Osaka

The capital of Osaka Prefecture and the third-most populous city proper in Japan, after the special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama, with about 2.8 million people at some 12,505 to the square kilometre. It is the largest component of the Keihanshin metropolitan area, the second largest in Japan and the tenth-largest urban area in the world, with more than 19 million inhabitants. Traditionally the country’s economic hub, it had grown into an important regional port by the Kofun period and served briefly as the imperial capital in the seventh and eighth centuries, then flourished through the Edo period as a centre of Japanese culture.