Tennōji Transformation and the Lost Identity of Osaka

Boundaries of Tennōji Village and Nishinari Ward

Umeda mainly developed as an exchange hub where people from northern Osaka, Hyōgo, and southern Kyoto gathered, while Namba and Shinsaibashi developed significantly as exchange hubs where people from southern and western Osaka gathered. From this background of differing atmospheres, Osaka created a unique culture in which the Umeda area was long referred to as “Kita” and the Namba–Shinsaibashi area as “Minami,” but the place I was most attached to was Tennōji, which lies further south of these urban areas. Since I was born in Sakai City in the mid-south of Osaka, Tennōji was the closest place to go out to the city, and having gone there many times since childhood, I believe I have seen its transformations over time.

One interesting point is that both “Kita” and “Minami,” through large-scale redevelopment, completely lost their former vigor—the somewhat dangerous atmosphere and the inexplicable mixture of people—and have now been replaced entirely by foreign tourists, with the Japanese crowd homogenized to the point of resembling Tokyo. In other words, everything has become superficially “clean,” but this cleanliness undeniably erased Osaka’s unique culture and identity all at once. Tennōji, however, alone barely sustains remnants of its former atmosphere, though I sense it will be lost within a few years, making the town itself the final remnant of Osaka’s old character. That said, Tennōji, like Kita and Minami, has also been a target of redevelopment, and compared with the scenery I saw in my student days, both the people and the city have changed dramatically (in fact, this redevelopment turned out to be a major failure). In the spot now known for housing Osaka’s tallest building, “Abeno Harukas,” there once stood the somewhat cluttered Kintetsu Department Store, and behind it, the “Abeno Q’s Mall” did not yet exist. The completion of this Q’s Mall actually became the very symbol of Osaka’s loss of unique culture and identity.