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Imagine a couple filming their tough, altercations, late children about things no one wants to admit.
Well-intentioned projects are driven by nostalgia for happier, younger, and ironic times. A considerable amount of money is scattered, and parents’ smiles are locked into a business that is recaptured and feels secure. The kids roll their eyes and smile at the selfies, but make it clear that they are everywhere else.
This is essentially the Osaka Expo 2025. The timing at the start of the World Trade War is a celebration of global greatness that embodies the embodied phrase “The show must continue.”
Supporting Japan’s stubbornness is a desire for the world to resemble a friendly international embrace than reality allows. Osaka held a fantastic exposition in 1970 when the country was rising. This iteration is to prove that neither Japan nor the world has betrayed the promises of the time.
But the evidence shows that supply is declining. It was a shame that in the eight-year-old event of the program, Expo 2025 should have opened the door to the media on the day President Donald Trump’s tariffs came down to many countries represented there, including very heavy, very heavy on the host.
Holding a smile through rolling calamiti is a tough business. A global recession is a real risk, and Prime Minister Isba has declared a national crisis. Three hours after the expo was opened, the Ministry of Finance, Financial Services Agency and the Bank of Japan held an emergency meeting to discuss the global crisis and pledge with the IMF and other G7 countries to stabilize the markets turbulent by Trump’s tariffs.
If negotiations with the Trump administration go as well as many of the suspects they do, Japan already has a hefty investment in the US – may vow to move further into manufacturing there. It inevitably costs Japan’s work, and many of them in the industrial areas surrounding the exposition.
In a belief that large global Jamborees confirm the existence of large global consensus, even the seemingly unwavering Japan must have wondered whether venue quartiles, including pavilions in the US, China, Vietnam and Canada, would be perfectly fitting to name the “Empower Zone.”
Unlike big sporting events where the concept of competition is central, the Expo demands a much bigger pretense that everything is going well. Cognitive dissonance is overwhelming.
The US pavilions sit in a flock of countries that initially imposed import duties of 24% (Malaysia), 17% (Philippines), 20% (France), and 16% (Mozambique). That star-shaped mascot spark bounces hilariously from exhibit to exhibit, apparently last week that the president accused many of the people in the nearby pavilion of “looting, looting, raping, looting and looting America for 50 years.
Yet, in an age where no one is completely clear about the actual purpose of the exposition, the seriousness of Japan’s role as hosts and seamakers is impressively unharmed. And many of the citizens and business pavilions who gathered on Osaka Bay’s reclaimed island are actually original and fun. This weekend, when it is fully open to the public, millions of people will undoubtedly visit and have a great time.
Some of the exhibits may be a little too serious. Sponsored by dozens of Japanese companies, one vast pavilion invites visitors to tours of the future of life. This is the story of a host of popular TV chat shows that works after death, scattered across robots who assume the choice of whether their dying grandmother dies naturally, or downloads their minds to androids and living. Minor Spoiler Alert: Tears Granddaughter.
But with a very wide margin, the seriousness of defeating despair. The genius of the Osaka Expo is that it surrounds the entire site with a huge wooden ring 20 meters high and 2km in circumference. The plaque on one of its pillars proves its position as the world’s largest wooden structure.
More importantly, it may be there to help deal with the dissonance, as we want to protect it from what we actually have. In a grand ring, the world is healthy. Outside is a denial. Expo 2025 is ridiculous, but at this moment it may be the hope we need.
leo.lewis@ft.com
