OSAKA
(oh-SAW-kuh)
Third
largest Japanese city Common clues: Honshu port; City near
Kobe; 1970 World's Fair site; Japanese port; Japan's second
largest city; Bay of Japan, Industrious Japanese city Crossword
puzzle frequency:
4 times a year Frequency
in English language:
25968 / 86800 Video: Adventures
in Japan part One: Osaka
Osaka
City is the third-largest city in Japan, with a population of 2.7
million.
However, its day time (9am~5pm) population is second in Japan
after Tokyo. It is located on the main island of Honshu, at the
mouth of the Yodo River on Osaka Bay. The city is one of Japan's
major industrial centers and ports, as well as the capital of
Osaka Prefecture and a central part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto
metropolitan area which has a population of 16.6 million. It is
part of the Kansai region.
Osaka
city was named originally Naniwa
and appears in early Japanese historical documents. Emperor
Kōtoku made this area his capital, and named it
Naniwa-no-miya (The Capital of Naniwa). It has always been a
vital connection, by land and sea, between Yamato (modern day
Nara Prefecture), Korea, and China. Settsu,
a former province of Japan, consisted of the northern part of
modern Osaka prefecture and the seaside part of Hyogo Prefecture.
In
1496 the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist sect set up their headquarters,
the heavily fortified Ishiyama Honganji temple, in Ishiyama,
today a part of Osaka. In 1576, Oda Nobunaga started a siege of
the temple that went on to last for four years. The monks finally
surrendered in 1580, the temple was razed and Toyotomi Hideyoshi
took the place for his own castle, Osaka Castle.
Osaka
was called Ōzaka
from the middle ages until the pre-modern period. In the
beginning of Meiji Era the government renamed the city to Ōsaka,
which remains its name today. In those days Osaka was the second
largest city of Japan and economically the most important,
because most of the important markets, rice, exchange and so on
were there.
The
modern city was designated on September 1, 1956 by government
ordinance.
As
of 2003, the city has an estimated population of 2,624,129 and
the density of 11,857.79 persons per square kilometre. The total
area is 221.30 km².
The
people of Osaka speak a dialect of standard Japanese called
Osaka-ben,
characterized, most prominently amongst other particularities, by
the use of the suffix hen
instead of nai
in the negative of verbs.
Osaka
people are considered by other Japanese to be rowdy and
boisterous with a robust and coarse sense of humor, befitting
people engaged in the commercial life of the region. Compare to
American stereotypes of New Yorkers.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Osaka, Osaka".
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