World Expo goes back to nature in Japan's industrial heartland, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, in Aichi.
It's 35 years since Japan staged a World Expo. Osaka 1970, which attracted a stunning 64 million visitors, proclaimed that Japan was Asia's up-and-coming economic power and put everyone else on notice that it aimed to achieve western levels of prosperity.
Times have changed, and that's acknowledged by the theme of Expo 2005 in Aichi prefecture, roughly half-way between Osaka and Tokyo. For the Japanese have realised that progress came at a price; the "insatiable desire" for economic expansion, says the Expo catalogue, has put a "tremendous burden" on the natural environment.
Aichi is Japan's "kingdom of production" and has ranked first in the country for manufacturing output every year since 1977. Toyota cars are the most famous of its products. The new international airport - on an artificial island near its main city, Nagoya - opened in mid-February, a month before the Expo.
Nagoya, a remarkably unattractive city with a population of 2.2 million, had a waste crisis in the late 1990s when plans for a landfill in a wetland area met popular opposition. A new emphasis on recycling has since reduced waste volumes by 30 per cent. Even Toyota encourages its employees not to drive to work.
NATURE'S WISDOM IS what it's all about now. Indeed, the site originally selected for this year's Expo had to be dropped after it was found to contain nesting goshawks. So the Aichi Youth Park was developed instead, after undergoing an environmental impact assessment - the first for an expo.
To minimise the amount of tree felling, the Expo designers linked different parts of the site with elevated "loops" supported on steel structures, some up to 14 metres high. The official mascots are furry forest creatures, Morizo and Kiccoro, while the site itself is home to a rare species of dragonfly.
Some of its energy needs are met by extracting bio-gas from waste and wood pellets. Environment-friendly transport for visitors includes battery-powered trams, hybrid buses and bicycle taxis. There's also the "bio lung", a 150-metre wall of plants to absorb carbon dioxide and cool it in the summer months.
The aims are to show some pathways to a more sustainable society by highlighting technologies of the future, such as "life-support robots" that look after cleaning, waste collection, customer service, security and even childcare, as well as to orchestrate what the organisers call "a grand intercultural symphony".
Since London's Great Exhibition in 1851, which made an international statement about Britain's leading role in the industrial revolution, expos have been used by countries to project images of themselves on the world stage. And it's always fascinating to see how they do it, particularly the host.
In Aichi, 120 nations are vying to grab the attention of the modest target turnout of 15 million visitors, including an anticipated 1.5 million from overseas. The Austrian pavilion, for example, has a toboggan ride while Jordan offers exhibitionists a chance to "swim" in a miniature recreation of the Dead Sea.
At previous expos, the participants tried to outdo each other by building their own pavilions. But Aichi cut down costs all round by offering everyone a standard module of 18 by 18 by 9 metres. Many countries, including Ireland, settled for just the one, but others with more vaulting ambitions got two or three.
As a result, there isn't much in the way of "architecture", more exhibition design - though Morocco managed to transform its standard box with an external plastered earthen screen studded by the stalks of palm trees and a parallel wall of distinctive blue ceramic tiles behind it, washed by a sheet of water.
Japan's pavilion, with 5,000sq m, outclasses all others. Its centrepiece is a spectacular 360-degree projection of the wonders of the earth, with mesmerised visitors standing on a broad catwalk. Such is its enveloping power that you feel slightly unsteady afterwards.
Poland has done at least half as well with a 180-degree projection of moving images showing every aspect of the country at its best, to the background music of Chopin. After that, visitors descend by a lift into a salt mine with real rock salt, which some Japanese have been licking to see if it really is genuine.
The Polish pavilion has a blobby wicker façade designed by Christof Ingarden, who was also the architect for Poland's new embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese cultural centre in Krakow. Right alongside, just like on the map, is Ukraine's multicoloured pavilion.
There are other interesting juxtapositions. France and Germany share a building, with a "neutral area" between their pavilions, while Austria and Switzerland are beside each other, and Greece and Turkey stand on opposite sides of a colourful, sun-drenched plaza that might well be a metaphor for the Aegean.
Britain transplanted a woodland garden to the Aichi site, following the example of Finland at the Hanover Expo in 2000. The interior of its pavilion seems almost Japanese in style, surrounded by a timber screen with back-lit cut-outs in the shape of leaves, with a lot of interactive computerised gadgetry.
THE ENTIRE CONTINENT of Africa is housed in a single large pavilion, led by South Africa celebrating 10 years of freedom with a Rhythm of Life exhibition. Other attractions include a joint Russian-Japanese exhibit showing the remains of an 18,000-year-old mammoth, excavated from the permafrost of Siberia.
The Spanish clad their large, highly visible box in a honeycomb terracotta screen, in the colours of Spain, while Portugal went for a more subtle arrangement of vertical waves on the façade of its much smaller pavilion. Spain wanted to create a splash in Aichi to promote its own "mini-expo" in Zarragossa in 2008.
The next big expo is scheduled for Shanghai in 2010, and that's bound to be a crowning showpiece for China after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. But with the Chinese government pledging a car for every family by 2020, the environmental concerns being voiced in Aichi are unlikely to find much resonance there.
Expo 2005 Aichi Japan runs until September 25th