Imazato

Imasato is the name of the area around Imasato Station in Higashinari Ward, Osaka City, and around Kintetsu Imasato Station in Ikuno Ward. It is associated with attractions such as the birthplace of Konosuke Matsushita’s entrepreneurship, a Koreatown area, and the former Imasato Shinchi—once considered one of Osaka’s five major red-light districts. In the Muromachi period, the area was part of an estate known as Shinkai-no-sho. During Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s land survey in 1594, Shinkai-no-sho was abolished, and in the Edo period the villages of what is now Higashinari Ward became direct shogunate territory. In the Meiji period, the area was a quiet rural zone where agriculture was the main industry. In 1885, it suffered severe damage in the Yodogawa flood, but large-scale river improvement works began in 1897 and were completed in 1909. From the first year of the Taisho era, the former farming area began transforming into residential neighborhoods. In 1914, the Daiki Railway (predecessor of today’s Kintetsu) opened, and the population grew from about 17,000 in 1909 to over 100,000 by 1924. In the early Showa period during the “Great Osaka” era, the population exceeded 330,000 and the city developed into one of Japan’s major commercial hubs. However, the 1934 Muroto Typhoon and the 1945 Osaka air raids caused enormous damage, and black markets emerged after the war. Today, facilities such as the Higashinari Ward Housing Service Center and the Oto-shiyori Sukoyaka Center Tobukan have been built, making the area a place where elderly residents can live with greater peace of mind.