On this day, I published an essay titled “On the Underlying Strength of Osaka and Kansai.”

It was a piece that began: To those working particularly in the real-estate industry, where companies that say they give virtually no consideration to investment anywhere outside Tokyo have come to constitute the majority: Kansai is not the small economic region that you imagine it to be.…

These photographs are, first of all, a light jab delivered to the reporter from a certain weekly magazine who wrote an article claiming that Osaka was the poorest city in the world; to those whom I have repeatedly mentioned, who constantly looked only at the present moment, continued thinking solely about themselves and the profits of their own companies, disparaged Kansai—no, Osaka—and continued to undervalue it, thereby bringing about Osaka’s great stagnation lasting more than twenty years; and to the pathetic reporters of the major newspapers who defined Osaka, absurdly enough, as “a city of comedy” without ever questioning it.

Photographed shortly after 3:00 p.m. on February 18, 2012, from the Floating Garden Observatory, one of Hiroshi Hara’s greatest masterpieces.