Map of Osaka, Kita Ward

A highly detailed prewar urban map of Osaka, focusing on Kita Ward, one of the city’s principal commercial and administrative districts. Issued under the banner “Great Osaka” , the map reflects the period when Osaka had emerged as Japan’s largest city and a symbol of modern industrial urbanism.

The ward boundary is clearly delineated, enclosing a dense and finely articulated street grid with individual blocks and plot divisions shown in detail. Roads, bridges, railways, and municipal streetcar routes are rendered with precision, while rivers and canals—integral to Osaka’s mercantile and industrial infrastructure—are highlighted in green. Numerous symbols identify public buildings, transportation nodes, and civic facilities, underscoring the map’s informational and planning-oriented purpose.

Across the upper margin runs an extensive statistical table, presenting ward-level data on population, households, and related civic metrics. This quantitative framing, together with the title term (kusei, “ward conditions”), situates the map firmly within the genre of early 20th-century Japanese urban survey and modernization literature rather than tourism.

The map was issued as a supplement to the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun to commemorate the newspaper’s 50th anniversary, firmly dating its publication to 1926. The emphasis on the “latest” condition of Kita Ward reflects a moment of rapid infrastructural expansion and administrative consolidation at the end of the Taishō period and the threshold of the Shōwa era.

Produced well before wartime destruction and postwar reconstruction, the map preserves the prewar urban fabric of central Osaka at a peak moment of confidence and growth, closely paralleling contemporary ward maps of Tokyo and other major Japanese cities.

This map is an important document of Osaka’s prewar urban history, illustrating the spatial organization, transportation networks, and civic identity of Kita Ward at the height of the “Great Osaka” era. Issued by a major national newspaper, it also exemplifies the role of mass media in disseminating urban planning knowledge and celebrating municipal modernity in early 20th-century Japan.

Catalogue note: A rare and visually compelling example of Taishō–early Shōwa urban cartography, combining statistical survey material with detailed ward-level mapping.