History Memes

Oh yeah. Name changes, multiple villages growing bigger and merging. Like Heian-kyo, the name Osaka came a while later, Naniwa was much smaller. Osaka / Naniwa / the Kawachi Bay weren't nearly as big when the capital was there, though it did have control of most of the island up to above Tokyo.

The biggest kofuns (tomb mounds), with the one that's larger than the biggest Giza pyramid, are there from the 380s-400s. It was all militaristic at that time, there might still have been a bunch of infighting between rising clans, there's one theory that there was a dynasty change before 400 and another around 540 just during the period of those giant tombs... Not that we could ever tell the difference if those people who took power really were related or not. The official mythology says they were the same family because they're all the grandsons and 6th or 7th generation descendants of this guy and that guy anyway so shut up (yes the guys who lived 100+ years shut up), the theory says that's a big move though, and it's weirdly convenient how that one guy died at 18 just like that.

But even so, the capital wasn't officially in the Osaka region for most of that period... Mostly because the official timeline is clearly shifted with some reigns elongated or shortened and some others made up.

Basically the Nara region had the capital when Japan was coming up with its identity in the early Kofun period and started maybe thinking about unity and central power because fighting each other was tiring (also Korea sucks for sending refugees by the thousands with their wars), the Osaka region had the capital when it was conquering everyone on the island at the height of the Kofun period because fighting each other was cool actually when one guy beats everyone else (and did I say fuck Korea btw), then came back to the Nara region (also the Yamato region which is now part of Nara prefecture), then there's a couple centuries when politician families start realizing that controling the king's family and internal politics is much more lucrative actually when you just take all the land and all the taxes and do nothing for it, and then the Kyoto region held the capital when the imperial line was at its biggest and most influential. And then the warriors took power again and the capital was irrelevant and left alone in Kyoto.