Chuo-ku

What I first want to hold down is that Chuo-ku is not an independent city but one of the wards constituting Osaka City. It is the ward corresponding to the core of Osaka’s commerce and history, including Senba, Namba, Minami, and Osaka Castle in its area. In the latest Population Census the population is about 104,000 (103,726 in 2020). In the five years from 93,069 in 2015, it greatly increased by a little over ten thousand. In a ward where commerce and business gather, a population increase exceeding ten percent 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 sixteen hundred, from 7,952 in 2015 to 9,557 in 2020. In the same period, the share aged 65 and over fell, rather, from 16.5% to 15.1%. Counter to the nationwide trend of advancing aging, a movement is occurring in which the share of the elderly falls and children and total population both increase. On the other hand, the household-with-children share is low, at 10.8% in 2020. 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 605,000 yen per square meter (2026 — 605,000 yen/m²), at a high level. Why these numbers take this shape cannot be read without going back over the history of the palace-capital, the castle town, and the merchants’ town.

Chuo-ku’s skeleton stands upon an exceedingly old history, in which three centers — capital, castle, and merchants’ town — overlapped on the same land across the ages. On this land was placed the ancient palace-capital, the Naniwa palace. It is one of the very earliest cities of the archipelago, where the imperial residence was placed from the Asuka to the Nara period. The origin of the center of governance having been set here is this town’s deepest foundation.

The second foundation is the castle. In 1583, Toyotomi Hideyoshi began the building of Osaka Castle. With the castle as its core, a castle town was laid out around it, and in Senba — Kitahama, Honmachi, and the like in particular — a merchants’ town spread. Senba became the center of the Osaka economy from the Edo era, and, together with Nakanoshima and Dojima of Kita-ku, came to form Osaka’s central business district (CBD). What economic geography calls "an agglomeration of the merchants’ town laid out in a castle town" decided this town’s skeleton. On the other hand, on the southern side of the ward area — the stretch corresponding to the former Minami-ku — spread the entertainment quarters of Minami: Namba, Dotonbori, Shinsaibashi, Sennichimae. The two faces — the northern Senba bearing commerce and business, the southern Minami bearing commerce and entertainment — come to dwell together in one ward area.

And in recent years, as a third layer, dwelling piles up. As for the ward system, the Higashi-ku and Minami-ku, which had continued for 110 years since the enforcement of the County-Ward-Town-Village Organization Act, merged into Chuo-ku on 1989-2-13 (the same day Kita-ku merged with the old Oyodo-ku). In the city center that had been a town of commerce and entertainment, high-rise apartment buildings rise, and there people begin to live. A castle was built in the palace-capital, a merchants’ town spread beneath the castle, and city-center living was further loaded on — this town’s shape stands upon a history in which the functions of governance, commerce, and dwelling piled up on the same land across the ages.

What characterizes Chuo-ku is that, although the total population increased by a little over ten thousand and the number of children increased by a little over sixteen hundred, the household-with-children share is low, at 10.8% (2020). The same combination seen in Kita-ku (27127) appears here too. Reading the inside of the increased population apart, it makes sense that much of the households that flowed into the city center’s apartment buildings are single people or households without children, and that the number of children increases because the base figure of the inflow is large. As household composition, the figure of child-rearing households being thin holds at once.

That the share of the elderly fell from 16.5% to 15.1% is also 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 the consequence of a limited movement: 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 one aspect of the increase or decrease of the total, one misreads the structure of the town.

Chuo-ku, Osaka City, holds several functions of its own. One is Osaka Castle, standing in the east of the ward area, which, as the castle Hideyoshi built on the land of the ancient Naniwa palace, keeps conveying the core of Osaka’s history to the present. Another is Senba — Kitahama, Honmachi, and the like — which, carrying on the lineage of the merchants’ town from the Edo era, is one corner of Osaka’s central business district (CBD). Further, in the south of the ward area spread the entertainment quarters of Minami: Namba, Dotonbori, Shinsaibashi, Sennichimae, supporting another face as the center of commerce and entertainment.

Chuo-ku is a ward that, upon an origin as the center of governance, has reloaded the castle, the merchants’ town, the entertainment quarters, and city-center living. The Naniwa palace, Osaka Castle, the merchants’ town of Senba, the entertainment quarters of Minami, and the high-rise apartment buildings were, in origin, all set upon the same land — Osaka’s center — across the ages. A capital was placed, a castle was built, a merchants’ town spread, and now people live here. This stretch, which has gone on being the center, has, over a thousand years, replaced what is placed there — from capital to dwelling. Set beside the fact that Kita-ku (27127), also a ward of Osaka City, bears another core in Nakanoshima and Umeda, the structure becomes visible — that Osaka’s center is divided among and borne by several wards.