Hanshinkan Modernism

Hanshinkan Modernism (阪神間モダニズム) identifies the modernist arts, culture, and lifestyle that developed from the region of Japan centered primarily on the Hanshinkan conurbation between Osaka and Kobe, the ideally terrained area between the Rokkō Range and the sea (Kobe's Nada and Higashi Nada wards, Ashiya, Takarazuka, Nishinomiya, Itami, Amagasaki, Sanda, and Kawanishi) from the 1900s through the 1930s, or the circumstances of that period.

Accompanying the suburbanization of the Osaka Bay area, which continued to grow after 1923 in contrast to the Tokyo Bay area where the spread of urbanization was temporarily suspended due to the Great Kantō earthquake, the Hanshinkan Modernism cultural sphere spread to Ikeda, Minoh, and Toyonaka in Osaka Prefecture, and to Kobe's Suma and Tarumi wards.

[2] It has become the subject of study for the dawning in this region of cultural phenomena related to the 77-years process of Japan's prewar modernization from the Meiji Restoration to the end of World War II, excluding the postwar reconstruction, rapid economic miracle, bubble economy, etc.

First, during the Meiji Period wealthy merchants in the Keihanshin region built luxurious mansions one after the other in the vicinity of Sumiyoshi village (current Higashi Nada ward in Kobe).

The influence of Hanshinkan Modernism can be seen in Japanese contemporary construction in the Kantō region in Western-style resort facilities and high-class vacation home areas like Karuizawa, and residential suburbs of Tokyo like Den-en-chōfu.

Former Hankyu Umeda Station Concourse in Osaka
Shukugawa Catholic Church in Nishinomiya