History
Namba Station opened on 29 December 1885 as the terminus of the Hansei Railway, the first private-railway terminal in Japan, in present-day Chūō Ward, Ōsaka. The first station building was destroyed by fire in February 1888 and rebuilt in September of the same year. The operator was merged into Nankai Railway in October 1898, and the fourth-generation station building — the Corinthian-styled Nankai Building, designed by the architect Setsu Kuno and housing the Takashimaya Osaka department store — opened on 9 July 1932. The station was elevated when track quadrupling to Tengachaya was completed in 1938. After three phases of rebuilding between 1972 and 1980 the station took its present nine-platform form, and a ninth platform face dedicated to the Rapi:t airport limited express was added in June 1994 before Kansai Airport's opening.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The 64th and final verse of the 1900 Tetsudō Shōka — the great popular railway song that opened at Shinbashi — uses Namba Station as its closing destination.