The 2025 World Exposition in Osaka will feature eight high-tech pavilions, showcasing a future society that highlights the importance of life, the organizing body said Monday.
Eight prominent professionals from various fields, including Cannes Film Festival award-winning filmmaker Naomi Kawase, will produce the so-called signature pavilions based on their interpretations of the expo's central theme of "Designing Future Society for Our Lives," the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition said.
The world expo, which will be the sixth official international exposition in Japan and the second for Osaka Prefecture after Expo '70 in Suita, will be held on Yumeshima, an artificial island in Osaka Bay, from April 13 through Oct. 13, with 150 countries and regions and 25 international organizations expected to join so far.
The producers also include biologist Shinichi Fukuoka, anime creator Shoji Kawamori, writer Kundo Koyama, roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, musician and math researcher Sachiko Nakajima, media artist Yoichi Ochiai and health policy expert Hiroaki Miyata.
Kawase, who won the Camera d'Or award at Cannes in 1997 and is also known as the director of the official film of the latest Tokyo Olympics, said at a 2025 World Expo event that gaining a real feeling and engraving it in people's memories is important.
"That is an amazing ability only human beings possess, so creating a venue (and offering such an experience) in a certain space will be significant," said Kawase.
Her pavilion will be a "dialogue theater," which will allow real-time dialogue between people who do not know each other through a screen.
The goals of the exposition include a society that achieves the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations, according to the association.
Japan was selected as the host country in November 2018 at the Bureau International des Expositions general assembly, defeating bids by Russia and Azerbaijan.
