is a shopping district of Naniwa Ward,

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

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

furniture Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating (e.g., Stool (seat), stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (table (furniture), tables), storing items, working, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Furnitur ...

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 ...

, and "

otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, such as anime, manga, video games, computers or other highly enthusiastic hobbies. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in '' Manga Burikko''. ...

" interests such as

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

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

manga 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 history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

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

kanji are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are ...

日本橋 in Japanese,

Nihonbashi is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, which sprung up around the bridge of the same name that 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 in the Tokyo Metropolis in Japan. The ward refers to itself in English as Chūō City. It was formed in 1947 as a merger of Kyōbashi and Nihonbashi wards following Tokyo City's transformation into Tokyo Metropolis. C ...

is a different place and has a different pronunciation.

History

During the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, 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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, many

consumer electronics Consumer electronics, also known as home electronics, are electronic devices intended for everyday household use. Consumer electronics include those used for entertainment, Communication, communications, and recreation. Historically, these prod ...

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

"Nipponbashi" name

"Nipponbashi" most properly refers to the bridge of the same name, which crosses over the Dōtonbori 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 Akihabara 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 metropol ...

. Several retailers are also

tax A tax is a mandatory financial charge or levy imposed on an individual or legal entity by a governmental organization to support government spending and public expenditures collectively or to regulate and reduce negative externalities. Tax co ...

- and duty-free. With the opening of Yodobashi Camera in Umeda and Bic Camera in Namba, 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 Akihabara. 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, and Osaka Gundams—a two-story all-

Gundam is a Japanese military science 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 ...

outlet. The town also features numerous maid cafés and

cosplay Cosplay, a blend word of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and Fashion accessory, fashion accessories to represent a specific Character (arts), character. Cosplayers often i ...

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 Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Japan), MLIT publications, it is written as . The Sakaisuji Line is uniq ...

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

Notes

References

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