Expo 2025 opened yesterday with 160 countries and regions showcasing their technology, culture and food, with host Japan hoping to provide the world with some much-needed hope.
Highlights at the show in Osaka until mid-October include a Mars meteorite, a beating artificial heart grown from stem cells and Hello Kitty figures in algae form.
Surrounding most of the pavilions — a chance for architects’ fancies to run wild — is the world’s largest wooden structure, the “Grand Ring.”
Photo: Reuters
Its creator Sou Fujimoto said that the Expo is a “precious opportunity where so many different cultures ... and countries come together in one place to create diversity and unity.”
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the event would help bring a sense of unity in a “divided society.”
“Through Expo, we would like to restore a sense of unity in the world once again,” Ishiba told reporters.
However, with conflicts raging and US President Donald Trump’s tariffs causing economic turmoil, that might be optimistic.
“Not for sale” states a yellow and blue sign over Ukraine’s booth — echoing defiant comments from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy about the war with Russia, which is absent at Expo 2025.
“We want the world to know more about our resilience. We are the ones who create, not the ones who destroys,” Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Economy Tatiana Berezhna said.
Yahel Vilan, head of Israel’s equally compact pavilion — there is also a Palestinian one — featuring a stone from Jerusalem’s Western Wall, said that “we came with a message of peace.”
The US building has the theme “America the Beautiful,” focusing on the country’s landscapes, artificial intelligence and space.
The nearby Chinese pavilion, evoking a calligraphy scroll, focuses on green technology and lunar samples brought by the Chang’e-5 and Chang’e-6 probes.
Among the more bizarre displays are 32 sculptures of Hello Kitty dressed as different types of algae — to symbolize the plant’s many uses — and a “human washing machine” that shows imagery based on the bather’s heart rate.
Elsewhere are demonstrations of drone-like flying vehicles, and the tiny artificial heart made from induced pluripotent stem cells shown in public for the first time.
“It has an actual pulse,” said Byron Russel of Pasona Group, which runs the exhibit.
Themes of sustainability run through the Expo, including at the bauble-like Swiss pavilion, which aims to have the smallest ecological footprint.
However, Expos have been criticized for their temporary nature, and after October, Osaka’s artificial island would be cleared to make way for a casino resort.
Only 12.5 percent of the Grand Ring will be reused, Japanese media said.
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