From the top of Abeno Harukas, the tallest skyscraper in Japan, the observation complex known as Harukas 300 gives one of the most expansive views in the country across the sprawl of Osaka and far beyond. The building rises three hundred metres in the Tennoji and Abeno district in the south of the city and was completed in 2014, taking the title of Japan's highest building from earlier rivals and combining a department store, offices, an art museum and a hotel beneath the viewing floors. The obs.....

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The tower called Tsutenkaku, a name that can be rendered as the tower reaching to heaven, stands at the centre of the old Shinsekai district of Osaka and has become an emblem of the city's downtown, working-class character. The present steel tower, rising about 100 metres, dates from 1956, a postwar rebuild of an earlier structure put up in 1912 that had combined echoes of the Eiffel Tower with a replica of a Parisian arch below; that first tower was dismantled during the Second World War when i.....

Few structures sum up the spirit of a neighbourhood as completely as Tsutenkaku does for the Shinsekai quarter of Osaka, where the tower has loomed over the streets since 1956. An earlier version, raised in 1912 as the centrepiece of a brand-new entertainment district modelled partly on Paris and partly on New York's Coney Island, was lost during the Second World War when its metal was requisitioned, and the present 100-metre steel tower was built by local subscription to bring the landmark back.....