Historical Background

Around fifteen hundred years ago when it was known as Naniwa, Osaka was Japan's most significant gateway to China and Korea, the main cultural and political hubs of East Asia. Many of the arts that signify Japanese culture and, are perhaps more readily associated with aristocratic Kyoto rather than mercantile Osaka, have their roots in Osaka's role as a connection to Asia and grew up in the city. Bunraku, a traditional form of puppetry, Kabuki, the Japanese counterpart to Western opera, and Noh, the profound and minimal stage art, are all examples of these traditional forms of entertainment.

Japan's oldest temple, the sprawling Shitenno-ji Temple in downtown Tennoji, was constructed in 539 by Prince Shotoku at the time of Buddhism's introduction to Japan. A walk around the temple with its air of grandeur and majesty still intact will reveal what significance the area was invested with even in such ancient times. Osaka today retains its cultural significance through the vibrant youth culture that the city produces, the fact that it is home to the National Bunraku (Puppet) Theatre, and that no less than five of Japan's eight Nobel laureates either hailed from or made their name in the area.

For a relatively brief time in the 7th and 8th centuries, Osaka had its turn at being Japan's capital: a period that saw Osaka's first serious growth as an urban center. Wars in the fourteenth century destroyed much of the city, but in 1496, Ren-nyo, the leader of the militant True Pure Land sect of Buddhism, chose Osaka as the site for his temple. The city grew rapidly around this new nuclei. The temple itself, Ishiyama Honganji Temple, was completed in 1532.

The city became a temple town and around that time began to be known by the name Osaka. After a long siege, the temple was overcome and destroyed in 1580 by Oda Nobunaga. His successor, and the unifier of Japan's myriad domains, Toyotomi Hideyoshi chose in 1583 to build his fortress on the site of the temple. It survives to this day, although it was rebuilt in concrete after World War II, as Osaka Castle, it is a must-see. Not only for the massive moat encircled stone walls it sits atop, but also for the expansive park that surrounds it, reflecting the seasons in the middle of Osaka's somewhat industrial grayness. Hideyoshi brought the whole of Japan under his control from Osaka Castle, and it remained Japan's center of power until he died in 1598.

In 1614-15 the next rival regime under the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu laid siege to Osaka and the city suffered greatly. However, recognizing its importance as a center of commerce and culture, the shogun rebuilt and developed it extensively. In 1617 the building of canals was decreed, thus exploiting the many rivers that bisect the city. Osaka was unique in that, not being a political center anymore, it had no ruling samurai class and was completely in the hands of merchants, truly making it with its new canals the "Venice of the East." The country's feudal lords used it as the center of exchange for the rice taxes they levied and, with the concomitant growth of commerce and industry, monetization soon followed.

The population of Osaka in 1719 reached 375,000 (three-quarters of contemporary London's). The city's growing prosperity throughout the Genroku Era (late 17th to early 18th centuries) enabled it to become a center of learning, art and culture dictated by the demands of the commoners that ran the city rather than the samurai. However, with the Tokugawas having established Tokyo as the capital, Osaka gradually lost its cultural predominance in the eighteenth century. It remained, though, an important center of learning, especially Western learning, at a time when Japan was, by government decree, prohibited from communicating with the outside world.

Towards the end of the Tokugawa regime, and after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 when Japan was opened to the world, Osaka suffered due to a campaign of sweeping reforms. However, it more than survived, and from the time of Japan's exposure to Western influence, the city followed a Western pattern of expansion, elaboration and improvement. It was established as a municipality in 1889. Harbor improvement, streetcars, water supply, drainage, electrification and city planning continued until the city's next setback, during the Second World War, when it was devastated by bombing. The Chinese Revolution deprived Osaka of lucrative trade until the 1970s, and Tokyo became more and more the center of national life.

Expo '70, hosted by Osaka, got the city back onto the world stage, and since then Osaka has continued to keep a vibrant profile. The latest boost for the region has been the construction of Kansai International Airport, a mammoth construction project involving the creation of an artificial island that was completed in 1994. The harbor has also been extensively developed as a recreation area.

Osaka takes pride in being one of Japan's most unapologetically hardheaded and idiosyncratic cities with a tradition of contact with the outside world and a corresponding mercantile mentality. This makes for a stimulating and refreshing contrast with, most notably, the airs of high culture that Kyoto allows itself, and the cold, mind-your-own-business metropolis attitude of Tokyo. It has a relatively high proportion of foreigners compared to other Japanese cities ("foreigners" include not only expatriates but also, more commonly, ethnic Koreans born in Japan but unwilling to take out, or ineligible for, Japanese citizenship).

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