Kita-ku

What I first want to hold down is that Kita-ku is not an independent city but one of the wards constituting Osaka City. It is the ward corresponding to the center of Osaka’s commerce and business, including Nakanoshima, Dojima, and Umeda in its area. In the latest Population Census the population is about 139,000 (139,376 in 2020). In the five years from 123,667 in 2015, it greatly increased by a little over fifteen thousand. In a city-center ward where offices and commerce gather, this much population increase is occurring.

What I want to see here is that the number of children is increasing too. Those under 15 increased by a little over two thousand, from 10,533 in 2015 to 12,854 in 2020. In the same period, the share aged 65 and over fell, rather, from 18.4% to 17.0%. Counter to the nationwide trend of advancing aging, the share of the elderly falls and children and total population both increase — a movement peculiar to the city center is occurring. On the other hand, the household-with-children share is low, at 11.2% in 2020. That is, one can read that much of the increased population is centered not on child-rearing households but on single people and households without children. The land price of the residential area is about 609,000 yen per square meter (2026 — 609,000 yen/m²), at the high level of the city center. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history from a town of warehouse-residences to city-center living.

Kita-ku’s skeleton is a layered structure in which rail and dwelling later piled up upon an origin as a commercial center surrounded by rivers. The ward area is a waterside land surrounded on three sides by the Yodo, the Okawa, and the Tosabori Rivers, and in the Edo era it was the hub of Osaka’s logistics, called "the nation’s kitchen." On Nakanoshima and Dojima, the warehouse-residences of the various domains stood in rows, and at Dojima was placed the Dojima Rice Market, said to be the world’s first futures exchange. The annual-tax rice of the whole nation was traded here, and prices were set. What economic geography calls "a commercial agglomeration with logistics and finance at its core" is this town’s first foundation.

The second foundation is the railway. In 1874, Osaka Station opened in Sonezaki Village in the ward area. At first a station set amid fields, it was also called "Umeda Stenshon" from the surrounding place-name. In 1897, Sonezaki and Kitano were incorporated into Kita-ku, Osaka City, and the area before the station developed, as Umeda and Kita, into the gateway of Osaka where commerce and business gather. On Nakanoshima, public institutions such as the Osaka City Hall and the Osaka Branch of the Bank of Japan gathered, and the ward area came to form one corner of Osaka’s central business district (CBD).

And in recent years, as a third layer, dwelling piles up. The ward system began with the old Kita-ku in 1879, and on 1989-2-13 the old Kita-ku and the old Oyodo-ku merged into the present Kita-ku. In the city center that had been a town of offices and commerce, high-rise apartment buildings rise, and there people begin to live. Upon the logistics hub of warehouse-residences, the railway’s before-the-station commerce overlapped, and city-center living was further loaded on — this town’s shape stands upon a history in which the functions of each age piled up upon the condition of a commercial center.

What characterizes Kita-ku is that, although the total population increased by a little over fifteen thousand and the number of children increased by a little over two thousand, the household-with-children share is low, at 11.2% (2020). This combination, which looks contradictory at first glance, makes sense when the inside of the increased population is read apart. Much of the households that flowed into the city center’s apartment buildings are single people or households without children. On top of that, the reason the number of children increases too is that the base figure of the inflow itself is large, while, as household composition, child-rearing households are thin — both hold at once.

That the share of the elderly fell from 18.4% to 17.0% can also be read as the reverse side of the same inflow. If a large layer of young single people and DINKs joins the layer that originally lived there, the share of the elderly relatively falls. Counter to the advancing aging of many regions of the nation, the share of the elderly falls and children and total population both increase — that these several flows advance at once is a movement that occurs only in a very limited area: the concentration of dwelling into the city center. Even though children increase, the center of households is not in the child-rearing layer. Taking out only the increase or decrease of the total or of children, one misreads the inside of the town.

Kita-ku, Osaka City, holds several functions of its own. One is Nakanoshima and Dojima, spreading at the south end of the ward area, where the Osaka City Hall, the Osaka Branch of the Bank of Japan, and the like are sited — one corner of Osaka’s central business district (CBD). Another is Umeda and Kita, centered on Osaka Station, which, as an agglomeration of offices and commerce united with a rail junction, bears the role of Osaka’s gateway. The lineage of the Edo-era warehouse-residences and the Dojima Rice Market is carried on even now in its character as the center of commerce and finance.

Kita-ku is a ward that, upon an origin as a logistics hub surrounded by rivers, has reloaded the before-the-station and city-center living. The warehouse-residences, Osaka Station, the public offices of Nakanoshima, and the high-rise apartment buildings were, in origin, all set upon the same condition — a commercial center surrounded by rivers — in each age. In the stretch where warehouses and wholesalers handled their cargo, high-rise apartment buildings now rise, and lights are lit at night too. The ward that was a place to carry cargo is changing its expression into a place where people live. Set beside the fact that Chuo-ku (27128), also a ward of Osaka City, bears another core of the merchant capital in Senba and Minami, the structure becomes visible — that Osaka’s center is divided among and borne by several wards.