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Toyonaka is a city in the Hokusetsu area of northern Osaka Prefecture, Japan, a leafy residential city on a plateau just north of central Osaka. It is known for the great green space of Hattori Ryokuchi, for the Senri New Town on its northeastern hills, and as the place where Japan's national high school baseball tournament was first played in 1915.
Burial mounds of the 4th to 6th centuries show that the plateau was settled early, and before modern times the area prospered along the Nose Kaidō road. From the 1910s the railway that became the Hankyu line brought new suburbs, and after 1960 the Senri Hills were built up into Japan's first large new town. Today Toyonaka is home to about 400,000 people and shares Osaka's Itami Airport with its neighbors.
Spend a morning in Hattori Ryokuchi with its open-air museum of old farmhouses, then visit the shrines and burial mounds around Okamachi. See the bush clover at Tōkō-in in September, and the fossil crocodile at the Osaka University Museum.
Hattori Ryokuchi Park covers about 126 hectares in southern Toyonaka, one of the four great green spaces of Osaka, planned in 1941. More than ten ponds lie among its woods and lawns, which draw crowds for cherry blossoms, and it is ranked among the 100 best city parks and historic parks in Japan.
Open-Air Museum of Old Japanese Farm Houses opened in 1956 in Hattori Ryokuchi, Toyonaka, as the first open-air museum in Japan. It gathers eleven homes of the 17th to 19th centuries from Iwate to Amami, among them a thatched gasshō house from Shirakawa and three Important Cultural Properties.
Hattori Ryokuchi Open-Air Theater is an outdoor music venue in Hattori Ryokuchi, Toyonaka, built in 1991 with seats for up to 2,700 people beside the rehearsal hall of the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra. Each summer the orchestra gives family concerts under the stars.
Toyonaka Performing Arts Center opened in January 2017 in the Sone area of Toyonaka, with a main hall of 1,344 seats and two smaller halls. The curtain of its main hall was overseen by the Nobel physicist Yōichirō Nambu, who lived in the city, and the building has won several architecture awards.
Harada Shrine stands near Okamachi Station in central Toyonaka, said to date from the 4th or 5th century and once the guardian of 72 villages. Burned in 1578, it was rebuilt in 1652, and its main hall, a rare five-bay design with a cypress bark roof, is an Important Cultural Property.
Hattori Tenjingū is a shrine in southern Toyonaka known across Kansai as the shrine of the god of feet. Legend says Sugawara no Michizane, struck by illness of the legs on his way into exile in 901, prayed here and recovered, so runners and footballers now come to pray before their races and games.
Tōkō-in is a Sōtō Zen temple in Toyonaka known as the temple of bush clover, said to trace back to the monk Gyōki in 735 and moved here from Osaka in 1914. Bush clover is planted throughout its grounds and blooms for a festival each September, and the poet Masaoka Shiki praised it in a haiku.
Toyonaka Inari Shrine stands on a low hill in central Toyonaka, on the site of an ancient burial mound, honoring Uka-no-mitama, the god of rice. Its treasures were lost in 1578 when the shrines of Settsu were burned in Oda Nobunaga's campaign against Itami Castle, and it was rebuilt in 1651.
Sakurazuka Kofun Group spreads around Okamachi Station in central Toyonaka, once a cluster of 44 burial mounds of the 4th to 6th centuries, the largest mid-Kofun group in Hokusetsu. Most were lost to housing, but five survive as national historic sites, including the keyhole tomb of Ōishizuka.
Harada Castle Ruins lie in the Sone area of Toyonaka, home of the local Harada clan, with a north fort begun around the 14th century and a south fort added in the late 16th. A city historic site since 1987, part of its earthen rampart survives as a mound in the old Hamuro house garden.
Osaka University Museum shows the research collections of the university at the Machikaneyama Shūgakukan in Toyonaka, a historic building on the campus hill. Its star is the 7-meter Machikane crocodile, a fossil of 300,000 to 500,000 years ago dug up on this hill in 1964, the first found in Japan.
Birthplace of High School Baseball Memorial Park in Toyonaka marks the site of Toyonaka Grounds, opened in 1913 as the first baseball field in the Kansai region. In August 1915 it hosted the first national middle school baseball tournament, forerunner of today's summer tournament at Kōshien.
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