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Expo 2025 logo (left) and MYAKU-MYAKU, the official character of the Expo (right)
©Expo 2025

Set to begin in April 2025, Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan is a major international event that will bring together 158 countries and regions and 9 international organizations (as of Dec. 27, 2024) for a six-month period, allowing visitors to experience cutting-edge technologies, services, and systems that anticipate the future.

In this article, we provide the latest information on the soon-opening Expo, highlighting pavilion exhibitions and more, following the feature that appeared in the May 2024 issue of HIGHLIGHTING Japan.

Theme: Designing Future Society for Our Lives
Concept: People’s Living Lab (A laboratory for a future society)
Venue: Yumeshima Island (Osaka City waterfront)
Period: April 13 to October 13, 2025
Participation: 158 countries/regions and 9 international organizations (as of Dec. 27, 2024)

Features of Expo Pavilions

A large number of participating countries and regions, international organizations, the Japanese government, local governments, and private companies will showcase pavilions at the Expo featuring their own creative and innovative designs. The Expo aims to be a place where the world’s knowledge, including cutting-edge technology, will be brought together and ideas shared to co-create our future society based on the “People’s Living Lab (A laboratory for a future society)” concept.

Domestically Developed Pavilions: Rediscovering Unique Japanese Qualities

• Joint Pavilion Iida Group × Osaka Metropolitan Univ.
The jointly designed pavilion has its entire surface covered with specially processed Nishijin-ori fabric from Kyoto, a renowned textile representative of Japanese quality. With an exterior design concept defined as “Sustainable Mobius,” the pavilion features a Mobius strip motif symbolizing eternity and infinity. Incorporating themes of continuation, circulation, inheritance, and evolution, the design expresses the hope that all beings blessed with life can live in happiness. Inside the structure, visitors can experience the latest technologies for healthy and comfortable living, with exhibits including Wellness Smart City®, a huge diorama depicting a city of the future, and an introduction of artificial photosynthesis technology that can create energy using CO₂.

[画像:Image of "Joint Pavilion Iida Group × Osaka Metropolitan Univ."]

• GUNDAM NEXT FUTURE PAVILION
Mobile Suit Gundam, an anime series that debuted in Japan in 1979, set in a fictional era in which humans live in space, was highly acclaimed not only in Japan but throughout the world. The pavilion offers full experiences of the series’ near-future worldview. First, a life-sized, 17-meter-tall GUNDAM statue catches visitors’ eyes. The exterior design evokes a future space airport. Inside, realistic videos and space design consisting of eight phases offer experiences of themes depicted in the Gundam series, including life in the future and scientific technology yet to be realized.

[画像:Image of "GUNDAM NEXT FUTURE PAVILION"]

Introducing Foreign Countries/Regions’ Pavilions

• France Pavilion
Based on a theme of “A Hymn to Love,” the pavilion presents a new vision of the future guided by various forms of love, such as love for oneself, love for others, and love for nature. The entrance to the pavilion evokes a mystical yet spacious theater, with the exterior of the building covered in a veil inspired by a theater curtain. Inside, visitors will find bistros, boutiques, and other features highlighting France’s proud traditions of cuisine and culture. (National Day: September 13)

• Singapore Pavilion
Designed around the tagline “Where Dreams take Shape” and in celebration of Singapore’s 60th year of independence, the Pavilion or the ‘Dream Sphere’ presents a captivating multi-sensory exhibition that immerses visitors in Singapore’s dynamic spirit of innovation and creativity. Showcasing art installations by young Singaporean artists, it illustrates how Singapore transforms dreams into reality. The Pavilion also highlights Singapore’s food, culture and arts, further piquing visitors’ interest in Singapore as a top-of-mind travel destination.

• USA Pavilion
The USA Pavilion theme, “Imagine What We Can Create Together” features a wabi-sabi inspired exterior and consists of two triangular buildings with wooden facades, juxtaposed by an illuminated, suspended cube. Two large LED screens, featuring iconic landmarks and national parks, form a sort of canyon, welcoming visitors to explore the United States of America. (National Day: July 19)

Signature Project (Brilliance of Life Project)

This project focuses on developing the most creative pavilions led by eight producers who are at the forefront of their respective fields. The pavilions are called Signature Pavilions, since they represent “signature works” through which each producer reveals and expresses their own philosophies on the eight different themes. Here, we will introduce the eight creative Signature Pavilions, which aim to encourage all visitors to think about life and update their conceptions of it.

Pavilion name: Better Co-Being
“Resonance of Lives” is the theme of the pavilion produced by Keio University School of Medicine professor MIYATA Hiroaki. Connected to the Forest of Tranquility in the center of the Expo site, the pavilion has no roof or walls. Visitors form groups with others who happen to be present that day to experience the forms of resonance between people and people, people and the world, and people and the future as they tour the pavilion. The pavilion encourages visitors to become one with nature along with its changes of season, weather, and time of day, and to practice living in resonance with the forest.

[画像:Image of “Better Co-Being”]

Pavilion name: Future of Life
“Amplification of Lives” is the theme of the pavilion produced by leading robotics expert ISHIGURO Hiroshi. The pavilion will introduce and exhibit a variety of robots and androids, as well as a diverse range of companies’ and creators’ ideas about society, products, and the state of Japanese culture 50 years in the future, as well as what life might be like 1,000 years from now. The pavilion proposes a future society in which boundaries between humans and robots have been eliminated and possibilities of life expanded through integration with technology.

[画像:Image of “Future of Life” ]

Pavilion name: Playground of Life: Jellyfish Pavilion
“Invigorating Lives” is the theme of the pavilion produced by musician and mathematician NAKAJIMA Sachiko. With an exterior evoking the form of a jellyfish floating with a mystical flowing rhythm, the design expresses the concept that the most important thing in life and creativity is playing with a similar sense of flow. Inside the pavilion, a vibrant Tree of Creation stands at the center of a playground for the senses, which will be filled with music and dances of various types to stimulate visitors’ five senses and expand their sense of play and creativity.

[画像:Image of “Playground of Life: Jellyfish Pavilion”]

Pavilion name: null²
“Forging Lives” is the theme of the pavilion produced by media artist OCHIAI Yoichi. Incorporating mirrors and digital technologies, the structure slowly changes form, distorting the surrounding scenery and people to create unfamiliar new scenes. Based on a concept that the world is in a state of constant change and we do not have one single perception of it, the pavilion will reveal to visitor’s scenes that humanity will be encountering for the first time. Inside, cutting-edge digital technologies are used to transform visitors’ bodies into avatars so that they can experience the wonder of coming face to face with their own avatars, which move as digital life-forms.

[画像:Image of “null2”]

Pavilion name: DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM OF LIFE
“Quest of Life” is the theme of the pavilion produced by biologist FUKUOKA Shin-Ichi. Based on a “philosophy of life,” a fundamental perspective on what life is, the pavilion will encourage visitors to experience what the producer calls the “dynamic equilibrium of life” relating to the finite nature of individual life and the infinite connections among all life. With its large, floating roof, the structure embodies the autonomous order that emerges only momentarily in the ever-changing flow of life.

[画像:Image of “DYNAMIC EQUILIBRIUM OF LIFE”]

Pavilion name: LIVE EARTH JOURNEY
“Totality of Life” is the theme of the pavilion produced by animation director and mecha designer KAWAMORI Shoji. Expressing the connections between all life that dwells in the universe, the oceans, and on land, the design appeals to the importance of protecting and nurturing life based on a concept of striving for a shift from a human-centered focus to a focus on all life. Inside are arrangements of structures of various sizes, called “cells,” and a theater and indoor exhibition incorporating cutting-edge technologies to express the diversity and brilliance of life.

[画像:Image of “LIVE EARTH JOURNEY”]

Pavilion name: EARTH MART
“Cycle of Lives” is the theme of the pavilion produced by broadcast writer and Kyoto University of the Arts vice president KOYAMA Kundo. The structure features a roof made with the traditional Japanese kaya-buki thatching technique. Presenting an imaginary supermarket space intended to lead to a better future, the exhibition offers visitors senses of cycles of food and life, sharing potential offered by the food culture that has been cultivated in Japan and the technology-based evolution of food, while confronting issues such as the global environment and hunger. The pavilion will serve as a venue giving visitors a chance to reconsider the value of food and consider new eating-related practices together.

[画像:Image of “EARTH MART”]

Pavilion name: Dialogue Theater – sign of life –
“Embracing Lives” is the theme of the pavilion produced by filmmaker KAWASE Naomi. The pavilion encourages visitors to deepen their mutual understanding through dialogue in order to remove the boundaries between people. Inside the pavilion, which is made from two abandoned wooden school buildings (an elementary school and a junior high school) that were taken apart and moved to the site, a forest-themed theater has been set up. In it, a different pair of participants each day, considering a different topic each day, will engage in unique, heartfelt dialogues, demonstrating to visitors the importance of dialogue.

[画像:Image of “Dialogue Theater - sign of life -”]

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