Abeno about 60 years ago and today

History of Abeno

Tennoji Station of JR and the subway faces Kintetsu's Osaka Abenobashi Station. Centered on this station, the southern terminal of Osaka, the aerial photographs cover the area from the park north of the station to the Abeno district spreading to the southwest. In the southwest of the frame, the Abeno redevelopment rebuilt the wooden rows of houses all together over 42 years. In the seven past eras, the fine grain of the rows of houses continues in almost the same form for more than half a century, and in today's photograph it has been replaced by masses of large buildings.

Rows of houses gathered around the station

According to the history of Abeno compiled by Kintetsu, the Kintetsu station began as Osaka Tennoji Station, opened by the Osaka Railway in April 1923, and it was renamed Osaka Abenobashi Station the following year. A building gathering restaurants and shops opened in front of the station, and in October 1938 the Daitetsu Department Store, later the Kintetsu Department Store, opened in full. As far as the photographs show, the area south and west of the terminal was already packed with homes and shops without gaps before the war.

Cloud shadows fall as black stains across the frame, and the details in the c. 1928 photograph tend to be crushed. Even so, the railway running east-west through the center of the frame and the white ground of the park spreading north of it can be read clearly. In one corner of the park there is a lot that looks like a garden drawing a geometric pattern, contrasting with the fine texture of the surrounding rows of houses. South of the railway, the area is filled from edge to edge with the grain of small roofs, with almost no open ground worth the name. In the upper right, another railway runs diagonally to the northeast.

By c. 1936-42 the frame becomes sharp. A wide street running straight north-south just west of the center catches the eye, and in the park north of the station the trees and paths are drawn in fine detail. A large white square building around a courtyard stands east of the station, and a station building with a long roof continues along the tracks. Southwest of the station, the rows of houses cut by narrow alleys are packed black, and only the side facing the street is edged with somewhat larger buildings.

Wooden rows of houses from before the war

The 1945-50 photograph has strong black-and-white contrast. In the upper part of the frame, the grain of the houses has disappeared, and wide lots show only the lines of roads floating on white ground. The same Kintetsu history records that the department store was damaged in an air raid in March 1945. Restoration work on the department store began in December of that year, and the whole building reopened for business in April 1948. Southwest of the station, on the other hand, the fine black grain of roofs remains in almost the same shape as in the previous era. The City of Osaka describes this district as land densely packed with old wooden buildings from before the war, short of roads and parks. The prewar rows of houses became the framework of the postwar district as they were.

In 1961-69, the whole frame is filled with rows of houses again. The fine texture southwest of the station is unchanged, and the grain of roofs looks even denser. In the lower part there is a bright corner divided into a fine grid, with a grain size different from the surrounding rows of houses. The white building around a courtyard east of the station remains in the same position as in c. 1936-42, and the park north of the railway also keeps its outline.

Apart from a few large buildings added south of the station, the grain of the rows of houses to the southwest in 1974-78 closely resembles that of c. 1936-42. The whole frame is tinted purple. In 1979-83, a thick white curve appears from the left of the frame toward the bottom, sweeping in a large arc out to the lower right. It appears to be a road structure newly built along the existing road, and the same arc continues in today's photograph. Among the rows of houses southwest of the station, a few large white roofs begin to cut in.

In the 1984-86 photograph too, most of the fine grain to the southwest still remains, and bright open lots are only dotted here and there. On the station side, Kintetsu began improvement work on the terminal in 1983, and in November 1988 it expanded the department store's sales floor to about 58,600 square meters. In the photograph, the outlines of the buildings around the station only grow little by little, and the difference from the rows of houses to the southwest is still small.

Rebuilding 28 hectares

The City of Osaka's Abeno District Category II urban redevelopment project had its city plan decided in September 1976 for about 7.2 hectares, and the area was expanded little by little from there to about 28.0 hectares by March 1994. The rights holders numbered more than 3,000, and the construction of 29 redevelopment buildings was finished at the end of fiscal 2012. The whole project was completed in March 2018. According to the city, the aim was more intensive use of the land and the renewal of urban functions, and the project developed roads and parks together with the redevelopment buildings. In the city's documents, the roughly 900 homes before the project were planned to become about 3,100 homes after it, and the nighttime population was planned to go from about 6,300 to about 8,000. In January 2009, construction of a large commercial facility began on a site of about 37,800 square meters in front of the station.

Rebuilding also went ahead on the station side. In August 2007 Kintetsu announced that it would rebuild the west side of the department store as a 300 m tall skyscraper, which opened in full as Abeno Harukas on March 7, 2014.

The shadow of the skyscraper standing just south of the station stretches west, and from there to the southwest, today's photograph shows large square roofs and high-rise residential towers lined up together. The area that was filled with the fine grain of roofs until 1984-86 has been replaced by a handful of large buildings. In contrast, outside the redevelopment the area keeps its fine grain. The corner divided into a grid at the bottom of the frame also remains with almost no change in shape since 1961-69. The wide street running south just west of the center follows the same line as in c. 1936-42, and the blocks of the redevelopment line up along its west side. The green of the park north of the station also remains in the same position as in the c. 1928 photograph.

The station lies one step lower than the land to its north, south and west. The way the coarseness of the grain of the houses lets you tell apart the history of each part of the district is what to compare in the photographs of this location.