Osaka

• 1. Introduction

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  Osaka sits at the meeting point of rivers, sea lanes, and centuries of ambition. With an estimated population of 2,816,247 as of the 1st of October 2025, it is Japan's third-most populous city, trailing only the special wards of Tokyo and the city of Yokohama. But population rank alone tells you very little. What makes Osaka worth understanding is the combination of roles it has played over more than two thousand years: imperial capital, merchant powerhouse, industrial engine, and now a global financial center. The city's name itself carries a clue. "Osaka" translates as "large hill" or "large slope," yet the oldest written evidence for that name dates only to 1496. For most of its early life it was called Naniwa, a name still carried by central districts today. The questions this story will try to answer are not simple ones. How does a city submerged under water during the Jomon period become, for a brief moment in the early twentieth century, the largest city in Japan? How does a place once scorned by Edo writers as greedy and vulgar become one of the most cosmopolitan and multicultural cities in the country? And what explains the peculiar restlessness of Osaka, a city that hosted a world's fair in 1970, bid for the Olympics in 2001, narrowly voted against reorganizing its own government twice, and then hosted another world's fair in 2025?

• 2. Water, Land, and First Settlements

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  During the Jomon period, roughly 7,000 BCE, the land that would become Osaka was mostly underwater. What existed above the surface was a peninsula stretching 12 kilometers long and 2.5 kilometers wide, separating Kawachi Bay from the Seto Inland Sea. That geography turned out to be decisive. The site offered fresh water, dense vegetation, and a position that was relatively easy to defend. The earliest evidence of human settlement in the Osaka area is found in the central Chuo-ku district, where excavators uncovered buried human skeletons, shell mounds, oysters, arrowheads, stone tools, fishing hooks, and crockery bearing traces of rice processing. Estimates place this debris at roughly 2,000 years old, spanning the boundary between the Jomon and Yayoi periods. As sediment built up north of the Uemachi peninsula, Kawachi Bay gradually became a lagoon, and then, by the end of the Yayoi period, an inland lake connected to the mouth of the Yodo River. During the Yayoi period itself, running from around 300 BCE to 250 CE, permanent settlement on the plains expanded as rice farming spread. Near the harbor, at the beginning of the third century CE, the grand Sumiyoshi-taisha shrine was inaugurated, commissioned by the consort Empress Jingu. The architectural style that emerged from its construction became its own distinct category, known as Sumiyoshi-zukuri, and the maritime landscapes visible from the shrine gardens inspired a type of painting that still carries the name Sumiyoshi drawings. That single founding act at the harbor's edge set a pattern the city would repeat for centuries: building something at the water that outlasted everything around it.

• 3. Port, Palace, and Imperial Ambition

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  By the Kofun period, running from roughly 300 to 538 CE, the port of Naniwa-tsu had become the most important in Japan. Trade intensified with the Asian continent, and the plains around Osaka began to fill with keyhole-shaped burial mounds, the largest belonging to emperors and senior nobles. The mausoleum of Emperor Nintoku was discovered nearby in Sakai, and four of these great mounds can still be seen within Osaka's boundaries today, in the southern districts of the city, dating to the 5th century. A cluster known as the Mozu Tombs is located in Sakai, in Osaka Prefecture. Infrastructure followed ambition. Engineers of the Kofun period diverted the course of the Yamato River to stop its floods from devastating the plains, and major roads were laid toward Sakai and Nara. Warehouses expanded to hold the growing flow of maritime cargo. Then came the most dramatic intervention. In 645, Emperor Kotoku built his Naniwa Nagara-Toyosaki Palace on the site of present-day Osaka, making the city the imperial capital of Japan. The capital shifted again to Asuka in 655, but Naniwa remained the critical connector between Yamato, Korea, and China. A second stint as capital came in 744, by order of Emperor Shomu, lasting until 745. After that, the port's influence gradually passed to neighboring areas, though the city remained a lively hub of river, channel, and land routes linking Heian-kyo, the city we now call Kyoto, to the rest of the country. Two religious foundations from this era still stand. Sumiyoshi Taisha Grand Shrine was founded by Tamomi no Sukune in 211 CE. Shitennoji, first built in 593 CE, holds the distinction of being the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan.

• 4. Merchants, Rice, and the World's First Futures Market

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  In 1496, Jodo Shinshu Buddhists established their headquarters at the heavily fortified Ishiyama Hongan-ji, built directly over the ruins of the old Naniwa Imperial Palace. Oda Nobunaga began a siege of the temple in 1570 that lasted a decade. When the monks finally surrendered and the temple was razed, Toyotomi Hideyoshi constructed Osaka Castle in its place in 1583. The castle would later play a central role in the Siege of Osaka in 1614-1615. The merchant class that grew up around the castle era gave Osaka its most enduring economic identity. Daimyos, the feudal lords of the Edo period, received their incomes mostly as rice. Osaka merchants built storehouses to hold that rice, trading it for coin or paper receipts, and in doing so created what were essentially the precursors of modern paper money. Many of those rice brokers also made loans, and some grew enormously wealthy. By 1697, Osaka merchants had established the Rice Exchange at Dojima. From that exchange emerged the world's first futures market, trading rice that had not yet been harvested. The arts kept pace with the commerce. By 1780, Osaka had built a vibrant cultural life centered on its famous Kabuki and Bunraku theaters. Then, in 1837, a low-ranking samurai named Oshio Heihachirou led a peasant insurrection in response to the city government's failure to help the poor. Approximately one-quarter of the city burned before shogunal officials put down the rebellion, after which Oshio killed himself. Osaka was opened to foreign trade on the 1st of January 1868, at the same time as Hyogo Town, now Kobe, just before the Boshin War and the Meiji Restoration swept the old order away. Nomura Securities, the first brokerage firm in Japan, was founded in the city in 1925, a direct institutional descendant of that centuries-old culture of commercial calculation.

• 5. Industrial Capital, Slums, and Stereotypes

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  Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the relocation of the imperial capital from Kyoto to Tokyo, Osaka shifted from financial center to industrial powerhouse. The modern municipality was established in 1889 with an initial area of just 15 square kilometers, overlapping roughly with today's Chuo and Nishi wards. Through three major expansions it grew to its current 222 square kilometers, with the largest single expansion of 126.01 square kilometers taking place in 1925. By that year, Osaka was the largest and most populous city in Japan and the sixth largest in the world. It had earned the nickname "the Manchester and Melbourne of the Orient." Rapid industrialization drew Asian immigrants, including Indian, Chinese, and Korean communities, who built distinct lives within the city. The political system stressed modernization; literacy was high and a growing middle class supported both literature and the arts. In 1927, General Motors operated a facility called Osaka Assembly, manufacturing Chevrolet, Cadillac, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick vehicles with Japanese workers and managers, until the factory closed in 1941. The city also confronted poverty directly. Osaka was the first Japanese municipality to introduce a comprehensive poverty relief system, drawing partly on British models, with policymakers stressing family formation and mutual aid to minimize welfare costs. The Great Kanto earthquake, centered near Tokyo, sent a wave of migrants to Osaka between 1920 and 1930, and by 1930 the city's population of 2,453,573 briefly outnumbered Tokyo's 2,070,913. The Kamagasaki district in the south of the city is still described as the largest slum in Japan. Writers from Edo had been mocking Osaka residents as stingy, greedy, and vulgar since at least the 18th century. Jippensha Ikku depicted Osakans in 1802 as "stingy almost beyond belief," and in 1809 the derogatory term "Kamigata zeeroku" was coined by Edo residents to describe inhabitants of the Osaka region as calculating, shrewd, lacking civic spirit, and speaking a vulgar dialect. That stereotype, the source notes, persists in some form in Tokyo's view of Osaka even today.

• 6. War, Reconstruction, and the World's Fair

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  On the 13th of March 1945, 329 Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers took part in an air raid against Osaka. According to an American prisoner of war held in the city, the raid lasted almost the entire night and destroyed 25 square miles. The United States bombed the city again twice in June 1945 and once more on the 14th of August, one day before Japan surrendered. What followed was a reconstruction that, according to the source, brought the city even greater prosperity than it had known before the war. Osaka's population surpassed three million in the 1960s, triggering large-scale suburbanization within the prefecture. By the 1990s, the population had doubled to six million. Osaka Prefecture was chosen as the site of Expo '70, the first world's fair ever held in an Asian country. The 1995 APEC Summit was also held in Osaka. In 1956, Osaka was one of the first cities in Japan to receive designated city status. In March 2014, the 300-meter tall Abeno Harukas opened, briefly becoming the tallest building in Japan, surpassing the Yokohama Landmark Tower. It held that distinction until 2022, when the 330-meter Azabudai Hills Main Tower in Tokyo was completed. Expo 2025 was held at Yumeshima Island in Konohana-ku from April to October 2025, with a projected visitor count of approximately 28 million. It made Osaka the third city in history to host the World Expo twice. On the same site where Expo 2025 was held, MGM Resorts began construction on MGM Osaka in April 2025. When complete, it will be Japan's first integrated resort, including 2,300 hotel rooms, a casino, convention space, and a 3,500-seat theatre.

• 7. Food, Culture, and the City's Reputation

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  Author Michael Booth and food critic Francois Simon of Le Figaro have both suggested that Osaka is the food capital of the world. That claim rests on an old local saying: "Kyotoites are financially ruined by overspending on clothing; Osakans are ruined by spending on food." In 2004, Osaka had 25,228 wholesale dealers and 34,707 retail shops, with the largest concentrations in Chuo ward at 10,468 shops and Kita ward at 6,335 shops. The Tenjinbashi-suji shopping arcade stretches 2.6 kilometers from north to south, making it the longest shotengai arcade in Japan. The city's performing arts scene is equally rich. The National Bunraku Theater hosts traditional puppet plays. The Symphony Hall, built in 1982, was the first hall in Japan designed specifically for classical music; it opened with a concert by the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra, and both the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic have since performed there on world tours. Osaka-jo Hall, a multi-purpose arena in Osaka Castle Park, holds up to 16,000 people. The Tenjin Matsuri festival, held on the 24th and the 25th of July at Osaka Tenmanguu, is one of the most famous festivals in the city. The Osaka Metro system alone serves over 912 million passengers annually, ranking eighth in the world by ridership. Kansai International Airport handles primarily international flights, while the nearby Osaka Itami Airport handles domestic services. The city's geographic position also gives it ferry connections to Shanghai, Tianjin, and Busan, connections that Tokyo, surrounded by land on three sides, cannot match.

• 8. Governance and the Metropolis Question

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  Osaka's Osaka City Council holds eighty-nine seats, allocated across the city's twenty-four wards in proportion to their populations, with members re-elected every four years. The council's current and 104th president is Toshifumi Tagaya of the LDP, serving since May 2008. For years, a proposal backed by former mayor Toru Hashimoto and his Osaka Restoration Association sought to dissolve Osaka's twenty-four wards and reorganize the city into five special districts resembling the twenty-three special wards of Tokyo. A May 2015 referendum narrowly rejected the plan. A second referendum in November 2020 proposed merging the twenty-four wards into four semi-autonomous units, but this too was voted down, by 692,996 votes representing 50.6% against, with 675,829 votes, or 49.4%, in favor. Hashimoto announced he would leave politics after the first defeat. In October 2018, Osaka officially ended its sister city relationship with San Francisco after San Francisco permitted a monument memorializing "comfort women" to remain on city-owned property. The city sent a 10-page, 3,800-word letter in English to San Francisco mayor London Breed explaining the decision. That relationship had existed since October 1957. Osaka still maintains sister city ties with Chicago, Hamburg, Lyon, Melbourne, Milan, Saint Petersburg, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Toronto, among others, and was most recently joined by Manchester in September 2025. The current mayor, Hideyuki Yokoyama, won both the 2023 and 2026 mayoral elections, continuing to govern a city that, as of 2025, is also preparing to welcome MGM's first integrated resort in Japan on the same ground that just hosted a world expo.