The site of the Dojima Rice Exchange, which operated from 1697 to 1939 and is historically significant as the world's first organised futures market. The original building no longer exists, but a plaque marks the site near the Nakanoshima waterfront, and the Osaka Prefectural Nakanoshima Library nearby has extensive records of the exchange's operations.
In the Edo period, the rice exchange made Osaka the financial capital of Japan: daimyo (feudal lords) from across the country stored rice in Osaka warehouses and used the futures market to hedge against poor harvests. The system of paper contracts for undelivered rice created the basic mechanisms of modern financial markets — speculation, hedging, and price discovery — centuries before formal financial theory described them. The nearby Museum of Oriental Ceramics occasionally displays materials related to the Edo-period merchant culture the exchange produced.