Ōsaka-Kōbe metropolitan area

Ōsaka-Kōbe metropolitan area

▪ urban industrial agglomeration, Japan
Introduction
 second largest urban and industrial agglomeration in Japan, located on Ōsaka Bay in west-central Honshu at the eastern end of the Inland Sea. The cities of Ōsaka and Kōbe are at the centre of what is called by geographers the Hanshin Industrial Zone; as a result of the expansion of the urban area along the Inland Sea and northeast toward the city of Kyōto, the region is now included in the larger Keihanshin Industrial Zone. Neither of these zones is a political entity, but the larger of the two corresponds to the Kansai, one of Japan's traditional cultural areas. The Kansai, a region of ancient cities to the west (sai) of the mountain barrier (kan) near Mount Fuji, is the birthplace of the earliest Japanese state. It is an area of historically dense population that until well into the 20th century was the most industrialized and economically advanced part of Japan.

      Ōsaka is the capital of Ōsaka urban prefecture (fu), an administrative division that includes the city of Ōsaka, a number of smaller cities, and large rural areas. Kōbe is the capital and largest city of Hyōgo prefecture (ken) and one of Japan's chief ports. There are many satellite industrial and residential cities around the two central cities. Pop. (2005 est.) 11,268,000.

Physical and human geography

The landscape
The city site
      The city of Ōsaka is situated on the delta of the Yodo River. To the east of the central city, Ōsaka Castle, originally built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, stands on a northern extension of the upland (about 65 feet [20 metres] above sea level) that rises in the southern part of Ōsaka urban prefecture to more than 3,000 feet. The metropolitan area spreads over the deltas of the Yodo, Yamato, and other rivers and into their diluvial uplands. The area is bounded by the Ikoma Mountains in the east, the Izumi Mountains in the south, and the Rokkō Mountains in the northwest. The southwestern boundary of Ōsaka Bay is formed by Awaji Island. On the northwestern shore of the bay is Kōbe, above which rises the granite peak of Mount Rokkō (3,058 feet). The region is geologically unstable. Although earthquakes (earthquake) occur only infrequently, they can be highly destructive; notable severe quakes include one that struck the area in 1596 and another that devastated Kōbe and neighbouring cities in 1995.

      The coastline between the two cities has been altered by reclamation for port facilities and industries. Along the coast and in the uplands are the best residential areas of Kōbe and the cities of Ashiya, Nishinomiya, Takarazuka, Ikeda, and Itami. On the delta of the Kanzaki River, just west of Ōsaka, is the city of Amagasaki, a centre of heavy industry. To the north of Ōsaka are the cities of Toyonaka, Suita, and Ibaraki. Above them, on Senri Hill, are new towns developed since the 1960s. Northeast of Ōsaka, along the Yodo River, are the industrial and residential cities of Takatsuki, Moriguchi, Neyagawa, and Hirakata. To the east of Ōsaka are the cities of Kadoma, Higashiōsaka, and Yao. To the southeast are Fujiidera, Tondabayashi, Matsubara, and others, most of them old historical towns. To the southwest, on the coastal plain, are Sakai, Izumi-Ōtsu, Kaizuka, Kishiwada, and Izumi-Sano, some of them industrial and others residential. Urbanization extends to Nara, 25 miles (40 kilometres) east of Ōsaka, and to Kyōto, 25 miles northeast. A dense network of railways and roads winds throughout the area.

      The region has a temperate climate. The annual mean temperature is about 60° F (16° C), and the annual rainfall averages 54 inches (1,370 millimetres). The temperature in August is often 86° F (30° C) or more, with no breeze from the sea at night. The January mean is about 40° F (4° C), and snow falls several times in winter. The rainy seasons are in June–July and September–October. In September the region is usually struck by one or two typhoons. The greatest typhoon disaster in the area's history occurred in 1934, when 3,000 people were killed. During the rainy season of June–July 1938, huge landslides from the Rokkō Mountains buried wide areas of Kōbe, and floods took the lives of 870 persons.

      The citizens of Ōsaka once took pride in its smoky atmosphere as a mark of industrial progress, calling it the “Capital of Smoke” (“Kemuri no miyako”); but by the mid-1970s the city's smog and air pollution were seen as harmful, and since then there has been noticeable improvement in the region's air quality. Other environmental problems receiving attention include water pollution and subsidence (sinking) of the earth in the Amagasaki region.

The city layout

Street patterns
      The streets of central Ōsaka are laid out on a grid plan, but the rest of the city is a patchwork of planned grids and rambling streets. The north-south axis is Midō-suji (“Midō Street”), connecting Ōsaka railway station in the north and Namba station in the south. The east-west axis is Chūō Ōdōri (“Central Boulevard”), running from the Central Pier of the Port of Ōsaka in the west to the foot of the Ikoma Mountains in the east. Parallel to Midō-suji is the narrow Shinsaibashi-suji, the central shopping district. Dotombori, at the south end of Shinsaibashi-suji, is a crowded theatre and restaurant area.

      The central business district is the northern part of the downtown area. Nakanoshima, an island formed by arms of the Yodo River, contains City Hall, the Central Civic Hall, the Bank of Japan, and the headquarters of the Asahi Press and several large businesses. Until World War II the traditional commercial centres were Semba and Shimanouchi streets, where old-style white-walled shops with family quarters behind them had existed for centuries.

      There are two large sakariba (amusement districts) in the city. Kita (“The North”) is located just south of Ōsaka railway station, where the city's highest-priced land is found. Kita has a complex of high-rise office buildings and a large underground shopping centre. Minami (“The South”) has many theatres and restaurants. Ōsaka's industrial areas are on the lower Yodo delta and in the eastern and northeastern parts of the city.

      The street pattern of Kōbe is governed by its location between the mountains and the shore. Main streets run roughly east and west, crossed by short north-south streets and occasional longer streets going up into the hills. The central shopping street, Motomachi, runs between the Sannomiya and Kōbe railway stations. The central business district is near the harbour.

Settlement patterns
      The Ōsaka area has been settled and built upon since prehistoric times; kitchen middens and pottery shards have been found dating to at least 7000 BC. There are many ancient burial mounds from the Tumulus period (c. AD 250–c. 550), and the contents of some of these have helped document the presence of settlers from the Korean peninsula. The ancient villages of the rice farmers were on the marshy plains, while the palaces, shrines, and temples were located on higher ground. Medieval settlements were in the uplands. Some modern residential areas are on the sites of several former settlements. Thus, Tezukayama, a residential development in Ōsaka south of the castle, is built over a number of ancient mounds.

      The central part of Ōsaka is now primarily commercial; since 1920 there has been a migration from the city to the suburbs, helped along by private railway companies that have made suburban building land available along their rights-of-way. The Hankyū Electric Railway was particularly instrumental in developing the city of Toyonaka northwest of Ōsaka. Two of the large postwar housing developments are Senri New Town and Senboku New Town, started in 1961 and 1965, respectively.

      About two-thirds of Ōsaka urban prefecture's dwellings are apartment houses. Much of Ōsaka and nearly all of Kōbe were destroyed during World War II, and inner-city areas are now occupied mostly by Western-style multistoried buildings. Traditional architectural styles can still be seen, however, in the Tekijuku, a school of foreign studies (18th century), and the Kōnoike (1708; rebuilt 1853) in Ōsaka, as well as in some residential houses in Kōbe. Examples of early Western-influenced architecture survive on Nakanoshima, including the Bank of Japan building (1903) and the Ōsaka Prefectural Library (1904). The redevelopment of the central business districts of both cities since the 1960s has produced many large, modern, and architecturally innovative buildings: notable examples include the office and hotel complex in front of Ōsaka railway station; the Semba Centre Building, which although only four floors in height extends about three-fifths of a mile along Chūō Ōdōri and is constructed under an elevated expressway and over a subway; and the convention centre built on the man-made Port Island in Kōbe Harbour.

The people
      Demographic trends in the Ōsaka-Kōbe metropolitan region parallel two major national trends: sustained urban population growth through rural-urban migration and suburbanization. Thus, the region's population has been swelled for more than a century by a continuous stream of people moving in from rural areas; but the population of the city of Ōsaka—after reaching a peak of about 3,150,000 in the mid-1960s—has declined, as people have migrated from the city to the suburbs. In addition, the city's highest density is not in the centre but in the peripheral wards, because the population decrease has been greatest in the central wards. By contrast, the population of the city of Kōbe has increased steadily, although, like Ōsaka, there has been a loss of population in the inner city and high increases in peripheral wards.

      The population of the Ōsaka-Kōbe metropolitan area—like the Kansai region in general—is the most ethnically diverse of Japan. Included are the country's largest concentrations of ethnic Koreans, most of whom are the Japan-born descendants of Koreans who migrated to Japan during the period (1910–45) when Korea was a Japanese colony and who are classed as resident aliens; Okinawans, who legally are Japanese citizens but who often are treated as internal aliens; and burakumin, the term being a euphemism for descendants of an outcaste group that was once legally, though not genetically, distinct from the general Japanese population. All three groups are subject to discrimination in education, employment, marriage, and housing. In Kōbe there are also sizable communities of Chinese, Indians, and Westerners, whose presence contributes an international flavour to the city's culture.

The economy
      Ōsaka was once known as the Manchester of the Orient because of its great textile industry; now, however, its leading industries are the manufacture of electrical and other machinery, iron and steel, fabricated metals, and chemicals. Between Ōsaka and Kōbe are several other industrial cities. The largest, Amagasaki, is a centre of machinery, metallurgy, chemicals, cement, and paper production. The major industries in Kōbe are shipbuilding and steel production. Heavy industry and chemical plants are situated along the shore of Ōsaka Bay, while light industry and assembly plants are inland.

      In the past the merchants of Ōsaka greeted one another in the mornings with the query, “Are you making money?” Contemporary merchants and executives continue to greet each other by asking about the state of their businesses. The salutations reflect the traditional importance of commercial enterprise in Ōsaka. The city holds about one-seventh of the nation's wholesale trade.

      Ōsaka is Japan's second largest financial centre; it is headquarters for some of the world's largest banks, and it has one of its major stock exchanges. Together with Kōbe it is the leading port for foreign trade, handling about one-fifth of all exports.

      Ōsaka is an important junction point of the national railway network, handling traffic between the Tokyo region to the northeast and regions farther west and south. Following the privatization of the formerly government-controlled Japanese National Railways (JNR) in 1987, Ōsaka became the headquarters of the West Japan Railway Company (JR Nishi Nihon), which operates passenger service in western Honshu. The region is also served by Shinkansen “bullet” express trains and the national freight rail system, both of which also are now private entities. In addition, other privately owned railroads provide suburban commuter and regional interurban passenger service between Ōsaka and Kōbe and their suburbs and to other major cities in central Honshu, particularly Kyōto and Nagoya. Rail lines also run inland from Kōbe to rural areas of Hyōgo prefecture north of the city. Ōsaka's subway system, started before World War II, underwent great expansion in the late 1960s and was expanded again in the early '80s; Kōbe's first subway line was opened in the mid-1980s.

      Because of heavy automobile traffic, Ōsaka's main streets are one-way. A network of surface and elevated expressways runs through the central parts of Ōsaka and Kōbe, linking the two cities together as well as joining them to the national expressway system. Ordinary highways also span the whole region. The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, which was the world's longest suspension bridge at the time of its completion in 1998, links Kōbe and Awaji Island. Kōbe and Ōsaka are both international and domestic ports; passenger ships, freighters, and car ferries sail to the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu and to various ports of the Inland Sea. International air service is provided by the Kansai International Airport, built on a man-made island in Ōsaka Bay and opened in 1994, while domestic flights use the older facility located a few miles northwest of the city at Itami.

Administration and social conditions
      The city of Ōsaka is the capital of Ōsaka urban prefecture, which consists of 31 cities and 13 towns and villages. It is also the centre of the Kinki region (chihō), which consists of the seven prefectures of Ōsaka, Kyōto, Hyōgo, Nara, Wakayama, Shiga, and Mie. Various prefectural and regional institutions have their main offices in Ōsaka. Both Ōsaka and Kōbe are divided administratively into wards (ku), each of which has an appointed mayor. The wards elect representatives to respective city councils headed by an elected mayor.

Public utilities
      Ōsaka's main source of water is the Yodo River; Kōbe has several reservoirs on the slope of the Rokkō Mountains. Sewage services are adequate in the central urban areas. Electricity is available everywhere, and gas is available in most city areas.

      Medical care in Ōsaka centres on the hospitals of Ōsaka University and of the Ōsaka City University and on several other medical institutions. Other hospitals and health centres are distributed throughout the region.

      In Ōsaka and Hyōgo prefectures there are more than 100 universities and junior colleges. Ōsaka University, Ōsaka University of Foreign Studies, Ōsaka University of Education, Kōbe University, and Hyōgo University of Education are national universities. Public municipal institutions include Ōsaka City University and the University of Ōsaka Prefecture. Kansai University in Ōsaka and Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya are the oldest and largest private universities in the area.

Cultural life
 Ōsaka and Kyōto long have been leading centres of culture—Ōsaka, famous for its cuisine, has a more bustling, democratic tone than Kyōto, which is one of the great centres of Japanese culture. Traditional and modern Japanese drama and music are performed at theatres and halls in the metropolitan area, as are Western music, operas, and plays. There are numerous museums, galleries, and libraries. Ōsaka is the home of two national newspapers, the Asahi and the Mainichi.

      Green space in the city of Ōsaka is scarce, but recreational opportunities abound. The important parks include Nakanoshima, Ōsaka Castle, Tsurumi Ryokuchi, Nagai, and Tennoji, the latter with a zoo and botanical gardens. The suburbs have many historical sites and large recreation areas. Besides the spacious man-made Hattori Ryokuchi and Meiji no Mori Minoo parks, there are the recreational areas of the Kii Peninsula on the Pacific, the beaches of the Inland Sea, the historical cities of Nara and Kyōto, and scenic Lake Biwa, near Kyōto. At Kōbe, Mount Rokkō (in the Seto-naikai National Park) can be ascended by road or by cable car; there is a golf course at the top and ponds for swimming. There are two professional baseball teams in the metropolitan area, and the national high school baseball championships are played each summer in Nishinomiya. The town of Takarazuka, northwest of Ōsaka, has been developed as an amusement centre; it houses the Girls Opera and Dancing Theatre. In 1970 the Japan World Exposition (Expo 70) was held near Senri New Town; Expo Memorial Park now holds the National Museum of Ethnology, the National Museum of Art, and a recreation area. Ōsaka is home to Kaiyukan Aquarium, Japan's largest.

Shinzo Kiuchi Ronald P. Toby

History

Ōsaka
Ancient and medieval periods
      The plain of Ōsaka was settled in Paleolithic times and by about AD 300 was a political centre. Among the many ancient burial mounds in the Ōsaka area is that ascribed to the semilegendary emperor Nintoku; the largest tomb of the Tumulus period, the 5th-century structure is surrounded by three moats and occupies some 80 acres (32 hectares). Ancient Naniwa—in what is now Ōsaka—was the site of palace or capital complexes intermittently from the early 5th to the mid-7th century, but in 710 it lost its position to Nara, the first “permanent” national capital.

      When Kyōto became the imperial capital in 794, land and water routes between Ōsaka and Kyōto were improved. The reclamation of the delta of the Yodo River allowed the building of new settlements, including Watanabe, which became a provincial capital and port during the Middle Ages. South of Ōsaka, on the eastern shore of the bay, is Sakai, which had emerged as a port town by the 14th century. There is evidence that, like some medieval European towns, it was self-governing in the 15th and 16th centuries, run by its leading merchants until they capitulated to the warlord Oda Nobunaga in 1569. These merchants grew wealthy from Sakai's lucrative domestic and foreign trade; under their patronage Sakai became a centre of the arts after Kyōto was devastated in the Ōnin War (1467–77). Sakai was also a centre of Christian proselytizing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries; the accounts of Jesuit missionaries tell of the wealth and cosmopolitan flavour of the city at that time.

      In 1496—in the midst of a century of civil war—Rennyo, chief priest of the militant True Pure Land (Jōdo Shin) sect of Buddhism, selected a site near the mouth of the Yodo River for a fortress temple. Completed in 1532, this structure, the Ishiyama Hongan Temple, became the nucleus of a major town that was destroyed in 1580 by Nobunaga, after a siege of many years. Nobunaga's successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, built a great castle on the site with massive stone walls and broad moats; the castle town that developed around it was the origin of present-day Ōsaka. From this base Hideyoshi brought the whole of Japan under his control, and Ōsaka was the seat of national power until his death in 1598.

Early modern and modern periods
      The castle and town were badly damaged and depopulated during Tokugawa Ieyasu's (Tokugawa Ieyasu) siege of 1614–15, in which he eliminated Hideyoshi's heir and consolidated his power as shogun. Succeeding shoguns rebuilt the castle and town, and during the rest of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) Ōsaka was a directly administered shogunal city. Unlike other towns of the period, Ōsaka was not a political centre and therefore was not dominated by the samurai (warrior) class. Instead, it became the country's main commercial city; feudal lords from throughout Japan established warehouses for their tax rice along the city's canals, and rice was traded actively. Many other goods were traded in Ōsaka—which had some 380 wholesale houses by 1679—and the city became an expanding commercial and manufacturing centre. These activities stimulated the rapid monetization of the regional economy.

      As it grew more prosperous, Ōsaka became a centre of the cultural renaissance of the Genroku period (late 17th–early 18th century). Dramatic forms such as bunraku (puppet theatre) and kabuki prospered, and new genres of prose fiction arose, the styles and themes of which catered to the tastes of urban commoners and marked a shift in cultural arbitration away from the samurai class. During the 18th century, however, Ōsaka's position as cultural leader was lost to Edo (now Tokyo), but the city remained an educational centre, with schools in classical studies and in medicine. In the mid-19th century, when Japan was still closed to most Westerners, the Dutch language and Western science were studied by the Japanese in Ōsaka.

      Ōsaka remained preeminent both as a port and as a centre of industry until World War II. Much of the city was destroyed by aerial bombardment during the war, however, and postwar economic growth was focused largely in the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area. The communist revolution in China deprived Ōsaka of its important China trade until the early 1970s, while the increasing economic role of the national government tended to encourage industrial location in the Tokyo-Yokohama area.

Kōbe
      The history of Kōbe is as old as that of Ōsaka. In ancient times the name Kōbe was applied to a small fishing village separated by the Minato River from the town of Hyōgo, the chief port of the area. Hyōgo, also known as Ōwada and Muko, was an important port for trade with China and Korea as early as the 8th century. For many centuries it continued to be Japan's chief port for foreign trade, prospering especially during the 15th and 16th centuries, and the government maintained patrol boats there to control piracy in the Inland Sea. Briefly during the 12th century Taira Kiyomori made it the capital instead of Kyōto.

      During the Tokugawa period, Hyōgo served as the outer port of Ōsaka until in 1868 it was reopened to foreign trade. Soon it was outstripped and absorbed by Kōbe, which has a deeper harbour. The combined ports have been called the port of Kōbe since the establishment of the Kōbe customhouse in 1872. Hyōgo and Kōbe were incorporated as the city of Kōbe in 1889. The many foreigners who settled there in the 19th century gave it an international and cosmopolitan atmosphere.

      The size of the city increased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the absorption of adjacent communities. During World War II, air raids destroyed much of the city. It was rebuilt quickly after the war, its size again increasing by annexation. Kōbe has become one of the largest cities in Japan. Its port facilities, which have undergone tremendous expansion since the war, have been combined administratively with those of Ōsaka since the early 1970s. The earthquake that struck the region in 1995 destroyed large areas of Kōbe and several of its suburbs, caused damage on nearby Awaji Island, and killed some 5,500 people. Kōbe's port facilities and transportation systems also were severely damaged.

Additional Reading
Two publications by the Association of Japanese Geographers are useful: Japanese Cities: A Geographical Approach (1970), for the academic study of postwar urban Japan; and Geography of Japan (1980), especially ch. 12–18, which contains scholarly analyses of contemporary Japanese urban development. William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Ōsaka and the Kinai Cotton Trade (1974), analyzes Ōsaka's premodern economic role. Osaka and Its Technology (semiannual) includes essays on urban development and public works. A novel by Junichirō Tanizaki, The Makioka Sisters (1957, reissued 1983; originally published in Japanese, 3 vol., 1949), provides an excellent if romanticized view of life in the Ōsaka-Kōbe region before World War II. Pat Tucker Spier (ed.), The River Without Bridges: An Encounter with the Japanese Buraku (1986), discusses the civil rights of the burakumin in Ōsaka. The 1995 Kōbe earthquake is depicted in T.R. Reid, “Kobe Wakes to a Nightmare,” National Geographic, 188 (1): 112–136 (July 1995).Shinzo Kiuchi Ronald P. Toby

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Universalium. 2010.

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