What is "keihanshin"

is a metropolitan region in Japan encompassing the metropolitan areas of the cities of Kyoto in Kyoto Prefecture, Osaka in Osaka Prefecture and Kobe in Hyōgo Prefecture. The entire region has a population of 19,341,976 over an area of . It is the second-most-populated urban region in Japan (after the Greater Tokyo area), containing approximately 15% of Japan's population.

The GDP in Osaka is $671 billion as measured by PPP , making it one of the world's most-productive regions, a match with Paris and London. MasterCard Worldwide reported that Osaka is the 19th ranking city of the world's leading global cities and has an instrumental role in driving the global economy. If Keihanshin was a country, it would be the 16th-largest economy in the world, with a GDP of nearly $953.9 billion in 2012.

The name Keihanshin is constructed by extracting a representative kanji from Kyoto (京都), Osaka (大阪), and Kobe (神戸), but using the on-yomi (Chinese reading) instead of the corresponding kun-yomi (Japanese reading) for each of the characters taken from Osaka and Kobe, and the Kan-on Chinese reading of the character for Kyoto instead of the usual Go-on Chinese reading.