（市立運動場付近）
The reconstruction land readjustment of the Minato district was a scheme without parallel: an area of subsided ground that had lost nearly all its built-up streets to war damage and had then been struck by typhoon storm surges was raised by 2 to 3 m of fill across the whole of it. The fill came up to the height of the manhole in the picture, and the stand in the background is the municipal athletics ground opened in 1923, which was closed in 1961. A permanent international trade fair hall was built here between 1956 and 1968; the fair then moved when Intex Osaka was built at Nanko in 1985. The site was taken into an enlarged Yahataya Park, and in 1996 Osaka Pool was built along with the central gymnasium, roofed and set underground beneath a hill.
関西電力春日出第２発電所
Kansai Electric's Kasugade No. 2 power station was completed in 1922 as the Osaka Electric Light Kasugade No. 2 station. Its eight chimneys, 70 m high, caught the eye of the city, but it was closed for rebuilding in 1959 and the chimneys went with it. A full Kasugade power station was newly completed in 1963, but that in turn was closed in 2002 and pulled down the following year. A Kohnan home centre and a La Mu discount store have since opened on the site.
阪神野田踏切
Where the Hanshin Electric Railway crossed National Route 2 west of Noda station, the Noda-Hanshin crossing had barriers split in two at the middle of the road and was long a hard spot for traffic. Through the efforts of those concerned, in 1957 work finally began on raising the line onto a viaduct, a grade separation long sought. The up line opened first in July 1961, the down line in November, and all the work was finished in September the next year, ending a crossing so famous for never opening that it was called a speciality of Osaka. In 1981 the viaduct of the Hanshin Expressway Osaka-Nishinomiya line was completed alongside the railway viaduct.
国際見本市会館（コクサイホテル）
The International Trade Fair Hall was opened when its northern half was completed in 1951, a building holding both the fair hall and a hotel, and the first international trade fair was held there in April 1954. It was the first international trade fair held outside Europe, and from then on it alternated between Tokyo and Osaka. The southern half was added in 1958. The fairground later moved to the permanent exhibition hall at Yahataya, and the hall's premises became the Kokusai Hotel, which closed in 1999. In 2006 the City Plaza Osaka hotel opened on the site, with a natural hot-spring bath on its top floor.
生野区役所
As the wooden ward office built after the war grew too cramped, the Ikuno ward office was rebuilt in 1957 as a three-storey reinforced concrete building. As that in turn aged and ran short of space, it was rebuilt again in 2005 as a six-storey reinforced concrete office. The new building holds a waterworks bureau service station, and the health and welfare centre, which had been in a separate block, is now inside it too, so the site has been consolidated.
市立社会福祉会館
In 1959 the municipal social welfare hall opened at Higashi-Kozucho, where welfare organisations worked and advice of various kinds was given. It was rebuilt in 1987 and renamed the municipal social welfare centre, with meeting rooms large and small, a base for welfare organisations, advisory services and the provision of information. The upper part of the 24-storey block is the Housing Supply Corporation's Urban Hill Uemachi.
1960s
大阪商工会議所
The Osaka Chamber of Commerce building, newly built in December 1925, was in Renaissance style and of reinforced concrete. Two years later, in 1927, the Chambers of Commerce and Industry Act was promulgated and it became the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry; a third floor was added in February 1933. In 1968 it moved to a new building at Uchihommachi Hashizumecho. On the old site stands the nineteen-storey NTT Telepark Dojima No. 2 Building, completed in 2002, said to have been built on top of the eight-storey Osaka Telephone Office building begun in 1982.
埋立前の長堀川
The Nagahori river divided Semba from Shimanouchi in Osaka. As river traffic declined and the water grew foul, the river lost its purpose, and as a remedy the stretch east of Yotsubashi was filled in between 1960 and 1962. The Nagahori car park, underground with room for 900 cars, was completed in 1964, and the Nagahori west of Yotsubashi was filled in between 1966 and 1973. The Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi subway plan later took shape, and in 1997 the Crysta Nagahori underground mall and the Nagahori car park opened along with the line. Crysta Nagahori runs 730 m to Sakaisuji, takes daylight through rooflights and holds a hundred shops for fashion, goods and food. The new car park is three levels underground, self-park, with room for 1,030 cars.
十三市民病院
Before the war the city had two general hospitals; after it, to build up health care, eight citizens' hospitals were established by December 1953: Kita, Higashi, Momoyama, Imamiya, Sumiyoshi, Nipponbashi, Juso and Shirokita. The picture shows Juso Citizens' Hospital around 1960. It was opened in 1949 and rebuilt in 1958 as a five-storey reinforced concrete building. In 2002 a new hospital was completed at Nonaka Kita 2-chome and it moved there. On the old site stands a five-storey reinforced concrete complex holding the Yodogawa ward office, the health and welfare centre and the Yodogawa indoor pool.
市立中央図書館
Begun at Kita-Horie in Nishi ward as a project marking seventy years of city government in 1959, the municipal central library opened, long awaited, in November 1961. It boasted the newest equipment, with open shelves throughout, and it offered research and enquiry services by telephone from the day it opened. As it aged it was to be rebuilt, and from 1992 the work went ahead with the former Electricity Science Museum serving as a temporary library; in November 1996 the new central library opened, six floors above ground and six below, of steel-framed reinforced concrete. It has 7,840 square metres of reading rooms, underground stacks and 1.71 million volumes.
防潮堤かさ上げ工事
The picture is of work in 1962 raising the flood wall west of Oebashi on the left bank of the Dojimagawa at Nakanoshima. On 16 September 1961 the storm surge of the second Muroto typhoon sent water over the Dojimagawa flood wall, and even the office blocks of central Nakanoshima were flooded. From that bitter experience the flood walls were raised along their whole length, from the coast up the rivers. The raised walls have protected Nakanoshima ever since, but ringed by high revetments it grew further from the feel of a city of water. In 1986 the Nakanoshima riverside walk was completed as one with the revetment, from Oebashi to the south end of Watanabebashi, and it has since been extended through the Nakanoshima area.
市立婦人会館
As women moved further into public life, a women's hall opened in Tennoji ward in October 1962 as a centre for their education and culture, and it was much used for lectures, study groups and circle activities. It was later closed, and in 2001 the municipal women's centre central branch, Creo Osaka Chuo, opened on the site. The building has four floors above ground and two below, with a hall seating 1,000, an exhibition gallery, a seminar hall and music room, meeting and training rooms. There are five Creo Osaka centres in the city; with the enactment of the Basic Act for a Gender-equal Society, the women's centres were renamed gender equality centres in 2001.
大阪気象台
In 1933 the prefectural Osaka weather station was newly built on the site of the prefectural agricultural school on Katsuyama-dori. It was a reinforced concrete building with a radar tower rising from it. On being transferred to the state, the Osaka weather station became the Osaka branch of the Central Meteorological Observatory in 1938, and the following year it was renamed the Osaka District Meteorological Observatory. In 1968, when the second Osaka joint government building was completed, the observatory moved to Hoenzakacho, closing thirty-five years of weather observation on Katsuyama-dori. The site became Okatsuyama Minami Park, where a stone marks where the observatory stood.
連続機械式の住吉焼却工場
As the population recovered and living standards rose, refuse grew sharply. To meet it, the Sumiyoshi plant, the first continuous mechanical refuse incinerator in the country, was completed in February 1963. As it aged, the Suminoe plant was completed at Kagaya in 1988 and Sumiyoshi was closed. The site is now the South-West Environment Business Centre, with offices for refuse collection, transport, reduction, cleanliness and public education, and garages for the collection trucks.
赤川鉄橋
In March 1929 the Yodogawa bridge of the Joto freight line opened. It ran as a single track at first, and on the upstream side of it a wooden temporary bridge, the Akagawa Karibashi, was provided for people on foot and on bicycles. The cutting of the new Yodogawa in the Meiji period had put 600 m between the two banks, and this has been the everyday route between them for local people, who call it the Akagawa iron bridge. Under the Osaka Higashi line now being built, the Yodogawa bridge is to be doubled for passenger trains; what is to happen to the footbridge has not been decided at this stage.
環状線今宮駅付近
The national railway's Osaka loop line was joined up between Tennoji and Nishikujo in April 1961, and Imamiya station was opened then too; loop running began in March 1964. This stretch was on embankment from then on, but later, as part of the Minatomachi development, a scheme to raise the JR Kansai main line clear of the roads and a land readjustment at Imamiya went ahead. Through them, in 1996, the raising of the line around Imamiya station was completed along with the sinking of JR Namba station, the former Minatomachi.
地下鉄と高速道路の同時施工
The Hanshin Expressway Osaka-Ikeda line was begun in 1962, and the Yotsubashi subway line in 1963. The picture is of the Higobashi work site around the spring of 1964, with the expressway piers visible on the left. In 1965 the expressway opened between Umeda and Dotonbori, and the subway between Nishi-Umeda and Daikokucho. The rebuilding of Higobashi that the subway work required was finished in 1966, widening it from 27 m to 29 m. The deck and railings of Higobashi were refitted in 1994.
大阪駅前市街地改造事業
The Osaka station forecourt redevelopment was carried out by switching from the three-dimensional land exchange method of the land readjustment first planned to a scheme under the newly enacted Urban Redevelopment Act. The city planning decision was made in 1961; the first building was begun in 1965, its west half finished in 1969 and its east half in 1970, and the second to fourth buildings were begun in turn along with a review of the original plan. So in May 1983 four buildings of twelve, sixteen, thirty-four and twenty-five storeys were completed, 420,000 square metres of floor in all. Through this twenty-year scheme, open space set well back from Midosuji was created, and a townscape fit for the front door of Osaka was achieved.
小児保健センター
As the only specialist hospital in the Kansai giving comprehensive care including the early detection and prevention of childhood illness, the five-storey reinforced concrete Children's Health Centre opened in October 1965. It was later merged, with Momoyama and Shirokita Citizens' Hospitals and others, into the Osaka City General Medical Center in 1993. On the centre's old site, the eastern branch of the health centre for older people and the Higashinari sports centre were built in 1998.
長吉出戸南の市営住宅
In April 1951 the Public Housing Act, the foundation of housing policy, was enacted and the city's public housing building began in earnest. Homes near work, intensive use of land and fire-resistant construction were the principles, and medium- and high-rise blocks were built. The municipal Nagayoshi Deto Minami housing, built in 1965, is a five-storey reinforced concrete estate. It has since been rebuilt, raised from 2005 onwards in stages to fourteen storeys of steel-framed reinforced concrete.
毛馬洗堰
A weir and lock built in 1910 at the mouth where the Okawa, the old Yodogawa, leaves the new Yodogawa, as part of the cutting of the new river. The brick Kema weir regulates the flow; at the back of the picture, on the right bank, are the Kema lock of 1907 and the second lock of 1918, built to let boats pass between two rivers at different levels. A new Kema lock was completed on the left bank of the Okawa in 1974, and a new Kema sluice and Kema pumping station in 1983. The old lock was closed in 1976, and the surroundings of the first lock's remains, designated an Important Cultural Property, have been laid out as a park.
三菱金属鉱業大阪製錬所
The Mitsubishi Metal Osaka refinery began in 1896, when Mitsubishi Goshi took over the Osaka refinery of the Imperial Household Ministry and made it the Osaka refinery attached to its Osaka branch. As an electrolytic refinery for blister copper it long had the largest capacity in the country, but its role came to an end with the times and the furnace was shut down in 1989. The site has been developed as Osaka Amenity Park, bringing in shops, offices, a hotel and housing on a large mixed-use scale: the 39-storey OAP Tower was completed in 1996, along with the Imperial Hotel Osaka and tall blocks of flats.
道頓堀川と戎橋
Ebisubashi is a reinforced concrete arch across the Dotonbori canal, replacing an earlier iron bridge in 1925. A graceful design fit for the heart of the entertainment quarter was adopted, with arch and railings faced as one in granite, and it became a place many citizens and visitors to Osaka know well. As it aged it was replaced, under a design competition, together with the Dotonbori waterside works: the new Ebisubashi, from whose deck plaza ramps and steps lead down to the riverside walk, was completed in 2007.
市営古市中住宅
The Public Housing Act was enacted in 1951, and on it Osaka drew up a three-year public housing programme, building in earnest from the 1953 financial year. The municipal Furuichi Naka housing is a large estate of more than 800 dwellings in reinforced concrete and the like, completed in the 1950s. It has since been rebuilt in stages as it aged, and has come back as Furuichi Higashi housing, with a varied composition of blocks from four to fourteen storeys.
大阪市消防学校
The Osaka Municipal Fire Academy moved in 1951 from Hoenzakacho to the site of the former Kanebo Shigino mill at Nishi-Shigino, in a new two-storey wooden building. In 1976, to meet fire service work that was growing complex and varied, it moved to Mishima in Higashiosaka, where its facilities have been built up. On the old site, the Housing Supply Corporation's Shigino Corpo blocks of eight and fourteen storeys were built in 1979 and 1980.
松下精工
Matsushita Seiko was founded in 1915 as an electrical machinery works of the Kawakita Electric Company, and after various changes became the Osaka works of Nippon Denki Seiki, then Osaka Denki Seiki in 1956, and was renamed Matsushita Seiko in 1962. In 2002 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Matsushita Electric and later moved away. On the site, between 2007 and 2009, a large development of 1,000 flats in blocks of fifteen to nineteen storeys, Times Peace Square, was completed.
椿本チエイン
In 1941 the Tsubakimoto Chain works was completed at Tsurumicho, and the firm grew into the leading maker in the chain and conveyor industry, renaming itself Tsubakimoto Chain in 1970. The first and second works were then closed and moved in turn, and by 2001 everything had gone to the Kyotanabe works. On the site of the first works, the large shopping centre Diamond City Leafa opened in 1996; later renamed Aeon Mall Tsurumi-ryokuchi, it is the shopping hub of the district.
市営鴫野第1住宅
The municipal Shigino No. 1 housing was built in the 1949 financial year on the site of the Kanebo Shigino mill, as single-storey wooden municipal housing. Under a rebuilding programme from the 1974 financial year it was raised to nine storeys and the site consolidated. A district plan went ahead alongside it: the near part of the picture was set aside for a school and a park, Shigino elementary school moved here and opened in 1980, and Shigino Park and its ground were opened as well.
関西電力大阪発電所
Kansai Electric's Osaka power station was built to serve the Osaka district, a great centre of demand consuming close to half the company's electricity. Units 1 to 4, 624,000 kW in all, began running in 1959 and 1960. The station was closed in 2003, and its 24-hectare site was designated by the prefecture and city as an area for promoting industrial clusters. In 2007 the Asahi Glass Osaka works opened on 4 hectares, and 14.7 hectares were given to a large Matsushita Battery lithium secondary battery plant; the Panasonic Energy Suminoe works was completed and opened in 2010.
桜宮橋
Sakuranomiyabashi, completed in September 1930 under the first city planning programme, is 188 m long and was the largest arch bridge in Japan before the war. The architect Takeda Goichi advised on its design. Painted silver, it is called the Silver Bridge, and it makes a fine sight at one with the Okawa and Sakuranomiya Park. In 2007, with the widening of the road, the New Sakuranomiyabashi was built on the upstream side. Designed by the architect Ando Tadao, it is longer than the old bridge but matched to it in height.
木津川千本松渡し
The Semmatsu ferry on the Kizugawa is a municipal ferry linking Minami-Okajima in Taisho ward with Minami-Tsumori in Nishinari ward. In 1973 the Semmatsu Ohashi bridge was completed, 323.5 m long with 34 m of clearance and two-level looping approach ramps on both banks, and its shape has earned it the name of the spectacles bridge. For the convenience of people on foot and on bicycles, the Semmatsu ferry was kept after the bridge was built, and many residents still use it to get to work and school.
柴谷平野線（南港通）
A picture of work under way on the city planning road, the Shibatani-Hirano line, now Nanko-dori, near Harinakano; a Kintetsu Minami-Osaka line train can be seen ahead. On the right of the line of the road to be widened is the Nankai Electric Railway's Hirano line. The Shibatani-Hirano line opened along its whole length in 1972. Using the track bed of the Nankai Hirano line, the Hanshin Expressway Matsubara line and the Tanimachi subway line between Tennoji and Yaominami opened in 1980, and Komagawa-Nakano station opened just short of the Kintetsu line, at which the Nankai Hirano line was closed.
弁天町
In the reconstruction land readjustment of the Minato district, laid waste as far as the eye could see by war damage and typhoon storm surges, the city's scattered holdings were gathered together and re-allotted in front of Bentencho station. The master plan then set it down as a sub-centre, yet it was used as the second hall of the international trade fair, as an events ground and as car parking. Against that background, the Bentencho station-front development land trust scheme was carried out to bring private energy into the good use of public land, as the western node of the east-west city axis. Through it, between 1990 and 1992, the fifty-storey Ork 200, with a hotel, offices, flats and amusement, was completed, and the area in front of Bentencho station changed beyond recognition.
平田の渡し
The Hirata ferry on the Yodogawa came under direct city operation in 1948; a motor boat for twenty-one was put on in 1960 and a new boat for thirty-six in 1963, and at its height it carried 3,000 passengers a day as a way for people to get about. With the opening of the Toyosato Ohashi bridge in March 1970 as a project connected with the Expo, the Hirata ferry, the last on the Yodogawa and three hundred years old, disappeared. Toyosato Ohashi is a full cable-stayed bridge, 19.5 m wide and 561 m long, with its cables arranged in two tiers, and it has been lit at night since 1983.
大正橋の架替え
Taishobashi was built in 1915 and was then the longest arch bridge in Japan. As it aged, strengthening work was carried out from 1956 to keep the old bridge in service. It was later rebuilt in step with works on the Izuo-Imazato line. After the new bridge on the left was completed in 1969, the old iron bridge was removed in 1971 and the widening to 41 m was finished in 1974, though because the approach roads had to be raised, full opening came only in 1977. Around where the gas tanks appear on the right of the older picture, Kyocera Dome Osaka, the Osaka Dome, can be seen as of 2011.
京阪ビルとOMMビル
The Keihan Building, in the foreground, is an eight-storey reinforced concrete block, its first stage completed in 1963 and its second in 1966, holding Keihan Tenmabashi station, the Matsuzakaya department store and shops, and a travel hall, later the Castle Hotel. Matsuzakaya withdrew in 2004, and in 2005 the exterior was refitted and Keihan City Mall opened. The Osaka Merchandise Mart building behind it was Japan's first wholesale centre building, a 22-storey block completed and opened in 1969 on the site of the old Keihan Tenmabashi station. In 1989 its exterior was completely refitted as a curtain wall and its look changed entirely.
1970s
難波宮の遺跡発掘
Where the Naniwa Palace stood was not confirmed until recent times. In 1953 a fragment of a shibi roof ornament came out of a house-building site at Hoenzaka, and at last the location of the elusive palace became clear. Excavation by Professor Yamane Tokutaro of Osaka City University and others then found the great audience hall site in 1961, confirming this as the Naniwa Palace site. The picture shows the 37th excavation, of the great hall of the later Naniwa Palace, in 1970. The site was designated a national historic site in 1964, 1976 and 1986, and in 1976 the platform of the later palace's great hall was restored and the place opened to the public as a historic park. Excavation continues and the shape of the ancient city of Osaka is emerging.
水道局巽配水場
As part of Osaka's waterworks expansion, the Tatsumi distribution reservoir was completed in 1957, carrying water from the Niwakubo purification plant to the fast-growing south-east and south of the city. Later, to make good use of city land, the top of the Tatsumi reservoir was used for Tatsumi Higashi Green, 4.8 hectares, opened in 1996. On its generous space, a walking path, a fountain, open lawns and a ground have been laid out, making a place well liked by residents.
清掃局東住吉工場
The Higashisumiyoshi plant of the cleansing bureau, built in 1971, was the sixth in Osaka and had mechanical incinerators. It could burn 600 tonnes a day, had a crusher for bulky refuse, and was fitted with the newest equipment to keep down smell, smoke, foul water and noise. It was rebuilt in 2003: a new plant with the newest equipment, of a soft design with a distinctive curved roof, was completed west of the old one, and capacity rose to 900 tonnes a day.
大阪大学医学部付属病院
The hospital of the Osaka University medical faculty was rebuilt from the ageing old hospital, and a new nine-storey hospital was completed in 1973. When the university moved to the Suita campus, the hospital too was newly built at Suita in 1993, ending about seventy years at Dojima. On the east of the old site, the 24-storey Osaka Nakanoshima joint government building holding the public prosecutors' office and others was completed in 2001; on the west, in 2008, Hotarumachi was born as a new node of Osaka the city of water, mixing Asahi Broadcasting, a multi-purpose hall, shops in Dojima Crosswalk and River Forum, and a 49-storey block of flats.
港大橋の建設工事
Linking Tempozan in Minato ward with Nanko in Suminoe ward and forming part of the Osaka bay route, this is one of the largest three-span gerber truss bridges in the world, 980 m long, with 51.5 m of clearance above the water so that large container ships can pass. The picture shows the fitting of the 186 m central span, 22.5 m deep, in February 1974. It opened in July that year as a double deck: the upper level carries the Hanshin Expressway Osaka Port line, the lower the bay route. Painted red, the huge bridge has an overwhelming presence and is a symbol of Osaka Port. It was damaged in places in the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995 and was strengthened against earthquakes between the 2002 and 2007 financial years.
此花西部地区
The west of Konohana ward held the huge group of works known as the Six Western Companies. At Sakurajima, the Osaka Iron Works' Sakurajima shipyard, later Hitachi Zosen, opened in 1900, and from the Showa years the Sumitomo Metal Industries works was enlarged as well. But being slow to answer changes in industrial structure, the area was pressed into a great transformation. In that context, a large project to use this area and turn the world's eyes to Osaka began, a piece of town-making centred on Universal Studios. In 1995 the Konohana west coastal land readjustment started to prepare the ground, and in 2001 Universal Studios Japan opened. It peaked at 11.02 million visitors in its first year and then ran at about 8 million a year, rising again with events and popular attractions, and it draws great crowds.
阿倍野再開発地区
The area south-west of the Abenobashi crossing lay close to the Abeno terminal, the southern gateway of Osaka, yet ageing shops and housing stood mixed and packed together, and redevelopment was urgent. From the city planning decision on the Abeno district urban redevelopment in 1976, the area was extended in stages and the plan covered the whole 28 hectares or so by 1994. Many buildings have been completed so far, among them Abeno Marche, Belta, Lucias, Medix, Grand Tour and nini. In 2011 the mall-type shopping centre Abeno Q's Mall opened as the core of the Abeno redevelopment area, and it draws large crowds.
東区役所
The Higashi ward office, long housed in a wooden building, was rebuilt in 1935 as a three-storey reinforced concrete office and was one of the faces of Hommachi-dori for many years. When Higashi and Minami wards were merged, the Chuo ward general office was completed at Kyutaromachi 1 in 1989 and the office moved there. In 2001 the eighteen-storey Osaka Business Innovation Center opened on the old site, working as a base of support for the small, medium and venture firms of Osaka.
大阪府警本部
The Osaka Prefectural Police headquarters was completed in 1959 as a five-storey reinforced concrete building, and the departments until then scattered through the prefectural offices and elsewhere moved in. As it aged, rebuilding began in 1998; the first stage of the new headquarters was completed in 2002 and the whole in 2007. The new building, designed by the architect Kurokawa Kisho, has nine floors, ten in part, with a helipad on the roof.
1990s
愛日小学校
Aijitsu elementary school replaced its palace-style wooden building of 1896 with a new three-storey reinforced concrete school with a swimming pool, completed in 1929. In 1990 it was merged with Shuei elementary to open Kaihei elementary, so Aijitsu closed and the building was used for facilities connected with the city. In 2008, under an urban redevelopment combining it with private land along Midosuji, Yodoyabashi odona was built: a sixteen-storey steel-framed reinforced concrete block of shops and offices formed as one out of the Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Yodoyabashi Building and the Yodoyabashi Mitsui Building.
Date not given
大阪城本丸東側の諸櫓
A wet-plate photograph from the end of the shogunate showing the outer face of the main enceinte of Osaka Castle before it burned in January 1868. Three-storey corner turrets, from the front the Umajirushi, Tsukimi and Hoshii turrets, and the tamon walls joining them stood in a row on the stone base; on the eve of the Meiji Restoration they burned away with much of the rest of the castle's buildings, as though standing for an age in upheaval. The castle grounds and their surroundings were then taken over by military facilities, which made them a target of the air raids of 1945. After the war the whole castle was laid out as a park, along with the keep rebuilt in 1931, and the view it gives today is well loved by the people of the city.
八軒家船着き場
An old landing place on the south bank of the Okawa, midway between Tenmabashi and Tenjimbashi, called Hachikenya because eight boatmen's inns stood there. In the Edo period many boats put in and out, among them the thirty-koku boats that linked Osaka with Kyoto and Fushimi, but it declined as the railways grew. In 2008, with the building of the Keihan Nakanoshima line, it was laid out as the Hachikenyahama landing connected directly to Keihan Tenmabashi station, with piers for water buses and sightseeing boats and with shops; a riverside walk along the Okawa as far as Tenjimbashi followed, steadily advancing the revival of Osaka as a city of water.
川口波止場
With the opening of Osaka to foreign trade in the early Meiji years, the river port of Kawaguchi was laid out on the left bank of the Ajikawa, along with the Kawaguchi customs house, foreign affairs office and telegraph office, and upstream of it the Kawaguchi foreign settlement was built, where the foreign trading houses gathered. Osaka's opening to Western civilisation began here. But the water at Kawaguchi was shallow and large ships found it hard to enter, so the foreign merchants of the settlement moved gradually to Kobe. Missionaries of the various Christian denominations settled in their place and founded churches, schools and hospitals, though those establishments later moved to Tennoji and Abeno wards. The settlement was abolished in 1899. The customs house was renamed the customs office and is now the Tomishima branch of Osaka Customs, with port sheds and other buildings alongside.
堺筋と三越百貨店
Among the tiled roofs and the old storehouses of merchant families scattered about, the eight-storey Mitsukoshi department store, completed in 1920, stands out. Sakaisuji, widened in 1912 for the city tram, was the arterial road that stood for Osaka before Midosuji was built. Tall blocks later lined Sakaisuji, and the subway opened along it in 1969. Mitsukoshi was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1995 and traded on with reduced floor space, closing in 2005. On the site, the 54-storey block of flats The Kitahama was built in 2009.
明治の天満橋
After the wooden Tenmabashi was swept away in the great Yodogawa flood of 1885, it was rebuilt as an iron bridge in December 1888. It was 11 m wide and 215 m long; the main ironwork was German, but the railings, lamp posts and name plate were made in Japan. In 1911 a bridge for the city tram alone was built just upstream, and in 1935 both were replaced under the first city planning programme by a solid steel girder bridge 22 m wide. A new Tenmabashi was later added above the existing one, on two levels. This viaduct, which rises from the north of Tenmabashi, crosses over it and runs to Tanimachisuji, is 410 m long in all and is known as the stacked Tenmabashi.
架け替え前の千代崎橋
Chiyozakibashi crosses the Kizugawa; after the wooden bridge was swept away in the great flood of 1885, a timber girder bridge on iron piers was built. The wooden bridge lost in the flood had an unusual structure, its central span retractable so that sailing boats could pass. In 1927 it was replaced under the first city planning programme by a steel plate girder bridge 12.8 m wide and 80.6 m long. It was raised in 1956 as a measure against storm surges.
鉄橋になった天神橋
Swept away in the great flood of 1885 and completed as an iron bridge in December 1888. Its arched superstructure spanned 66 m between piers, which is said to have astonished people at the time. Because the tip of Nakanoshima was extended as far as Tenjimbashi in the Taisho years, Tenjimbashi crosses two rivers, the Dojimagawa and the Tosaborigawa. The Temma vegetable market stood on the far bank. In 1934, under the first city planning programme, a steel two-hinged arch bridge 22 m wide and 211 m long was completed. In 1987 a spiral ramp for cyclists was built at the island's tip and Tenjimbashi was given a new finish.
石造りの心斎橋
The fine stone arch of Shinsaibashi over the Nagahori river, with gas lamps on iron columns, was Western in design and was rebuilt in November 1909. Through the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras it was the symbol of the shopping quarter that stood for Osaka; the old Nagahori Takashimaya building, completed in 1922, can be seen in the distance. When the Nagahori was filled in in 1964, Shinsaibashi became a footbridge, but because people were sorry to lose it, the old bridge's stone railings were kept as the railings of the footbridge. In 1997, when Crysta Nagahori was built, part of them was moved to an entrance of the underground mall.
寝屋川焼却場
Begun as the second stage of expanding the incineration plant, this refuse incinerator was built in 1929 on the south bank of the Neyagawa at Hanatencho. It had sixteen forced-draught furnaces, and its completion brought the city's daily incineration capacity to 750 tonnes. The Neyagawa plant later became out of date, and the Joto plant was completed at Mattaya Keno-cho in 1965 to replace it, whereupon Neyagawa was closed. Hanaten elementary school opened on the site in 1975, and a new school wing was completed in 2003.
赤レンガの大阪株式取引所
The Osaka Stock Exchange opened in 1878, was rebuilt in 1894 as the first Western building in Kitahama, and was extended again and again after that. Standing on the south-east corner of the Kitahama crossing, its brick building proclaimed the energy of Osaka the merchant city. The picture reflects the look of the streets in the late Taisho years and is interesting for that. As the Meiji building aged, it was replaced in April 1935 by a new six-storey trading hall of reinforced concrete faced in granite, with a circular dome. It became the Osaka branch of the Japan Securities Exchange in 1943 and the Osaka Securities Exchange in 1949. Later, as it aged and a trading floor was no longer needed, it was rebuilt in 2004 as a 24-storey block, but the exterior of the old exchange building, a landmark of Kitahama, has been preserved.
新世界通天閣と恵美須通
Shinsekai and Luna Park opened in July 1912. Neon shone on Tsutenkaku, their symbol, the lily-of-the-valley lamps of Ebisu-dori came on, and night fell on a pleasure quarter that drew people in. A Lion toothpaste neon sign was put up in 1920. Luna Park closed in 1923 and its site became a street of theatres. Tsutenkaku, then the tallest structure in Japan, had its legs damaged by fire in 1943 and was dismantled the following year for its metal in the war, and it disappeared. Through the enthusiasm of the shopkeepers of Shinsekai, a second Tsutenkaku 103 m high was rebuilt in October 1956, designed by Naito Tachu, who also designed Tokyo Tower, a little north of where the first had stood. It has been the landmark of Shinsekai ever since and was renewed in 2001.
埋立前の大野川
The Onogawa in Nishiyodogawa ward dates from when the whole north bank of the Yodogawa was still farmland; as the city spread it turned into a ditch, lost its drainage function and made the surroundings worse. So a plan to fill it in was drawn up, both against flooding and to improve the setting, and after a trunk sewer had been laid, filling and laying out began in 1970. The Onogawa pedestrian and cycle path opened along its whole length in 1979, with a shaded walk and a cycle track, and it is used as a local road tied directly to the neighbourhood, and as a green walk and a running course.
長柄橋
Nagarabashi has been famous since ancient times, though the details are not clear. After the new Yodogawa was cut, an iron pony truss bridge 674 m long was built in 1909. In 1936, as one of the ten radial road projects, it was replaced just downstream by a bridge 20 m wide and 656 m long, and the Nagara movable weir was built at the same time. Motor traffic then grew sharply in the 1950s and 60s and Nagarabashi became the worst bottleneck in the city; to clear the congestion, the Nagara bypass, a curved bridge in the shape of a b, was completed in 1964. Nagarabashi itself was replaced too, in line with the Yodogawa improvement plan, and a new bridge 656 m long with an arch at its centre opened in 1983. Nagarabashi is in the picture with the Nagara bypass beyond it.
塩水港製糖大阪工場
Ensuiko Sugar Refining, renamed Ensuiko Seito in 1950, was a large company counted before the war among the four great sugar refiners. Its Osaka works opened in 1920, with four-storey brick factory buildings standing in a row, and moved to Izumisano in 1973. The city bought the site and used it as open ground and a sports field, and in 2008 the municipal Sakuya Konohana junior and senior high school, a combined six-year school, opened there.
川と住宅と煙突
Osaka was once called the city of smoke and the Manchester of the East, and streets where factory chimneys stood in rows and gave off black smoke were to be found even near the centre. This picture, published in the 1912 bulletin of the society for the prevention of soot and smoke, looks from Tamaebashi on the Dojimagawa towards Fukushima, Nishikujo, Nakanoshima and Honden. Pollution from soot and smog went on from then until the high-growth years after the war. The streets now look nothing like they did: large facilities such as the Osaka International Convention Center and the Rihga Royal Hotel stand along Nakanoshima, and tall blocks of flats rise on the Fukushima side.
大阪府立図書館
In 1904, on a gift from the Sumitomo family, the Osaka Library was completed and opened in a corner of Nakanoshima Park, in Renaissance style. It was renamed the Osaka Prefectural Library in 1906; the picture is a full view of the library's main building from Hokoku Shrine. Reading rooms were added in both wings in 1922, again on a gift from the Sumitomo family. In the Showa era stacks and an annexe were added, and in 1974, when the prefectural Yuhigaoka library was founded, it was renamed the Prefectural Nakanoshima Library and designated an Important Cultural Property.
淀屋橋南詰の御堂筋（拡幅前）
Seen from the city hall, Midosuji at the south end of Yodoyabashi before it was widened: the narrow Yodoyabashi-suji can be seen between merchant houses, while beyond the tram line the clearing of houses has begun. The stretch from Yodoyabashi to Hommachi was widened by 1934. Midosuji, running north-south through the heart of Osaka, opened in May 1937 and is the greatest monument of modern Osaka. Forty-four metres wide, with four rows of ginkgo trees and a high-speed railway running beneath it, Midosuji became Osaka's main street, forming the city's foundation not only in its function as an artery of traffic, in the growth of the Osaka economy and in townscape, but also in the immense co-operation of citizens through the process of building it. Since 1970 it has been one-way southbound.
拡幅前の淀屋橋筋
The road running south from the south end of Yodoyabashi was once Yodoyabashi-suji, a narrow street about 6 m wide. The picture is near its north end, with the Bank of Japan's Osaka branch and the city hall in view. Midosuji was originally the name given to the road passing the gates of Kita-Mido, the Tsumura branch temple of Nishi-Honganji, and Minami-Mido, the Namba branch temple of Higashi-Honganji. This road was widened on its east side: the stretch north of the Nagahori river was finished in 1935, and the whole 44 m wide Midosuji opened in May 1937. Since then Midosuji has been Osaka's main street, and the townscape of buildings 31 m high standing in an even line along it has been well liked; from 1995, buildings have been put up under a new standard of 50 m.
中央体育館
The Osaka Central Gymnasium was built in 1959, the fortieth year of city government, on a gift from Nippon Life, and was the largest and best-equipped facility in the East. As it aged it was newly built and moved to Yahataya Park in 1996. On the site, in 2001, the Osaka Museum of History with thirteen floors and the NHK Osaka Broadcasting Hall with eighteen were built as one structure. Because the ground here is part of the Naniwa Palace site, the remains of a storehouse of the earlier palace are preserved underground and can be visited. The municipal museum inside Osaka Castle closed in March 2001, and the Osaka Museum of History opened in November.
今里ロータリー
The Imazato crossing is a five-way junction where Sennichimae-dori, Tamatsukuri-dori and Imazatosuji meet, and signals were hard to work there at the time, so in 1934 a circular island was set in the middle and traffic sent round it: a roundabout. A traffic survey in 1954 then found that the growth in traffic made it hard for people to cross and had turned the junction into a trouble spot, so the roundabout was removed and signals installed. From then on it has been an ordinary five-way junction, but local people still call it the Imazato roundabout.
木津川飛行場跡
Opened in 1923 at the mouth of the Kizugawa as the Kizugawa airfield, for both land and water, it was extended at Funamachi and designated for public use in 1929 as the Osaka Airfield. But it was badly placed for getting to from the centre, and it suffered from the smoke and haze of the factories around it. The city's plan for a Nanko airfield never gained the state's agreement, and in January 1939 the Osaka No. 2 airfield opened at Itami, whereupon the Osaka Kizugawa airfield was closed. The site later became works land for Nakayama Steel; a stone stands at the foot of the Kizugawa Ohashi bridge, along with part of a hangar.
桃山中学校
In 1912 Momoyama Middle School moved to Kita-Tanabe in what was then Tanabe village, into a newly built school in a purely English style. It burned down completely in the air raids of 1945, and after various changes it came back to the present site in 1949 as Momoyama Gakuin High School. Momoyama Gakuin University was founded in 1959 but moved in 1971 to the Tomioka campus in Sakai, and again to Izumi in 2005. A new high-school building was completed in 2001, and in 2009 a gymnasium marking 125 years of the school. With growing calls for six-year secondary education, Momoyama Gakuin Junior High School was re-established in 2008.
大阪府女子専門学校
The Osaka Prefectural Women's Vocational School built new premises and moved to Tezukayama Higashi, the former Sumiyoshi village Tezukayama, taken into the city area in 1925. In 1949 it became the prefectural Osaka Women's University, which moved in 1976 to Daisencho in Sakai. The old university buildings served as the prefectural nursing junior college and others; the school building became the prefectural trade vocational school in 1998 but was closed in 2004, while the old university library has been used since 1985 as the Osaka Prefectural Archives. On the south of the site, a special nursing home for the elderly and a care house were built in 1999.
Source: 大阪市 観光施設一覧 (CC BY 4.0), the rows the city files as 大阪の昔と今. Names stay Japanese as the city writes them; the accounts are translated from the city's own Japanese. The date is when the older of the city's photographs was taken, which is the only date the source gives. 127 of these have an Osaka Metro station within 1200 m in a straight line.
