Want to see the future at Expo Osaka? Get in line.
The car pulls into Yumeshima Station with a shhh, and the gleaming doors with a trim of neon green lights open onto a brand new train platform. I'm headed to the Osaka Expo 2025, a six-month world fair that wants to 'design future society for our lives,' and though I expect a whisper-quiet entrance to match the train ride, my first thought is that the future is very loud and full of rules.
As the doors open, I'm hit with a wall of sound. As if in anticipation of waves of lost people in uncontrollable crowds, the expo has stationed attendants every few meters, each armed with a megaphone, each shouting instructions at the same time, but out of sync. The blare reverberates in the metro tunnel, bouncing against the ceiling of an expansive hall and atrium, the layered intensity and crisscrossing directives ultimately making it impossible to decipher any message at all.
Welcome to the Osaka Expo.
Hiroshi Ishiguro's exhibit imagines a world in which androids have become fully integrated into human society. |
Thu-Huong Ha
The world expo is a strange event, in that it seeks to show the public a vision of the future, yet the way we primarily interact with it is by looking back. What's interesting about them is what has stuck: The Eiffel Tower, sewing machines, the telephone, steam locomotion — to the modern ear, world expos mainly seem old-timey and quaint. As I walk around the artificial island of Yumeshima in Osaka Bay, I can't help but think this imagined future looks like something cooked up by Hollywood in the 1990s.
I get in line — this is Japan's vision of the future, after all, where constant queueing is still de rigueur — for one of the buzzy marvels inside the pavilion hosted by Pasona. The HR company's exhibition, under the disproportionately humble theme 'Thank You, Life,' personified by Astro Boy, contains roomfuls of gadgets and predictions.
On a hypothetical timeline of Earth's history, 'Birth of the internet' and 'Rise of social networks' are somehow each just as important as 'Cambrian explosion' and 'Humans appear,' and from there it escalates quickly: Bees go extinct, then in the next phase, so does all life on Earth. I'm more intrigued by the exhibit's 'future sleep' bed prototypes, which adjust to your weight, movements, breath and heart rate to create optimal sleep conditions. I am desperate to crawl into one of the pods, but, ah, of course, the future is by reservation only.
What I've come to see, though, is an 'iPS heart,' a little flash of something in a clear vessel filled with blood-red liquid in the middle of one of the exhibition rooms. This is not really a heart, but a cluster of heart cells created from human-induced pluripotent stem cells in the shape of a heart. And just like a heart, these cells can beat.
A presentation showing the likes of Thomas Edison and Hippocrates flash in the background, with quotes by these great men meant to make us feel that we're witnessing the future of medicine.
In 2012, Shinya Yamanaka won a Nobel Prize in medicine for his development of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. His lab reprogrammed mature, specialized mouse skin cells to make immature, pluripotent ones, meaning they could grow into different types of cells in the body; later, his team was able to do the same thing with human cells. This was a breakthrough in understanding cells themselves, and could have wide-ranging significance, including the potential for tissue replacement using a patient's own cells, which reduces reliance on embryos and lowers the risk of the body rejecting someone else's cells.
Here in this room in Osaka, the implications of a beating iPS heart developed by Yoshiki Sawa of medical start-up Cuorips are not clear, a fact that is clearly irrelevant. The spectacle is more Mona Lisa than flying car: Not only is this a mysterious celebrity of murky provenance and meaning, but no one seems to care. The backs of people's heads block the 3.5-centimeter object, their hands pressing phones and long telephoto lenses to the case, intent on capturing what they've waited in line to see. In the future, just like in the present, proof of witnessing trumps understanding. Pics of the future, or it won't happen.
An 'iPS heart' at HR company Pasona's pavilion represents the promise of lab-grown human heart cells. |
Reuters
That night, standing in a queue under a blast of cold rain, I'm told that all the slots for the exhibition I want to see are full for the day, but I can join the wait list. (The future, by the way, is also full of QR codes.) I check my phone. It's 7 p.m., and ''Future of life,' by Ishiguro,' has 829 people in its virtual line.
I am very keen to see a me-sized avatar, but I'm running out of time to catch my train back to Tokyo, at which point I wonder if press credentials still work in the future. They do, and soon I'm being adorned with a heavy headset and pushed in with a group through an hour-long guided show.
The exhibition by renowned roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University is an impressively produced multistage, multifloor robot extravaganza. Three android tarento (TV personalities), including a likeness of Matsuko Deluxe, chat like they're on a variety show. Across the way, android Natsume Soseki sits at a desk with some books splayed open; the author of 'I Am a Cat' puts his hand to his brow and looks unconsolable, in a pretty convincing imitation of what it looks like to be a writer. In the final stage, three androids from 1,000 years in the future give a musical performance that's a Bjork-'Minority Report' mash-up fever dream.
The exhibit's main story centers on a narrative just 50 years in the future, by which time androids have been fully integrated into human society. We enter a room and ride a train to a futuristic city called Yumeshima, which means Dream Island, accompanied by a robot boy who spends the whole ride twitching in response to no apparent stimuli. A projection shows a little girl and her grandmother discussing the girl's android classmate, who's rumored to have the memories of his grandfather.
After a bad diagnosis, the elder woman is given a choice: She can pass naturally or upload her memories to an android. 'In that body, will I still be able to think about the people I love?' she asks. 'It's as close as you can get,' the doctor replies with the chilling compassion of a disc jockey.
One of the arguments for making lifelike androids is that the more they look and move like us, the more we'll trust and relate to them. Human-like smiles and eye contact can create the feeling that the robots have empathy, which has applications for caregiving and education. It's an urgent issue in Japan, where researchers are focused on robot solutions to address their aging population and labor crisis.
But as I envision a future with a robot sitting at my kitchen table with all my mother's memories, I struggle to grasp what I, or my mother, would gain. My real (very alive) mother does like to talk about the past, but the way we spend time is beyond conversation, lying instead in service, in warmth, the feel of her rounded shoulder, just below mine, as she shrugs my hand off because she's trying to flip a deep-fried spring roll and I'm in the way.
Latest advancements in robotics show androids doing human things and how human they look while doing them — taking selfies, playing air guitar, tossing popcorn into their mouths. Behold, how they look like us. And in AI, what gets the most attention is how closely generated art can mimic human art — it looks just like a Studio Ghibli movie, or sounds just like metafiction. But it's worth at least a few seconds of contemplation: Why exactly are we so intent on making our technology in our own likeness? Because, really, are humans so great?
The final beat of the exhibit is a quote from Ishiguro: 'We can design the future and live the life we want.' Technologists believe they push humanity forward by seeking solutions to alleviate physical pain and cure disease. But I confess I'm not as skilled at looking to the future — maybe because the present is so distracting: how intractable it seems, how we seem to be sliding backward, how we've destroyed our home, how corruption, greed, subjugation and power lock the world into conflicts that look unsettlingly similar to ones from a century ago.
At the expo, where Israel's booth is placed under the umbrella group theme 'Saving lives,' where the U.S. pavilion is designed as a 'gateway for all visitors' with the ridiculous exhortation to 'Imagine what we can create together' scrawled in neon, where Russia didn't even bother to show up, where China and the U.S. passive-aggressively battle it out for who has the better moon rock, the entire endeavor to present a utopian vision of global peace and cooperation starts to look like nationalist vaudeville. Modern developed societies have a tendency to look forward, thinking we are barreling toward progress and a better future, when these past few years have shown what is really broken, and where the real disease lies.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Mainichi
4 days ago
- The Mainichi
News in Easy English: Osaka Expo mascot 'Myaku-Myaku' now popular with visitors
OSAKA -- The official mascot of Expo 2025 in Osaka has become very popular. At first, many people did not like its strange look. Now, visitors often take pictures with the mascot. The mascot's name is "Myaku-Myaku." It is a mysterious character made of cells and water. Myaku-Myaku is everywhere at the event. There is even a special "Myaku-Myaku House" where people can meet a moving Myaku-Myaku. At the Expo, there are also Myaku-Myaku designs on manhole covers, playgrounds, and statues, using its red and blue colors. No one knows exactly what Myaku-Myaku really is. Its form changes often, and right now it looks like a human. People like it because it is strange and interesting. Inside Myaku-Myaku House, one visitor wrote, "I am sorry I first said you looked scary. I really like you now." A 25-year-old Osaka woman said, "I didn't like the mascot at first. But when I saw it moving, I became a fan." Another visitor, 55, from Kobe said, "At first, I wasn't sure about it. But now I think it's cute. I'm not sure why!" Many visitors now enjoy seeing Myaku-Myaku in person. The Osaka Expo will continue for six months. Organizers think about 28 million people will visit. Myaku-Myaku likes meeting people. Maybe the mascot can bring even more visitors to the event. (Japanese original by Takehiko Onishi, Osaka Photo and Video Department) Vocabulary mascot: a character or animal used to represent an event or group mysterious: strange, hard to understand cells: very small parts that all living things are made of manhole cover: a round metal cover on roads that leads under the ground organizer: a person or group that plans an event
5 days ago
Okamoto Tarō: Creating New Human Values for a Troubled Age
The artist Okamoto Tarō (1911–96) is best known for Tower of the Sun , a 70-meter structure at the heart of the 1970 Osaka Expo site. Both sculpture and building, complete with interior space, the tower was an almost mystical presence, looming over the exposition like a great masked figure or sacred idol. Tower of the Sun , symbol of the 1970 Osaka Expo. (© Jiji) The tower's interior depicted the evolution of life from ancient times in ways that resist narrow categorization. Following multiple rounds of restoration, it is open today to the public. Widely recognized to this day as a symbol of the age in which the 1970 Expo was held, the tower remains significant for a variety of reasons. The Osaka Prefectural Government, which manages the tower, released a comprehensive assessment of the structure in November 2024, hoping to secure its recognition as an Important Cultural Property. The gigantic Face of the Sun , which was attached to the front of Tower of the Sun . Okamoto Tarō is seen working in the center. (© Jiji) Myth of Tomorrow , another legendary work by Okamoto, was painted in 1969 for a hotel lobby in Mexico but went missing after the hotel's bankruptcy. Rediscovered in 2003, it was installed in Tokyo's Shibuya Station in 2008. Some 5.5 meters high and 30 meters long, the work transcends classification as a painting with its sheer, overpowering scale. Myth of Tomorrow is displayed in the walkway connecting the JR and Keiō Inokashira lines at Shibuya Station. (© Jiji) Myth of Tomorrow is a mysterious work. It addresses grave themes, showing the Japanese tuna fishing boat that was contaminated by nuclear fallout from a thermonuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll in 1954 beset by skeletal shapes symbolizing invisible, powerful energies of human creation. But its style has a manga-like lightness, and the work's overall perspective seems to airily rise above reality. Okamoto Tarō was never tied to one space or time. He transcends the now—and challenges us to join him. Following the 1970 Osaka Expo, he appeared in television commercials and on variety programs and was featured in news magazines and other media, constantly remolding existing values and reiterating his popular catchphrase: 'Art is an explosion.' These words were often understood as referring to uncomplicated art that ruptures the world with visceral directness, but in fact they were a broader call to arms reflecting Okamoto's belief that only art can change reality. Despite passing away in 1996 at the age of 84, Okamoto still attracts legions of fans. Why is this? Capturing the Antithetical in Artistic 1930s Paris Okamoto Tarō was born in 1911 to the successful cartoonist Okamoto Ippei and poet and author Okamoto Kanoko. Novelist and Nobel laureate Kawabata Yasunari once referred to this unusually artistic household as the 'Holy Family.' At school, Tarō argued with teachers as an adult might, causing friction that forced him to change schools multiple times. After graduating from Keiō Futsūbu School in 1929, he entered the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (now Tokyo University of the Arts). He left the school later that year, however, after the Asahi Shimbun newspaper assigned his father to cover the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The Okamoto family set out from Kobe together, but while his parents went on to London, Tarō disembarked at Paris, resolving to live like a local to realize his artistic goals. Instead of joining the Japanese expat artistic community in Paris, Okamoto studied at a suburban lycée, learning the French language, culture, and way of life. He frequented local art galleries and eventually studied philosophy and art at the Sorbonne. During his time in France, Okamoto would mingle with avant-garde artists like Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Ernst, Giacometti, and Man Ray, as well as thinkers like André Breton, prophet of surrealism, and Georges Bataille, who contemplated human existence through the lenses of death, violence, and eroticism. He experienced the cutting edge of abstract art and surrealism, concepts at the core of twentieth century art, in a milieu where debate raged over how to truly live, deeply influencing the subsequent course of modern French philosophy. As an artist, Okamoto endeavored to produce paintings where real and abstract elements coexisted in contradiction. After World War II, he became a proponent of 'Polarism,' a movement that sought to express rationality and irrationality in antithesis on a single canvas. Many of his works from this period place extremes in opposition, defying rational dissection much as human beings do. Ethnology as a Handle on Human Existence Visiting the Musée de l'Homme, opened at the former site of the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, 26-year-old Okamoto was deeply moved by the masks and idols on display, which had a vivid sense of presence rooted in the fundamentals of human life and belief. He began studying under the anthropologist Marcel Mauss at the Sorbonne to deepen his understanding of ethnography. Decades later, at the 1970 Osaka Expo, Okamoto created and used a subterranean exhibition space beneath Tower of the Sun to display his work Underground Sun , surrounded by countless statues and masks collected by scholars from around the world under Okamoto's guidance. These were later transferred to the National Museum of Ethnology, established seven years after the Expo. Okamoto Tarō on September 4, 1969, surrounded by masks and other folk art gathered for display at the 1970 Osaka Expo. (© Kyōdō) The interior of Tower of the Sun , symbol of Expo '70, has been open to the public again since 2018. Also on display is a re-creation of Underground Sun , which has been missing since the Expo. (© Jiji) After leaving for Paris at the age of 19, Okamoto made the occasional brief visit home and was conscripted into military service during the war, but did not permanently resettle in Japan until 1946, when he was 35. An un-Japanese life—a childhood in a home environment that celebrated artistic excellence and years lived amid the flourishing art scene of Paris in the 1930s—set him on a unique postwar path to transcend reality in Japan. The Meaning of the Avant-Garde in Japan Okamoto's philosophical and ethnographic pursuit of the meaning of human existence eventually led him to conclude that he would always be a foreigner in Europe, and would never produce art of substance unless he accepted Japan, where his roots lay, as his battleground. In 1940, as the war approached Paris, he boarded a ship for Japan for the last time. After arriving in Japan, Okamoto won awards for works produced in Europe, some shown at the 1941 Nika Exhibition and others exhibited independently. But the following year, at 31, he was drafted into the army and sent to China, where he spent over four years on the battlefield. When Okamoto finally returned to Japan in June 1946, he learned that his entire oeuvre to date had been destroyed, along with his family home, in the firebombing of Tokyo. He was thus free to reinvent himself as a fiercely independent Japanese artist, and he began charting a postwar course that sought to connect art with society and life amid the complex contradictions faced by modern Japan. Okamoto challenged Japan's conservative art establishment. He formed an avant-garde artistic movement called the Yoru no Kai (Night Society) with literary scholar Hanada Kiyoteru and others in 1948. Eventually, however, Okamoto shifted his focus from searching for a new art to developing a new art within society. In 1954, he established the Gendai Geijutsu Kenkyūjo (Institute of Esthetic Research) at his home and studio (now the Tarō Okamoto Memorial Museum), inviting artists, designers, architects, and others there to collaborate. The same year, he published the book Konnichi no geijutsu (Art Today), in which he asserted the need for artists to create new values relevant to people facing the many issues of modern society, including pollution, the Cold War, and the contempt for humanity accompanying economic growth. He expanded his activities to include public art, design, architecture, film, performance, and criticism, eventually coming to describe his occupation simply as 'Human.' New Traditions Linking Ethnology and Art The pursuit of Japanese tradition was Okamoto's driving force in the postwar period. In his 'Essay on Jōmon Earthenware: A Dialogue with a Fourth Dimension,' published in 1952, he reconsidered earthenware from the Jōmon period (ca. 10,000 BC–300 BC) discovered across the Japanese archipelago, claiming it had a beauty with no counterpart elsewhere in the world. Conventional accounts of Japanese art saw value in elements introduced alongside Buddhism, such as wabi-sabi and an emphasis on harmony, or modern Western aesthetics. But Okamoto believed that Japanese art was founded on dynamic Jōmon beauty, which destroyed balance with its fourth-dimensional irrationality. It was a startling discovery in the deep past of innovation that overturned old values, just as the art of prewar Paris did. Okamoto believed that Jōmon tendencies could still be seen in Japanese areas such as Tōhoku, Hokkaidō, and Okinawa. Armed with his knowledge of ethnology, he traveled the country studying, photographing, and writing about folk customs from his artist's perspective. For many years, he continued to publish his findings to share these 'new traditions' with wider society. He believed that the power of creativity is omnipresent in our lives: anyone can lead a more fulfilling life by adopting an artist's perspective or behavior into their everyday routines and resolving to express themselves and champion their personal values. 'Art is an Explosion' and 'Eyes Flying Through Space' This is the line of thought that led Okamoto to create Tower of the Sun and Myth of Tomorrow . In describing the essence of art, he used the phrase 'eyes flying through space'—in short, a perspective outside the reality-defining frameworks of human beings and our world that escapes into space. Artists work with an 'other,' be it paint and canvas, stone, or clay. But as they become absorbed in creation, they irrationally become one with that other. This is the true sense in which 'Art is an explosion!' When a work is completed, however, it rationally becomes an other again. Through art, comprising self and other, we have the potential to move beyond humanity and the world, shatter those frameworks, and change values at their foundations. Here is revealed the enduring, universal postmortem appeal, in our cramped and claustrophobic modern age, of Okamoto Tarō's art. Tower of the Sun . (© Jiji) (Originally written in Japanese and published on April 8, 2025. Banner image: Portrait of Okamoto Tarō. © Jiji.)
Japan Times
5 days ago
- Japan Times
Osaka Expo sees highest daily visitor number
The ongoing Osaka Expo attracted 162,000 general visitors on Saturday, marking a new daily record, the organizer said on Sunday. The Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition expects a total of 28.2 million people to visit the event, which is set to run until Oct. 13. To achieve the goal, the event needs to draw 150,000 visitors on average per day. Saturday's number exceeded the target for the first time. Visitor reservations grew on Saturday thanks to music and fireworks attractions, according to the association.
