Issue:
April 2025
The World Exposition, which opens in Osaka this month, could struggle to compete with its Japanese forerunners
When the 2025 Osaka Kansai Expo opens this month, organizers will herald it as a glimpse into a utopian high-tech future of cool, cutting-edge technologies and an international fair showcasing the cultures of foreign lands, as well as proudly promoting Japan’s own artistic traditions and industrial innovations.
Yet, while the content of the Expo may be new (prototypes of flying cars; advances in AI technology and stem cell research; the next generation of renewable energy sources), the sentiments behind it are quite old. For over 150 years, Japan has seen hosting world and less prominent expositions, viewing them as a giant international PR exercise for Japanese industry and technology. The aim is to show the rest of the world that Japan is a truly developed nation and, in more recent times, to spur the post-Expo development of land where the original plans fell through.
Japan’s hosting of international expositions stretches back to 1872, when the Kyoto Exhibition was held. This was less than four years after the Meiji Emperor departed Kyoto for Tokyo, ending 1,000 years of Kyoto being the Imperial Family stronghold. With few exceptions, foreigners were forbidden, on pain of expulsion from Japan or even death, from entering Kyoto while the Imperial Family was there, giving the city an air of mystery, shrouded in myth and legend.
But by 1872, Kyoto was in trouble. Countless Kyoto-based imperial courtiers, artists, craftsmen, and other assorted hangers-on followed the Emperor to Tokyo, turning the once prosperous capital into a ghost town. One in seven Kyoto homes was abandoned when the emperor left, giving rise to the saying “Only fools stay in Kyoto.”
In an attempt to revive interest in Kyoto now that Japan’s focus was shifting towards Tokyo, and in order to take advantage of the Japonisme boom in Japanese art – much it from Kyoto – that had been sparked at the 1867 World’s Fair in in Paris, a small, domestic exhibition was held in 1871. It proved so successful that a larger exhibition was arranged the following year. This time, however, foreigners, largely confirmed to foreign settlements in Kobe, Osaka, Yokohama, Nagasaki, and a couple of other places, were allowed to attend.
On April 13, 1872 (coincidentally, the starting date of 2025 Osaka Expo), an anonymous correspondent for the Hiogo News wrote: “Considerable doubt is expressed by many as to the success of the Exhibition itself.” Yet five days later, the same correspondent described a long, arduous journey from the Kobe settlement to Kyoto’s Fushimi district, first by ship to Osaka, and from there, by steamboat up the river before finally reaching his destination 10 hours later, only to be confronted by heavy security.
“From Fushimi I came (to Kyoto) by jinrikisha. The guard who came with me from Osaka … was armed with two swords. But the guards who, relieving one another every half mile or so, ran in front of my jinrikisha, had neither sticks, swords, or pistols till we neared Kioto. I should say the whole police force has been made guards, but I cannot see much use for them.”
Foreigners were not charged admission to the Kyoto Exhibition, which took place at Chionji, Nishi Hongwanji, and Kenninji temples.
Displays included traditional Japanese arts and crafts, as well as selection of artifacts from other countries and cultures. Food was apparently a problem for the foreign attendees. But the Hiogo News hack wasn’t bothered. Back at the hotel, Western food and drink were available. A "hearty meal, and some of Younger’s porter soon put your special correspondent to rights."
Similar expos were be held in Tokyo, and again in Kyoto, throughout the 19th century. While art and artifacts from faraway lands and Japan itself could still draw crowds, the focus was turning more toward government-approved displays of industrial and commercial progress.
Osaka followed suit, holding the Industrial Exhibition from March to May 1903. The Japan Times reported that over 324,000 exhibits “from all over the (Japanese) Empire”, were on display. Halls dedicated to the latest industrial machinery and mechanized transportation were set up – all easily visible thanks to the revolutionary new technology of electric lights.
Initially, the Osaka Exhibition proved a success. The opening day drew 22,419, including 95 foreigners, according to a report in the Japan Times on March 5. The second day drew 19,943 people, including 86 foreigners. Visitors strolled through the Industrial Hall, which featured over 155,00 exhibits and included displays of iron ore smelting machines, silk weaving machines, construction equipment, innovations in cement and glass production, as well as machinery used in the increasingly automated agricultural sector.
In addition, gold from mines in Kagoshima Prefecture, silver from Akita Prefecture, marble from Yamaguchi and Ibaraki prefectures and, most important to an industrializing Japan, coal from Hokkaido, were also on display.
The 1903 Osaka Industrial Expo was particularly important to Canada. A separate Canadian pavilion featured Canadian products such as pulpwood, as well as pears, peaches, plums, cherries, raspberries, gooseberries, and grapes, along with butter, cheese, and other items. They were all stored in an amazing new piece of technology at the center of the pavilion: a “cold storage chamber”, known to you and me as a refrigerator.
Exhibitions and expos would continue throughout the 20th century, but World War I, the Great Depression, and then World War II would limit their impact and importance. But in 1970, Osaka hosted the World Exposition, the first in Asia, in an effort to show the world Japan was putting the austerity and difficulties of the past behind it and embracing a new world of economic prosperity.
What is often forgotten today, however, is that artist Taro Okamoto, who designed the 1970 Expo’s most visible symbol, the Tower of the Sun, warned the world that overreliance on technology was foolish and would lead to spiritual poverty, and that efforts to reach technical utopia could ultimately lead to a nightmarish social dystopia.
At the time, Okamoto’s message, though it may have created consternation in sections of the political and corporate worlds, resonated with an emerging generation of Japanese workers who wanted to be prosperous but were also beginning to think seriously about the social and environmental damage being done in their pursuit of a materialistically good life. One legacy of the Osaka Expo, and Okamoto’s humanistic view that helped shape it, was the creation of the National Museum of Ethnology on the Expo site in 1974. The facility receives copious praise from anthropologists worldwide for its large collection of interesting and informative exhibits.
In 1975, a smaller event was held called the Okinawa International Ocean Exposition, the purpose being to promote Okinawa, which had finally been returned to Japan by the U.S. in 1972 after nearly three decades, on the condition that U.S. military bases remain. The Okinawa Expo made Japanese who previously knew little about the island more aware of the strategic importance of the oceans surrounding it, both in terms of geopolitics and Okinawa’s proximity to the Asian mainland, and in terms of possible untapped energy and mineral resources beneath the seabed.
A decade later, in 1985, an Expo focusing on science and technology was held in Tsukuba. But the next grand World Expo in Japan was the 2005 Aichi Expo, dubbed by wags the Toyota Expo due to prominent role the auto conglomerate played in bringing it to the site in Aichi prefecture that had originally been set aside for Nagoya’s failed 1988 Summer Olympics bid.
Most of those who are now pushing the second Osaka Expo were young children when the first one was held in the city. The purpose of the current Expo appears less about future technology and more about building support for a new casino resort complex that will be built on the site after the Expo structures are removed.
The Osaka Expo’s problems have been well-detailed, including in the Number 1 Shimbun. Critics have offered plausible economic, technical, and political explanations as to why things have gone so wrong. But a glance at past and more recent expos in Japan reveals that most were held at times when the country had far less information about the outside world, and when traveling abroad for recreation was a luxury.
Furthermore, it is harder today to amaze people with new technology, especially the kind of AI-driven exhibits that will be on display in Osaka. The event is unlikely to devote any space to the dark side of technology and industrial development that Okamoto warned about in 1970; instead, it will attempt to demonstrate how technology can solve complex political, economic, and social ills.
In that sense, Osaka Expo 2025 has more in common with its 19th and early 20th century predecessors than it may care to admit.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for the Japan Times. The views contained within this piece are those of the author and not those of The Japan Times.
