is a shopping district of

Naniwa Ward is one of 24 wards of Osaka, Japan. It has an area of 4.37 km², and a population of 51,567. General information Largely a residential area itself, Naniwa-ku is adjacent to and has in recent years blurred into the Namba district, whic ...

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. The area is centered along Sakaisuji Avenue, extending from the Ebisu-chō Interchange of the Hanshin Expressway in the south, to Nansan-dōri (just east of Nankai

Namba Station is a name shared by two railway stations in the Namba district of Chūō-ku, Osaka, Japan. One is owned by Nankai Electric Railway, while the other is by the Osaka Metro. The names of both stations are written in ''hiragana'' on signage with ...

) in the north. Known colloquially as "Den-Den Town," Nipponbashi is known for its many shops which specialize in

furniture Furniture refers to movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating ( tables), storing items, eating and/or working with an item, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks) ...

tools A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ba ...

, and "

otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in '' Manga Burikko''. may be used as a pejorat ...

" interests such as

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

manga Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is ...

, and

collectibles A collectable (collectible or collector's item) is any object regarded as being of value or interest to a collector. Collectable items are not necessarily monetarily valuable or uncommon. There are numerous types of collectables and terms t ...

. Nipponbashi is often compared to

Akihabara is a common name for the area around Akihabara Station in the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo, Japan. Administratively, the area called Akihabara mainly belongs to the and Kanda-Sakumachō districts in Chiyoda. There exists an administrative district ca ...

Electric Town, its equivalent (in terms of focus) in Tokyo. Although written with the same

kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequ ...

日本橋 in Japanese,

Nihonbashi is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan which grew up around the bridge of the same name which has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603. The curre ...

Chūō, Tokyo is a special ward that forms part of the heart of Tokyo, Japan. The ward refers to itself in English as Chūō City. It was formed in 1947 as a merger of Kyobashi and Nihonbashi wards following Tokyo City's transformation into Tokyo Metrop ...

is a different place and has a different pronunciation.

History

During the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

, this district was known as a , called . In 1792 and 1872, the Osaka municipal government renamed this district from Nagamachi to Nipponbashi. During the Meiji and Taishō periods, many second-hand bookshops opened there. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, many

consumer electronics Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic ( analog or digital) equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usuall ...

stores were opened, and it became well known as Den Den Town.

The name "Nipponbashi"

"Nipponbashi" most properly refers to the bridge of the same name, which crosses over the

Dōtonbori is one of the principal tourist destinations in Osaka, Japan, running along the Dōtonbori canal from Dōtonboribashi Bridge to Nipponbashi Bridge in the Namba district of the city's Chuo ward. Historically a theater district, it is now a popu ...

canal. However, the shopping district bearing the name of the bridge does not actually reach as far north as its namesake, though its northern areas are part of the "Nipponbashi" municipal designation (unlike

Electric Town which sits entirely apart from the origin of its name).

Den Den Town

, or is an alternate name for Nipponbashi, as it is famous for its wide variety of consumer electronics stores, and especially famous for its negotiable prices—unique to Osaka and the

Kansai region The or the , lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropoli ...

. Several retailers are also tax- and

duty-free A duty-free shop (or store) is a retail outlet whose goods are exempt from the payment of certain local or national taxes and duties, on the requirement that the goods sold will be sold to travelers who will take them out of the country, w ...

. With the opening of

Yodobashi Camera is a major Japanese retail chain specializing in electronics, PCs, cameras and photographic equipment. Yodobashi Camera's sales rank fourth among consumer electronics mass retailers in Japan, after Yamada Denki, Bic Camera and the EDION Grou ...

Umeda is a major commercial, business, shopping and entertainment district in Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan, and the city's main northern railway terminus (Ōsaka Station, Umeda Station). The district's name means "plum field". History Umeda was historical ...

and

Bic Camera is a consumer electronics retailer chain in Japan. Currently, it has 41 stores in Japan. Bic Camera has a 50% ownership of former rival store Kojima and full ownership of computer store chain Sofmap. As of 2018, Bic Camera is the third largest ...

Namba is a district of Osaka, Japan. It is located in Chūō and Naniwa wards. Namba is regarded as the center of so-called ''Minami'' ("South") area of Osaka. Its name is one of variations on the former name of Osaka, '' Naniwa''. Namba is be ...

, Den Den Town saw a major fall-off in furniture and home-appliance sales, but has more recently become known as a haven for

and

-related shopping, analogous to Tokyo's famous electronics district

. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the "Akihabara of West Japan", or by the phrase "Akiba in the East, 'Ponbashi in the West".

Attractions

Besides the usual large electronics retailers such as Joshin, Sofmap, etc. Nipponbashi is also host to numerous retailers of anime,

, and other otaku-related goods such as Mandarake,

Tora no Ana is a 2002 cover album by GO!GO!7188. The name translates in English as ''Tiger's Lair''. The album's cover art is similar to Revolver by The Beatles. Track listing # Yōkai Ningen Bem (妖怪人間ベム) - from the anime of the same name # ...

, and Osaka Gundams—a two-story all-

Gundam is a Japanese military fiction media franchise. Created by Yoshiyuki Tomino and Sunrise (now Bandai Namco Filmworks), the franchise features giant robots, or mecha, with the name "Gundam". The franchise began on April 7, 1979, with ''Mobile ...

outlet. The town also features numerous

maid café are a subcategory of cosplay restaurants found predominantly in Japan. In these cafés, waitresses, dressed in maid costumes, act as servants, and treat customers as masters (and mistresses) in a private home, rather than as café patrons. The f ...

s and

cosplay Cosplay, a portmanteau of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture ...

cafés. These include small and simple maid-themed coffee shops, maid-staffed massage and beautician services, and sit-down style full service cabarets.

Transportation

Ebisucho Station of the

Sakaisuji Line The is an underground rapid transit line in Osaka, Japan, operated by Osaka Metro. Its official name is , and in MLIT publications, it is written as . The Sakaisuji Line is unique in the Osaka Metro system in that despite being regulated as ...

, as well as the Nipponbashi Station of the Sakaisuji and Sennichimae lines both lead into Den Den Town.

External links

Official site
{{Authority control Tourist attractions in Osaka Shopping districts and streets in Japan Electronics districts Otaku Geography of Osaka Bridges in Osaka Prefecture