Osaka World Expo recalls a faded dynamism of Japan in 1970

When Osaka welcomed the World Expo for the first time in 1970, a quarter of a century after the Second World War, the Japanese economy was newly easy and developing so quickly that it was greeted as an economic miracle. The exhibition broadcast this momentum to the world.

It was the first world exhibition – a tradition dating from 1851 where countries come together to show their cultures and their achievements – which are held in Asia. Japan has passed sumptuously, displaying innovations such as mobile bridges, prototype wireless phones and 230 feet sculpture with a gold mask that turns to the future. The exhibition attracted 64 million visitors – equivalent to more than half of the population of Japan at the time.

Now, 55 years later, Osaka is again organizing the World Expo. On an artificial island in the city bay, the architects have erected a long wooden ring surrounding dozens of pavilions. But while the current exhibition, which opened a week ago, is trying to resume the fervor of its predecessor, Japan contrasts strongly with the place where it was in 1970.

Since the bursting of real estate and stock bubbles in Japan in the early 1990s, the economy has stagnated. The population of the country shrinks and ages quickly. Debt levels have increased and growth prospects are more jeopardized by increasing trade tensions with the United States.

By thinking about the decades that followed the 1970 exhibition, many visitors to the original event, now in sixties or more, refer to a feeling of economic power in Japan to have “flowed” in a world increasingly rolled by commercial divisions. Some hope that the current exhibition could prove to be a moment of national reinvention.