Along with takoyaki (octopus dumplings), comedy, and the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, Osaka has an established image as an urban area centered around the Kita (Umeda) and Minami (Namba) districts. But there's another part of the city that isn't quite so flashy. Intersecting Osaka's main transportation artery, Mido-suji, and lodged between the Dojima and Tosabori Rivers, Nakanoshima is an artificial sandbar that extends some three kilometers from east to west.


Concentrated along this small manmade island is Osaka City Hall, the offices of various companies, cultural facilities such as the Central Public Hall, a library, art and science museums, satellite campuses of several universities, and a number of newspaper and broadcast companies. It is truly a thriving waterfront business and culture zone. While retaining the basic functions of an urban area, parks with flower and plants and modern architecture are scattered throughout Nakanoshima. This place, where visitors can enjoy the stately appearance of various bridges and boat transport, might be seen as an important air-pocket in the chaotic metropolis of Osaka.

Just as many of Osaka's urban areas were ocean a few thousand years ago, Nakanoshima was a sandy spot downstream from the Yodo River that was overgrown with reeds. The development of the site by the wealthy merchant Yodoya Joan, who had previously demonstrated a highly advanced form of civil engineering in projects such as the construction of Fushimi Castle and the renovation of the Yodo River embankment, is said to have been carried out on the order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.


In the Edo Period, administrative shifted from Toyotomi to the Tokugawa clan, and as the area was used for water transportation, Nakanoshima came to be lined with the residences and storehouses of each clan, making it an important distribution center for goods from all over the country.


In addition, Yodoya built Yodoyabashi, a bridge spanning Nakanoshima, at his own expense, and established a rice market, the core of the economy at the time, nearby. Later, the world's first public futures-trading market would also be opened in Nakanoshima. While the national government was based in Edo (Tokyo), Osaka prospered as the nation's "kitchen" and merchant town, providing the foundations for urban planning and other business schemes that continue today. The Edo-period writer Ihara Saikaku, incidentally, detailed Yodaya's prosperity in his book Nippon eitaigura (Japan's Eternal Storehouse) and Chikamatsu Monzaemon depicted his downfall in Yodo goisshuse no takinobori (The Yodo Carp's Climb Up the Waterfall).

Following the feudal lords' return of land and people to the emperor in the Meiji Restoration, feudal estates were turned into government offices, schools, and hospitals, and the remainder were sold to private individuals. In particular, a variety of schools were established such as the Osaka-merchant built Kaitokudo, and the Dutch scholar Ogata Koan's Tekijuku, which turned out numerous important figures including the educator and writer Fukuzawa Yukichi.


Modern-day Nakanoshima was completed (as far as Tenjinbashi) in the Taisho Period. Symbolic of the prosperity that Japan enjoyed in the economic boom of World War I were such important events as the founding of the Nihon Kangyo Bank, the emergence of the cotton-spinning and machine industry, and the provision of electricity and gas services. All of these helped develop Osaka industry. In addition, due to the free spirit of the Taisho Romantic movement and the decisive actions of young businessmen, many famous and still extant buildings, such as the General Public Hall and prefectural library, were built with donations.

With the opening of a national highway and the Midosuji subway line in the Showa Period, the potential of "Kita" (north), centered around housing developments in the Hokusetsu district and Umeda Station, which provided a direct link to Kyoto and Tokyo, and "Minami" (south), centered on Namba Station, with access to Nara and Nagoya, grew, but Nakanoshima's function as a center of government, business, and education was for the most part unchanged. And even when urban development flourished during the high-economic growth of the Showa Period and "scrap-and-build" approach became common during the bubble era, the area's waterside landscape remained much as it had in ancient times.


One event of the era is particularly indicative of Osakans' marked tendency to value history and scenery. In 1971, the city announced its "East Nakanoshima Development Plan," which called for the reconstruction of City Hall and the General Public Hall, and the relocation of the library; and at the same time, a historical, environmental protection movement was launched by architecture and urban development specialists and citizens. As a result, the General Public Hall and the library were preserved, and later designated Important Cultural Properties by the national government.


On the other hand, in the late Showa Period, a report examining the possible use of an empty lot at Osaka University was compiled, and later an urban renewal and maintenance project was begun in the western part of Nakanoshima. This area in time came to house Osaka Science Museum, the Osaka International Convention Center, Nakanoshima Center, and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. As additional parts of the plan, Keihan Railway's Nakanoshima Line opened last fall to connect the island from east to west, the Asahi Broadcasting Corporation relocated to the area, and a series of other corporate reconstruction projects are now in the works.


Will these new waterfront developments continue in successive generations? One can only hope that the projects are focusing on the future.

In the mid-Showa Period, according to the Factory Limitation Act, designed to prevent an excessive concentration of residents and industries, restrictions were placed on new buildings and expansions of factories and universities in a given area, forcing these facilities to leave the city and relocate to the suburbs. At the start of the Heian Period, however, these rules were scrapped, and numerous schools, once entangled in national policy and dotting outlying areas, are now returning to the island.


Osaka University has set up its Nakanoshima Center on a site that was originally home to its medical school and science departments, and while offering a diverse range of courses open to the general public, functions as a "campus innovation center" for western Japan. As such, it's used by a dozen or so schools including Hiroshima University and Tokushima University.[1] In the prefectural library annex, located near the courthouse and many law firms, a center modeled on famous local university departments such as Kansai University's law school has been opened to provide free legal consultation.[2] The same building also houses a satellite branch of Osaka Prefecture University.[3]


To marks its 150th anniversary in 2008, Keio University launched its Riverside Campus near a monument commemorating the birth of the school's founder, Fukuzawa Yukichi.[4] The building also houses Osaka University of the Arts' Hotarumachi Campus. Moreover, the total number of satellite campuses and culture schools exceeds that of most any other urban area in the country.


Though the universities have perhaps targeted working people as a means of dealing with the declining birth rate after becoming independent administrative agencies, the wealth of educational facilities that have set out to satisfy people's intellectual curiosity and desire for learning is one of the most attractive things about the rise of the city.

Twentieth-century modernism, which first emerged in this history-steeped area, continues to live on in Nakanoshima.
While showing deference for traditions of the past, creativity that pursues new possibilities is an important element in every era. Since entering the 21st century, a variety of highly creative projects and programs, both large and small, have been launched in the Nakanoshima area.


In 2000, graf, a group which is involved in a wide range of creative activities, from furniture, space, product, and graphic design to food and art, set up its headquarters in Nakanoshima 4-chome, and since then has been at the forefront of the Osaka and wider Japan design scene.[5]


This summer a variety of other projects are planned for the area as part of Aqua Metropolis Osaka 2009. The project to help revive the city, which has long been associated with its abundant waterways, will make use of a "circuit of water" via the rivers (Dojima, Tosabori, Kizu, Dotombori, and Higashi Yokobori) that run through Nakanoshima.[6]


In nearby Dojima, Kansai's only art fair, Art Osaka 2009, will be held for the seventh time this year. In this event, 47 galleries, both from Japan and abroad, will make use of rooms in the well-established Dojima Hotel to display their works, offering visitors a chance to experience, buy, and enjoy art in the familiar surroundings of a hotel room.[7]

Also this year, the Dojima River Forum is set to launch the Dojima Riverside Biennale, a contemporary art festival that promises to pose a variety of intriguing questions through a collection of works selected from the Singapore Biennale, one of Asia's largest international exhibitions.[8]


Moreover, in an attempt to create a new Nakanoshima landmark, Artarea B1 was opened in the first-basement concourse of Naniwabashi Station on Keihan Railway's Nakanoshima Line. In a three-year period of trial and error that began in 2006 while the station was still being built, a group of companies, universities, and NPOs (Keihan Railway, the Osaka University Center for the Study of Communication Design, Dance Box) embarked on a collaborative social project to explore the possibilities of the "station as communication space." Rather than promoting station-based businesses, the project set out to establish the potential for station-based creations by presenting a diverse series of programs with the theme of "art and knowledge."[9]


Industry and the economy are important elements in society, but culture (learning and art) is an essential part of our lives that should not be overlooked. At the root of the word "culture" is the verb "to cultivate," an activity which places special value on the process and time involved in "edifying people; refining skills and spirit; and promoting learning and the arts."


Like great figures of old, those of us now living must put a prolonged effort into developing and creating things that are imbued with a clear vision and experimental spirit while being careful to make the most of our time. After looking back over this accumulation of events, we will then be better able to cultivate the city. Nakanoshima is a cultural zone that differs widely from Kita and Minami. Here, you'll find an abundance of urban activities to foster intelligence and sensitivity through law, government, academia, and art. Every bit as vital as Paris' Ile de la Cite, this outstanding area encourages local people to assemble and expand their autonomous spirit and establish a new type of modernism for the 21st century.


The day when "intelligence and art" are synonymous with Nakanoshima might not be far off.