A Neo-Renaissance hall of red brick and granite has stood on the water at Nakanoshima for a century. The city did not build it. An Osaka stockbroker, Einosuke Iwamoto, put up ¥1,000,000 in 1911, an astronomical sum at the time, and made it happen. That single act of private endowment is why Osaka City Central Public Hall has never been only a building: it stands for a merchant's conviction that the public should be left a hall of its own. It was completed in November 1918 and is a nationally designated Important Cultural Property.
Einstein lectured here and Helen Keller spoke here, which puts delegates on the floor those names stood on. The Large Assembly Hall runs double height through the first and second floors and seats about a thousand in its historic configuration, 1,161 by the old count, enough to carry the plenary of an international conference or a large ceremony. Under the seats, the brass fittings where guests once hung their top hats are still in place.
This is the place that sets the key of an opening. Beginning inside an Important Cultural Property that the citizens themselves endowed and have kept since tells every delegate that the meeting sits on the most substantial historical coordinate in Osaka, and no new hotel ballroom stands in for that. Because it is a public facility with a published rate schedule and an open booking desk, the formality comes without the usual difficulty of access.