This article is based on a visit made on Sunday, 20 November 2016.
Previously on Sekai Ichi, I made a morning visit to
Sumiyoshi Shrine in the south of Osaka. From there, I turned around and headed north to the Osaka Museum of History (大阪歴史博物館,
Ōsaka Rekishi Hakubutsukan). If you've ever been to the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Tokyo --
and I have -- this place covers similar ground, albeit with a more specific focus on Osaka and the surrounding regions.
The museum stands across the corner from Osaka Castle Park. In the shot above, it occupies the left-hand tower. The one on the right, connected by a glass-domed, ground-level plaza, belongs to NHK, the public television network. Once in the museum, audio guides in Japanese, English, Mandarin Chinese, and Korean may be rented for ¥200 each. This gives you a remote-like handset, and a laminated sheet which tells you what to play and where.
The path through the museum starts at the 10th floor. Compared to the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which mostly starts its teachings at the 17th-century Edo period, the Osaka Museum of History starts way back further. This pavilion is designed to evoke the old Naniwa Palace that stood nearby, over 1,300 years ago. Occasionally the window shades will be lowered to darken the room and make the video, looping on the screens above, better visible.
Life-sized statues about the pavilion depict the Emperor and the servants of their court.
From the window on this floor, you can see out to the former site of the Naniwa Palace, which stood from AD 652 to 686. Nowadays, its excavated foundation sits across the road from Osaka Castle park. Speaking of...
Osaka Castle (大阪城,
Ōsaka-jō) can also be seen from the museum. Better views of the castle can be seen from the stairwell, as above, but good luck taking a decent picture from all the window glare. I only got the colours on this one as good as I did with some post-prod editing.
Naniwa Palace may be long gone, but archaeological investigations of its former site have been documented in this museum. There are scale-model re-creations of what it may have looked like, based on the foundations that researchers were able to find of the building. With the museum's own smartphone app (available for iOS and Android), you can look out at the palace foundations with your phone's viewfinder, and see an augmented-reality re-creation of the palace that way, as well!
The 9th floor sends the clock forward a millenium, with a focus on Osakan society during the Edo period. In the hallway above, you will walk under a couple of fake bridges, and there's a very good reason for that. Osaka is criss-crossed by a dense network of rivers and canals, and so the people built many bridges to cross them. There was even a phrase coined in their honour, the "808 bridges of Naniwa", referring to a seemingly-uncountable amount. Today, the Kanji for bridge, "hashi" (橋), appends many place names in Osaka, even if the bridges they were named after no longer exist.
As with the Edo-Tokyo Museum, there are many miniature re-creations of scenes past.
Another scale model, this one depicting a kabuki play in progress. As with Edo, Osaka was also a major centre of the kabuki theatre. For a full-sized Kabuki experience, you could visit the Osaka Shochiku-za (大阪松竹座,
Ōsaka Shōchiku-za) theatre, in the downtown Namba district.
A very boat-like festival float, or maybe an actual boat. The festival it was built for escapes me, although it could have been the Tenjin Matsuri (天神祭). Held annually on 24-25 of July, and dating back to the 10th century AD, the festival is marked by processions on land and on river, with a fireworks display to boot. On the second day, the land procession starts and ends at Osaka Tenman-gu shrine, due southeast of Osaka/Umeda Station, and is promptly followed by the river procession, cruising out and back along the nearby O River.
The 8th floor is a little different, in that it has a general focus on archaeology. There are several hands-on activities you can spend your time on, such as this puzzle where you try to re-create a vase by sticking pieces together onto a magnetic base. As you can see from this picture, I managed it. :-)
Finally, we come down to the 7th floor, which shifts the focus to 20th-century history. By this point, Japan had opened itself up to influences and technologies from around the world, but never lost its own cultural identity.
Another model of one of Osaka's old train stations. Among the descriptions, you may learn about the Midosuji subway line. It was the second underground line built in Japan, after the Ginza line in Tokyo. It opened in 1933 between Umeda and Shinsaibashi stations, and expanded to its present length over the next 50+ years. And like the Ginza, I got the most use from the Midosuji out of all the subway lines in Osaka.
The far end of the room illustrates the lively theatre scene in Osaka, which I also mentioned earlier. One thing I find distinctive about this scene is the family of mannequin patrons off to the right. The parents are dressed in Japanese formalwear, while their child is wearing fashions of a more Western design. This alone gives you an idea of the changes that were going on in the middle of the 20th century.
I found a guest for my sign-off selfie -- one of the mannequins on this floor. Afterwards, I briefly recharged myself at the hotel, before resuming my Osakan adventure at the Umeda Sky Building. Find out what that was like, next time on Sekai Ichi!
Hours: Open from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM. Admission ends 30 minutes before closing time. Closed on Tuesdays, and from 28 December to 4 January.
Costs: ¥600.
Address: 4-1-32 Ōtemae, Chūō-ku, Ōsaka-shi, Ōsaka 〒540-0008
Access: The closest subway station is Tanimachi Yonchome (Osaka Metro Chuo
(C) and Tanimachi
(T) lines). The museum is also 15-20 minutes away on foot from Morinomiya Station (JR Osaka Loop
(O), Osaka Metro Chuo, and Nagahori Tsurumi-ryokuchi
(N) lines).
From Osaka Station, walk to the nearby Higashi-Umeda Station and take the Osaka Metro Tanimachi line to Tanimachi Yonchome (T23, 6 minutes, ¥230).
Directions: From the Tanimachi line, take exit 2 to street level and bear right, along the road. The museum will be on your right side in 300m (1,000 ft.), just before the next traffic light.
From the Chuo line, take exit 9 to street level. The museum will be immediately on your left.
Website:
(English) (Japanese)
