Mrs Tsk *

I was browsing at Beyer Books recently (my favourite Osaka cafe / library) in Metropolitan World Atlas, a visual breakdown by Arjen Van Susteren of data on global cities.



When talking of Osaka, this book lists a city they call Kobe-Osaka-Kyoto, the continuous urban region known in Japanese as Keihanshin. This makes sense to me: I buy my shoes in Kyoto and my tea in Kobe Chinatown, and although the feel of those cities is pretty different (Kobe is like Hong Kong, clinging to a hillside, overlooking a spectacular harbour, while Kyoto is a sacred, touristy place up in the mountains), they seem contiguous with Osaka; local.



Osaka on its own has a population of 2.6 million (by night) and 3.7 million (during the day), making it comparable, size-wise, to Berlin, the previous city I lived in, which has a population of 3.49 million. But Keihanshin is in quite another league; it’s the seventh biggest city in the world (according to the stats in Metropolitan World Atlas, which date from 2000; the ranking has probably changed slightly in the last ten years). With almost 18 million inhabitants at the last count, Keihanshin is comparable to the two cities I lived in before Berlin: New York and London. And that feels about right, in terms of the sprawl, bustle and vitality here.



Interestingly enough, a thousand years ago Keihanshin — centred on Kyoto — also featured in the top ten of world cities by population. Kyoto in the year 1000 was the fifth most populous urban area in the world, surrounded by cities like Kaifeng, Angkor, Neyshabur, Al-Hasa and Patan, places people today would have a hard time placing on a blank map. Then again, people today have no idea where the megacities of 2020 are on a map, according to this article in The Observer. Test yourself: where are Chengdu, Surat, Faridabad, Toluca, Palembang, Chittagong, Beihai, and Ghaziabad? The fastest-growing cities of the 21st century are as obscure to Westerners as the phantom megalopolae of the year 1000 — proof, if any were needed, that this really isn’t our century.