Osaka Kurashi no Konjakukan (The Museum of Osaka's Life Now and in the Past)

The Osaka Municipal Museum of Housing, nicknamed “Osaka Kurashi-no-Konjakukan,” is a public museum dedicated to the history and culture of Osaka City. The museum exhibits materials and models related to housing in Osaka City from the Edo period to the postwar period, and is located in the Osaka Municipal Housing Information Center Building.

The museum is housed on the top floor of the Housing Information Center, and visitors take the escalator from the 8th floor entrance to the 10th floor observation deck, where they proceed in order from top to bottom, viewing the “Chronicle of Naniwa Machiya” on the 9th floor and the “Panoramic Tour of Modern Osaka” on the 8th floor.

Upon arrival at the observation deck on the 10th floor, you will be greeted by rakugo storyteller Yonesho Katsura, a certified “living national treasure. Through the atrium, visitors can enjoy a panoramic view of the streets of Osaka in the Edo period.

Descending to the ninth floor, visitors will find a life-size reproduction of an Edo Period (1830s) Osaka townhouse and streetscape. The buildings, furniture, and furnishings have been academically examined by experts and made using traditional construction methods to represent life in those days.

Visitors are free to enter the late Edo period town through the Kido gate and stroll freely through the rows of merchant houses lining both sides of the main street. Visitors are free to pick up and view the exhibited materials.

The sound and light effects recreate the morning, noon, and evening hours, allowing visitors to experience the changes in time outside while inside the museum.

The “Summer Festival Decorations” (from spring to summer) shows the decorations of the Tenjin Festival, while the “Merchant’s Life” (from fall to winter) shows the stores of the merchant class.

Visitors can also enjoy how people in the Edo period changed the tools and decorations in their tatami rooms according to annual events and seasons.

In the exhibition space on the 8th floor, visitors can see the changes in Osaka’s housing and various aspects of civic life from the Meiji period to the present.

In particular, the “Six Views of Osaka from Housing” corner displays six representative houses of Osaka from the Meiji period to the postwar period.