48 Fun Facts About Osaka

Only Tokyo and which other city have more residents than Osaka?

Yokohama, Tokyo's neighbour, is the larger city today, yet in 1925 Osaka was the most populous city in Japan and the sixth largest in the world.

What do the kanji in the name Ōsaka literally mean?

Large slope is the literal reading; the second kanji can also mean hill. A popular story says the old 'slope' character was dropped in the Meiji era because its halves could be read as 'samurai rebel'.

By what ancient name was Osaka known when Emperor Kōtoku made it Japan's capital in 645?

Naniwa's palace was lost for centuries until archaeologist Tokutarō Yamane unearthed its foundations just south of Osaka Castle, confirming the site in 1961.

Which warlord built Osaka Castle in 1583 on the site of a razed Buddhist fortress-temple?

Toyotomi Hideyoshi modelled the castle on Azuchi, the seat of his late master Oda Nobunaga, who had spent ten years besieging the fortress-temple that once stood on the site.

How was the outside of Osaka Castle's original 1580s main tower decorated to impress visitors?

With gold leaf on its tiles and ornaments, the tower flaunted its builder's taste for gilding: he also owned a portable tea room covered in gold, carried from castle to castle.

After the truce that ended the 1614 winter siege, Osaka Castle lost which defence?

The moats were filled in, the outer one first and then the inner; in the traditional account Ieyasu's men went well beyond what the truce allowed. Stripped bare, the castle fell in summer 1615.

The main keep of Osaka Castle built in 1931 is made of what?

Ferroconcrete gave Osaka its first main tower in 266 years: lightning had burned the last one in 1665, and citizens' donations paid for the 1931 rebuild.

On 14 August 1945, the day before Japan's surrender, American bombers wrecked what facility beside Osaka Castle?

A military arsenal filled the castle grounds, and the raid killed 382 workers there. The rebuilt castle tower beside it was damaged but came through the raids still standing.

Edo-period Osaka was nicknamed 'the nation's kitchen' because it was Japan's main market for which commodity?

Rice paid as tax by the feudal domains was shipped to Osaka's warehouses, and in 1730 the shogunate licensed the Dōjima exchange there to trade rice futures, a forerunner of modern futures markets.

Which two electronics giants have their headquarters in Osaka Prefecture?

Panasonic and Sharp are both Osaka firms, but Sharp made its name in Tokyo with a mechanical pencil and moved west only after the 1923 Kantō earthquake destroyed its factories.

An old saying holds that Kyotoites ruin themselves on clothing while Osakans ruin themselves on what?

Food ruins Osakans in the saying, whose word kuidaore means eating yourself broke; the city wears it proudly, and a drumming mechanical clown named Kuidaore Taro has greeted Dōtonbori crowds since the 1950s.

At Osaka's kushikatsu counters, what are diners famously forbidden to do?

Dip twice and you break the rule these fried-skewer shops are famous for, since every diner shares the same pot of sauce; the dish grew up in the cheap bars of Shinsekai, the old amusement quarter.

What is the main filling of takoyaki?

Octopus went in when Osaka street vendor Tomekichi Endo, credited with inventing the snack in 1935, swapped it for the beef in his earlier radioyaki, borrowing the idea from the octopus dumplings of nearby Akashi.

The name of okonomiyaki, the savoury pancake with two rival regional styles, means roughly what?

Grilled how you like it suits a dish with no fixed recipe: okonomi means 'to your liking', and in many Osaka restaurants diners mix the batter and fry their own on a griddle set into the table.

The giant Dōtonbori billboard of a runner crossing a finish line advertises which confectionery company?

Glico is short for glycogen, which founder Riichi Ezaki took from oyster broth for a caramel whose box showed a runner with arms raised in victory; the sign has lit Dōtonbori since 1935.

Dōtonbori was historically what kind of quarter before becoming a nightlife area?

A theatre district from the 1620s, the canal bank was lined with kabuki and puppet playhouses; the teahouses and restaurants that served their crowds grew into today's eating street.

Which fast-food mascot statue did Hanshin fans throw into the Dōtonbori canal in 1985, supposedly cursing the team?

Colonel Sanders stood in for the team's bearded American slugger Randy Bass when celebrating fans could find no lookalike; divers hauled the statue out of the canal in 2009, minus its glasses and left hand.

The 'Hanshin' of the Hanshin Tigers pairs a character from Osaka's name with one from which port city to its west?

Kobe supplies the 'shin': Hanshin is the railway linking the two cities, and its Tigers dropped 'Osaka' from their name in 1961 because their Kōshien ballpark sits between them, outside Osaka Prefecture.

Osaka's Tsūtenkaku tower was modelled on which foreign landmark?

The Eiffel Tower was copied for the top half of the 1912 original, set on a base shaped like the Arc de Triomphe; that tower was pulled down after a 1943 fire, and its 1956 successor glows with Hitachi advertising.

Which American charm doll, 'God of Things as They Ought to Be', has feet that Tsūtenkaku visitors rub for luck?

Billiken was patented in 1908 by Missouri art teacher Florence Pretz and reached Osaka within a few years; the tower's original statue vanished in the 1920s, and an American university still has him as its mascot.

Which imperial prince commissioned Shitennō-ji, sometimes called Japan's first Buddhist temple?

Shōtoku brought temple carpenters over from Korea to build it, and one of them founded Kongō Gumi, the Osaka builder that stayed a family firm for more than 1,400 years until a 2006 takeover.

Osaka's ancient Sumiyoshi Taisha gives its name to what, older than Buddhism's arrival in Japan?

A style of shrine architecture, sumiyoshi-zukuri, keeps its roofs straight, not curved; its gods guard sailors, for the shrine once faced the sea.

The Tenjin Matsuri, one of Japan's three great festivals, honours which scholar, now worshipped as the god of learning?

Sugawara no Michizane's spirit leaves Osaka Tenmangū in a gilded portable shrine each 25 July and is paraded on a fleet of river boats under fireworks before being carried home.

In bunraku, Osaka's puppet theatre, who usually voices every character?

A single chanter, seated beside the shamisen player, voices men, women and children alike, while three operators dressed in black work each main puppet in full view of the audience.

Which avant-garde artist created the Tower of the Sun, the many-faced symbol of Expo '70 near Osaka?

Tarō Okamoto made his 70-metre tower burst through the fair's Big Roof, designed by Kenzō Tange; its golden mask looks to the future, the front face is the present and the black sun on its back is the past.

Expo '70 near Osaka drew 64 million visitors, a world's fair record that stood for 40 years until which city's Expo?

Shanghai passed it with 73 million visitors in 2010. Osaka's fair, the first held in Asia, also buried a time capsule meant to stay sealed for 5,000 years, until 6970.

Expo 2025 was held on which artificial island in Osaka Bay, whose name means 'dream island'?

Yumeshima began as a waste landfill in the bay; private cars were kept off it during the Expo, and the Metro's Chūō Line was extended out to the island to carry the crowds.

Expo 2025's Grand Ring, two kilometres around the Osaka site, holds a Guinness record as the largest structure made of what?

Wood, mostly Japanese cedar and cypress, was fitted together by architect Sou Fujimoto with traditional Japanese joinery; he called the ring a sign that a divided world can still connect.

What was the name of Expo 2025's red-and-blue mascot?

Myaku-Myaku is officially a creature born of red cells and blue water that shifts shape and merely mimics a human; its name doubles a word for pulse to mean something handed down without a break.

Osaka's main international airport, opened in 1994, is built where?

On a man-made island in the bay, the airport sank into the soft seabed far faster than planned, so hydraulic jacks under the terminal's columns lift it back to level.

Which Italian architect designed Kansai Airport's 1.7 km Terminal 1, the world's longest?

Renzo Piano curved the terminal's roof so that air blown along the ceiling reaches the whole hall without hanging ducts; seen from above, the building sits like a glider with the gates as its wings.

Which Universal Studios Japan land opened in Osaka in 2021, before any other Universal park had one?

Super Nintendo World was meant to open in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but the pandemic held it back until March 2021.

When the Kaiyukan in Osaka's bay area opened in 1990, what distinction did it hold?

World's largest public aquarium was the claim in 1990; visitors still ride up to the eighth floor and spiral down around a nine-metre-deep Pacific tank whose stars are whale sharks.

Unlike Tokyo's private line, who built and ran Osaka's 1933 subway?

The city opened Japan's first publicly run subway on 20 May 1933 between Umeda and Shinsaibashi, six years after Tokyo's privately built Ginza Line; it is now the Midōsuji Line.

Whose ward system did Osaka voters twice narrowly refuse to copy?

Tokyo's 23 special wards were the model: the 2020 version would have merged Osaka's 24 wards into four, and it lost by about 17,000 votes, 50.6% to 49.4%, after an equally tight defeat in 2015.

In 2018 Osaka ended its sister-city relationship with which US city over a 'comfort women' memorial?

San Francisco had been Osaka's sister city since 1957; Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura ended the 61-year tie in October 2018, a year after the statue went up in a public park in the city's Chinatown.

Osaka's merchant past survives in the proverbial local greeting 'Mōkarimakka', which asks what?

Whether you are making money is what mōkarimakka asks, from the verb for turning a profit; the set reply, 'Bochi bochi denna', claims only to be doing so-so.

Which two J.League clubs contest the Osaka derby?

Gamba and Cerezo share the Osaka derby, though Gamba's ground is next door in Suita; the cherry blossom is Osaka's official flower, which is why Cerezo took its name from the Spanish word for cherry tree.

Edo-period Osaka was proverbially the city of '808' what, most of them built by its own merchants?

Bridges: 'the 808 bridges' was a figure of speech for too many to count. The shogunate maintained just twelve of them, and merchants and townspeople built and kept up the rest at their own expense.

Which two districts are Osaka's main business and shopping hubs, north and south?

Umeda and Namba anchor the districts locals call Kita and Minami, 'North' and 'South'. Umeda was farmland and a graveyard on the city's edge until the first Osaka Station opened there in 1874.

Because its tunnels were built as part of the roads above them, most of Osaka Metro is legally classed as what?

A tram system is how the law treats most of Osaka Metro, because lines such as the Midōsuji were laid out as one project with the avenue overhead. The operator's legal name still contains the Japanese word for tramway.

Which airport handles most of Osaka's domestic flights?

Itami, formally Osaka International Airport, has handled only domestic flights since Kansai took over its overseas routes in 1994. It sits about ten kilometres north of the city centre.

Each March, Osaka hosts one of the six annual grand tournaments of which sport?

Sumo's Osaka tournament was called off in 2011 over a match-fixing scandal, the first grand tournament cancelled since 1946.

In Osaka dialect, which word replaces the 'da' that ends plain statements in standard Japanese?

Ya stands in for 'da', which is why the comedians' stock retort is 'nande ya nen', roughly 'you've got to be kidding'. Negatives change too, with -hen taking the place of -nai.

An Osaka restaurateur's 1950s visit to a beer brewery inspired him to invent which kind of restaurant?

Conveyor-belt sushi debuted in 1958 at Yoshiaki Shiraishi's Mawaru Genroku Sushi, its belt borrowed from the brewery's bottle line. He set it at eight centimetres a second, since any faster dried out the fish.

The Hanjōtei theatre, opened in 2006 beside Osaka Tenmangū shrine, is a full-time home for which stage art?

Rakugo, comic storytelling by a lone seated performer, had no full-time stage left in Osaka for decades. Public donations built the Hanjōtei, whose ceiling is lined with paper lanterns.

Which professional baseball team is based at Kyocera Dome Osaka?

Orix Buffaloes were formed by the 2004 merger of the Orix BlueWave and the Kintetsu Buffaloes. The Hanshin Tigers borrow the dome whenever the national high-school tournaments take over their own Kōshien Stadium.

Which city won the 2001 vote that knocked Osaka's Olympic bid out first?

Beijing took the 2008 Games on the second ballot with 56 votes, having lost the 2000 Games to Sydney by just two. Osaka went out in the first round with only six votes.