Osaka
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Osaka. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
o'za-ka, the second city of Japan. It is one of three imperial cities, or cities honored by the emperor as a place of residence. It is situated at the mouth of the Yodo on the Island of Hondo. It occupies both sides of the river and an island. Numerous connecting bridges and canals convey an impression of Venice. A commodious harbor is protected by an artificial mole. It is occupied by a forest of masts and smokestacks. The city carries on an extensive commerce with China, Korea, and Japanese ports. There are extensive manufactures of tobacco, clocks, ironware, boots and shoes , matches, glass, tools, chemicals, paper fans, and pottery. Among the antiquities of the city is a royal castle of massive stonework built in the sixteenth century. In 1909 a great fire destroyed 20,000 buildings, including the city's Buddhist temple, the largest in the world, the stock exchange , banks, government buildings, and factories. The losses ran into millions of dollars and thousands of persons were made homeless. An area over four miles square was burned over. The population, as given in the Statesman's Year Book, is 995,945. If suburbs be counted, the total is 1,311,909. Osceola (1804-1838), a Seminole chief. His Indian name, of which Osceola is a corruption, was Asseheholar, meaning, in the Seminole tongue, black drink. Osceola was born on the banks of the Chattahoochee River in Georgia. His father was William Powell, a trader. His mother was an Indian princess. He was taken to Florida with her people when he was four years old, where he grew up to hate the whites. When the Seminoles were asked to cede their Florida possessions, Osceola used his utmost influence to prevent the cession. In 1835 his wife, the daughter of a runaway negro, was seized and carried into slavery. This incensed the hostility of Osceola all the more. He threatened the Indian agent, General Thompson, so violently that he was put in irons and thrown into prison for six days. The wily chieftain feigned to have overcome his resentment, but he was no sooner released than he repaired to his people and returned with a band of warriors December 28, 1835. He fell upon the agency and put Thompson and four others to death. This was open warfare. Osceola and his band fell upon Major Dade and his command of 110 men; but, losing a second fight against a more successful American commander, Osceola and his followers took refuge in the everglades from which they sallied out now and again, carrying on a partisan warfare. After two years of this guerrilla warfare Osceola was led to confer with General Jesup under a flag of truce . The white man, in violation of his pledge, seized Osceola and conveyed him to St. Augustine. Later he was imprisoned at Fort Moultrie in the Charleston Harbor, where he died. In view of the fact that Osceola was abandoned by a white father; that his people were driven from his native country into Florida; that the whites followed them there and seized their country; that his wife was stolen from him and enslaved, Osceola's lifelong opposition to the whites does not seem unnatural. The ladies of Charleston take this view. His grave in a grove near Fort Moultrie bears this motto:
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or OZAKA, an important city of Central Japan, at the head of the gulf of the same name. The city covers an area of about 8 square miles and is intersected with canals. Its fine castle, the stones of whose walls are of astonishing size, was constructed by Hideyoshi's orders in 1583, and the palace, built afterward in its precincts and destroyed in 1868, was perhaps the most magnificent structure in Japan. Osaka is the great commercial center of the empire, and the headquarters of the rice and tea trade. Its port does not admit of the entrance of large vessels. There is a foreign settlement, mostly occupied by missionaries. Osaka was ravaged by destructive fires in 1910 and 1912. Pop. about 1,500,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts describe a canal-laced commercial capital of about a million people whose port "does not admit of the entrance of large vessels"; Collier's 1921 figure of 1,500,000 has since roughly doubled to about 2.7 million in the city proper, with some 19 million in the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto conurbation around it. Almost none of the fabric the entries admired survived the American incendiary raids of 1945, which burned out much of the city; the great castle Aiton's listed among the antiquities stands today as a concrete reconstruction of 1931, refurbished in 1997, though Hideyoshi's massive stone walls are original. The harbour problem was solved by building outward into the bay, and Kansai International Airport opened in 1994 on an artificial island offshore. Osaka has also lost the rank Aiton's gave it: by city population it now trails Tokyo and Yokohama, and Osaka hosted a world exposition in 1970 and again in 2025.
Written for this edition, 2026.