This article clarifies the changing structure of landownership in the central district of prewar Osaka. It has been argued that landownership is an important issue in the study of Japanese economic history. In this field, existing studies mainly focus on prewar rural landownership or postwar urban landownership. Thus, there are few studies on urban landownership of prewar Japan to date. The article takes a different point of view for three reasons. First, urban landownership follows sequential process from the Meiji period to the present due to the lack of an urban land reform during the Occupation. Second, many urban land laws are derived from prewar ones. Finally, for the study of Japanese urban economic history, it is important to consider various aspects related to the establishment of capitalism in Japan. The new findings presented here have been derived from a complete survey of the land registry of the central district of Osaka. The survey deals with all the landowners of this area from the records for 1911 and 1940, and shows that several types of landowners had different roles in the structure change of landownership. At the beginning of Meiji, most of the landowners in this area were of the merchant class of the Edo period. With the development of capitalism, large firms gradually dominated the landownership. It is also demonstrated that a particular city planning had a strong influence on this process.

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