Japan's world Expo opens, on a mission to heal global wounds

Despite soaring costs and lukewarm public interest, carnival aims to deliver a message of hope. Justin McCurry reports from Osaka

- Justin McCurry

As clunky as it sounds, "designing a future society for our lives" isn't a bad ambition for the world in these troubled times. From today, organisers of the 2025 Exposition in Osaka will be hoping that appeal will put the event's unsettled preparations in the shade for a six-month celebration of our common humanity.

The western Japan city is preparing to host its second World Expo, 55 years after the first was held in a country eager to capitalise on fading memories of the second world war as it embarked on its postwar journey to become an industrial and technological powerhouse.

Then, 64 million people descended on Osaka’s northern suburbs to view the Tower of the Sun - still a popular site in the commemorative park - and a moon rock retrieved by Apollo 12.

The 2025 version opens under a geopolitical cloud dark enough to cast a shadow over the 960-acre grounds on the reclaimed Yumeshima ("Dream Island"), a former dumping ground for industrial waste and, for successive Osaka governments, a plot of land in perennial need of a purpose.

The expo is the most convincing attempt yet to make use of the unloved island, until now a blot on the landscape, with Osaka’s industrial skyline on one side and the busy shipping lanes of the Seto inland sea on the other. In its mission to bring people together, 150 countries and regions will showcase the best of their culture and technology, albeit with an acknowledgment that humanity is more divided than at any time most of the millions of expected visitors can recall.