01 1925 Osaka The Daibiru-Honkan Building Pioneering Efforts
Toward a Full-Fledged Office
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  4. Back When Osaka Surpassed Tokyo

Back When Osaka Surpassed Tokyo

After the Meiji Restoration, Osaka was Japan’s largest city rather than Tokyo, the capital. Not many people know this fact, but it is undisputed. In the early 20th century, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I caused military demand to grow, and heavy industry flourished in Osaka as a result. As the city prospered, it grew into a major urban center dubbed the “city of smoke” and “Manchester of the East” (Manchester, England had played a central role in the Industrial Revolution). Osaka’s population also grew rapidly, reaching 2,114,800 by 1925 in comparison to Tokyo’s 1,995,500. During the 1920s, Osaka was the largest city in Japan in terms of population, area, and industrial output, and it earned the nickname “Dai-Osaka” (Big Osaka) as it surpassed Tokyo as one of the world’s largest cities. It was the sixth most populous city in the world. Shinpei Goto, who served as the Minister of Home Affairs and led Tokyo’s reconstruction after the Great Kanto Earthquake, said that he looked to Osaka as a model for urban planning.

  • A map of the Nakanoshima area during the Edo period

Accordingly, infrastructure development befitting an urban metropolis progressed during the Dai-Osaka period, and new large buildings were constantly cropping up. Midosuji Avenue was significantly widened, the Osaka Metro was built, and buildings like the Osaka City Central Public Hall, the Osaka Club, and the Osaka Securities Exchange Building made their appearance. Eventually, the title of Japan’s largest city would be relinquished to Tokyo with its transformation into a major metropolis in the 1930s.

One of the new buildings to appear during the Dai-Osaka period was the Daibiru-Honkan Building—the head office building of O.S.K. Lines (now Mitsui O.S.K. Lines) and a fitting example of that era’s prosperity.

Why was this building so well-suited to Osaka? It wasn’t only its large size and advanced features that made it so, but also its location at the corner of the Nakanoshima district in the heart of Osaka. The head office building of O.S.K. Lines had previously been located at 14 Tomijima-cho, Kita-ku, Osaka (its present-day address is 3-7-25 Kawaguchi, Nishi-ku, Osaka) on the city outskirts. The new location was at 1 Soze-cho, Kita-ku, Osaka (present-day 3-6-32 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka). The property was originally developed and inhabited by Soze Hayakawa, a man connected with Chigusaya, an Edo period currency exchange business. After that, it had been a kind of storehouse for the Tottori Domain called a kurayashiki.

Kurayashiki were residential estates with storerooms built during the Edo period by feudal clans, the shogunate, shogunate retainers, shrines and temples, and so on in order to sell rice and other products. Osaka was known as “the nation’s kitchen” because it was Japan’s largest commodity distribution center. As such, Osaka had many kurayashiki, and when it came to former kurayashiki sites, Nakanoshima was the most historic and unique district in Osaka. It was in the 1920s, right in the midst of the Dai-Osaka period, that Daibiru put plans into motion for the construction of a new commercial building.

The Daibiru-Honkan Building

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1927 1931

Hibiya Daibiru Buildings
No. 1 and No. 2

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