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Yomiuri Shimbun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Exhibitions Across Japan Remember Legacies of 1970 Osaka Expo and Other Expos Past
Exhibitions focusing on the art and architecture showcased at world expositions in the past, including the 1970 Osaka Expo, are being held across the nation to coincide with the ongoing 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo. The exhibitions aim to reexamine the history of these big world events where cultures from across the globe can be encountered. In Kawasaki The Yomiuri Shimbun Photos, documents and other items about the creation of the Tower of the Sun are displayed at the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art in Kawasaki. Among the legacies of the 1970 Osaka Expo, the Tower of the Sun in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, still draws visitors. A temporary exhibition titled 'Taro Okamoto and Tower of the Sun' is running at the Taro Okamoto Museum of Art in Kawasaki until July 6. The event focuses on the artist's ideas that came to fruition in the huge, strangely shaped structure. The tower, which Okamoto designed not long before he turned 60, was created as a symbol of resistance against the modernism embodied in the expo's theme of 'Progress and Harmony for Mankind.' The background to this was the folklore studies that Okamoto undertook as a student in Paris. The experience fostered his attitude of seeking a deep understanding of the roots of people's lives. The exhibition displays photos that Okamoto took after returning to Japan to document festivals, customs and architecture across the nation. The photos indicate that Okamoto had a strong interest in his origins. Among items related to the 1970 Osaka Expo, the exhibits include blueprints for the tower and motion pictures of Okamoto in the process of making the tower. There is also a space that reproduces scenes from the 1970 Expo in which folk items from across the world were displayed in the base of the tower. The tower, with its humorous and dynamic imagery, applauds the very existence of mankind. A curator of the museum said, 'Now that time has passed, I hope this exhibition is an opportunity to reconsider what Okamoto wanted to demonstrate at the [1970] Expo.' In Osaka The Yomiuri Shimbun A life-size design of a velvet wall hanging, named 'Nami ni Chidori,' is displayed at the Takashimaya Archives in Osaka. The Takashimaya Archives in Naniwa Ward, Osaka, is holding an exhibition titled 'Exposition Era' until Aug. 18. The exhibition shows the relationship between world expositions and department stores. The displays include artistically dyed fabrics, rough drawings of the fabrics and award certificates that Takashimaya Co. showed at world expositions at home and abroad from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. They include a life-size design of a velvet wall hanging in the Yuzen style named 'Nami ni Chidori' (Waves and plovers), which Japanese-style painter Seiho Takeuchi supervised. It is on display until June 23. The painting is a fantastical depiction of plovers taking flight over the moonlit sea. The wall hanging was displayed at the 1900 Paris Expo, and French actress Sarah Bernhardt bought it, causing a sensation. This anecdote indicates how highly Japanese craftsmen's skills were valued, in addition to the popularity of Japonisme — a trend that favored Japanese products — in those years. Yuzen-style dyed fabrics and embroidered pictures shown in the exhibition are all precise and take visitors by surprise. Takako Takai, a curator of the archives, said: 'Utilizing the experiences of displaying at the expo, Takashimaya changed its sales approach from a zauri style [in which clerks pulled out goods as customers requested them], to the current style of showcasing products on store shelves. The expo is one of the factors that prompted the evolution from kimono shops to department stores.' Items displayed will be subject to change during the exhibition. In Tokyo The Yomiuri Shimbun Blueprints and photos about attractive buildings at the 1970 Osaka Expo are shown at the National Archives of Modern Architecture in Tokyo. The National Archives of Modern Architecture in Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, is holding an exhibition titled 'World Fair in Japan 1970-2005,' which focuses on the role of world expositions from the perspective of architecture. In the first phase of the exhibition that ended on May 25, it showed the efforts of talented architects who, through trial and error, led Japan's architecture in the postwar period, mainly focusing on the 1970 Osaka Expo. At the venue of the 1970 Expo, the 127-meter-high Expo Tower, which was designed by Kiyonori Kikutake, stood opposite the Tower of the Sun. The exhibition displayed the twists and turns before construction of the Expo Tower began, including blueprints for a dynamic four-pillar structure that was ultimately not adopted. The Sumitomo Fairytale Pavilion in the 1970 Expo, designed by Sachio Otani, was shaped like a flying saucer, and the exhibition displayed blueprints depicting precise frames with curved lines, and also abundant sketches suggesting the buds of his ideas. In the next phase from June 14 to Aug. 31, the exhibition will focus mainly on the four expos held at home since the 1975 Okinawa International Ocean Exposition and those abroad.
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
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.)
The Mainichi
24-05-2025
- Health
- The Mainichi
In Photos: Tower of the Sun set to be designated important cultural property
Image 1 of 10 The Tower of the Sun is seen lit up in red as the "Osaka Model," an indicator for the spread of COVID-19 infections in Osaka Prefecture, was upgraded, in the prefectural city of Suita on Dec. 26, 2022. (Mainichi/Ryoichi Mochizuki)
The Mainichi
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Mainichi
Osaka Gov. wants 1970 Osaka Expo symbol Tower of the Sun listed as World Heritage
OSAKA -- Japan's Council for Cultural Affairs on May 16 recommended to the education and culture minister that the Tower of the Sun, a symbol of the 1970 Osaka Expo that embodied the design of famed artist Taro Okamoto, be designated an important cultural property. The approximately 70-meter-tall tower, located in the Osaka Prefecture city of Suita, combines ferroconcrete and steel-frame structures, with scholars and architects infusing the cutting-edge technology of the time. Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters on May 16 about the anticipated designation, "It is of great significance that the Tower of the Sun, a symbol of the Osaka Expo in 1970, will be designated an important cultural property. We'd like to aim for the tower to be listed as a World Heritage site next." While the Tower of the Sun had initially been scheduled to be dismantled after the Expo, formally the Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970, requests from local residents and others led to a decision to preserve the monument. Following seismic reinforcement work, the Osaka Prefectural Government has opened the tower's inside to the public since 2018. The prefecture began academic surveys by experts in 2021 with the aim of having the tower designated an important cultural asset. Regarding the ongoing Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Yoshimura remarked, "I was reminded once again that we are carrying out a project of extreme significance." As discussions are underway regarding the preservation and utilization of the Grand Ring, a symbol of the current Expo, after the event, the governor enthused, "The Tower of the Sun, which had been slated to be taken down, is now set to be designated an important cultural property. The Grand Ring has also been appreciated by many people as an amazing piece of architecture. I'd like to pursue the possibility of preserving part of it in its current form." Hiroyuki Ishige, secretary-general of the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition, released a comment on May 16 regarding the likely designation, stating, "It will be an event that symbolizes the (1970) Osaka Expo, which still lives on in the memory of so many people, and I think it's wonderful." The Tower of the Sun was designated a national registered tangible cultural property in 2020. In recommending the tower to the culture minister for the designation, the Council for Cultural Affairs highly rated the structure, stating, "It is valuable as a legacy symbolizing Japan in its high economic growth period" that spanned from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s.
Yomiuri Shimbun
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Tower of the Sun Named Important Cultural Property; Icon of Osaka Expo 1970 Symbolizes Japanese Postwar Economic Boom
The Yomiuri Shimbun The Tower of the Sun is seen in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, on Friday. The Council for Cultural Affairs on Friday recommended to the education, culture, sports, science and technology minister that the Tower of the Sun, a symbol of the 1970 World Exposition designed by artist Taro Okamoto and located in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, be designated an Important Cultural Property in the building category. With Osaka now hosting another World Expo, 55 years after the one for which the Tower was constructed, the structure has been recognized as a valuable legacy representing Japan's era of rapid economic growth. Under the leadership of Okamoto, the Tower of the Sun was erected as the centerpiece of the Expo's Theme Pavilion. In response to the Expo's slogan, 'Progress and Harmony for Mankind,' producer Okamoto deliberately conceived the tower as an anti-modern symbol reminiscent of an ancient Jomon clay figurine. The Tower left a powerful impression on visitors and became a public favorite. The construction of the Tower's enormous and distinctive form, 70 meters tall, brought together some of the most advanced techniques of the time. Mathematical analysis was applied to shape the trunk's complex three-dimensional curves, and the 25-meter-long arms, whose interiors have spaces visitors can enter, were engineered to a strength that would be challenging to achieve even with today's technology. Although the tower was slated for demolition once the Expo closed, petition drives and other opposition efforts secured its preservation. After seismic retrofitting, the interior was opened to the public in 2018 for the first time since the Expo. It will become Japan's second-newest Important Cultural Property in the building category, after the Seto Inland Sea Folk History Museum in Takamatsu, which was completed in 1973. Prof. Osamu Goto of Kogakuin University, a specialist in Japanese architectural history, said: 'Few cultural properties allow so many people to look back on history with a shared awareness. This is an unusual structure with multifaceted value, and it could one day be designated an Important Cultural Property in the fine arts category as well.'
