1,000 m of shop-lined concourses

History of the Semba Center Building

Early Development of the Semba Neighborhood

When Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the unifier of Japan, built Osaka Castle in the last decades of the 16th century, a castle town rapidly developed. Large numbers of samurai and vassal bands settled in the area, and merchants from nearby towns were ordered to relocate to Semba. Boatmen’s inns, restaurants, money changers, and dry goods and hardware stores sprang up one after another, and Semba began to flourish as a center of politics, business and commercial distribution.

Origin of the Name

The name Semba is written with characters meaning “boat place.” The most widely accepted explanation is that it came from the many wharves in the neighborhood, as canals formed the main transport network at the time.

From Boats to Vehicles

In the early 19th century, areas along east-west canals developed as additional routes for transporting goods to Osaka Castle, using wagons and horse carts. Eventually Horikawa and other canals were filled in to make roadways, and as north-south roadways were widened, Osaka acquired its regular grid of arterial streets.

Redevelopment

Amid the urbanization and rapid economic growth that followed the Second World War, Semba, near the heart of the city, found itself on the route planned for a main east-west highway. Negotiations to relocate the neighborhood’s dense wholesale district stalled due to high land prices, and the solution that emerged was to integrate a large building into the highway structure and sell space to businesses, thereby avoiding division of the neighborhood and lowering the overall construction costs. The Semba Center Building opened in 1970 during Expo Osaka, the Japan World Exposition.

Exterior Refinishing

After more than 40 years of service, the brown brick exterior walls were covered in 2015 with decorative aluminum panels, including large flat displays that light up the Semba area at night.