Esquisse on Location of Psychiatric Hospitals in Osaka Prefecture and the Image of the Boundary of Osaka City in the Formative Period of "Great Osaka"

After the Meiji restoration, Osaka developed radically to become "Great Osaka" at the beginning of the Showa Period. For about 65 years, Osaka City administratively enforced area extensions twice, but despite this the city became a disorderly sprawl, losing its own distinct image. In the same period, in Osaka Prefecture, some modern psychiatric hospitals were founded, but they were not located in Osaka City but rather in the surrounding rural districts. Formerly I surmised, through the investigation of Iwakura and Kuze in Kyoto, that such location on the boundaries of the cities has medical significance for mentally handicapped people. For the psychiatric hospitals, a definite distance from the busy city filled with various stresses is necessary, but simultaneously an assurance of intimate relationships with its parent city. In this esquisse, I study the locations of 18 psychiatric hospitals that were founded from Meiji 14 (1881) to Showa 15 (1940) to reflect the boundary of Osaka City in reference to some rivers and railways. The "Hedate" relationship that such rivers as the Yamato River represent seems to be one of the important factors when considering the location of psychiatric hospitals and the city boundary.