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The 1970 Osaka Expo: local planners, national planning processes and Mega Events

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02665433.2011.599933

1466-4518

Andrea Yuri Flores Urushima,

Architecture, Art, Education

Abstract The Expo 70 project received extraordinary levels of support from the Japanese central government in terms of both funding and the fast-tracking of infrastructural development. In order to profit from the advantageous employment of national resources, local governments competed to host the event in locations where it might boost local urban development plans. At first, local governments made independent submissions in the competition to attract the event to their areas. However, in order to overcome the powerful influence of specialists and local governments from the Tokyo metropolitan area, local governments in the Kansai region joined forces to attract the event to a region outside Tokyo and its surrounding areas. The promotion of the international exhibition in Osaka, permitted the strategic reinforcement of local planning endeavours by providing local specialists with experience of central government planning processes. Moreover, this national project can be seen as a response to local demands for large-scale urban improvement in the Kansai region. Keywords: Osaka Expo 70: national projectsKinki metropolitan regionlocal specialistsurban renovation Notes The establishment of the Comprehensive National Land Development Act in 1950 launched the fundamental statutory framework for regional development planning in Japan. This comprehensive system is set within the framework of a Comprehensive National Development Plan (CNDP) and conducts the specifications of City Plans. H. Abe and J.D. Alden, 'Regional Development Planning in Japan', Regional Studies 22 (1988): 429–38. The first CNDP of 1962 included in its main objectives the regional distribution of resources such as capital, labour and technology, prevention of excessive urbanization, and reduction of regional differentials to reach the goal of a 'balanced regional development'. J. Yamashita, 'Influence of Jean Gottman's thought on National Development Plans in Japan', Ekistics: Reviews on the Problems and Science of Human Settlements 70 (2003): 358–65. Y. Ishida, Nihon kingendai toshi keikaku no tenkai: 1868–2003 (Tokyo: Jichitai kenkyūsha, 2004), 207–9. S. Watanabe, 'Toshi Keikaku versus Machizukuri: Emerging Paradigm of Civil Society in Japan', 1950–1980, in Living Cities in Japan: Citizens' Movements, Machizukuri and Local Environments, ed. A. Sorensen and C. Funck (London: Routledge, 2007), 49. Kansai or Kinki region are terminologies which are historically developed to describe different geographical limitations and at present day can be used interchangeably to refer to the southern-central region of the Japanese main island, which mainly includes the prefectures of Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Wakayama, Hyogo, and Shiga. Some authors also include the prefectures of Mie, Fukui, and Tokushima. M. Roche, Mega Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire (1875–1914) (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987). Eric Hobsbawm, Ranger Terence, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). See more in S. Tanaka, Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts in History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, c. 1993). See more in A. Flores Urushima, 'Genesis and Culmination of Uzō Nishiyama's Proposal of a 'Model Core of a Future City' for the Expo 70 Site (1960–1973), Planning Perspectives 22 (2007): 391–416. More in the fifth chapter of M. Yamamoto, Nihon hakurankaishi [History of Japanese Expositions] (Tokyo: Risōsha, 1970). For an overlook of the 1940 Exposition's site plan map refer to Nihon bankoku hakurankai kyōkai [Japan Association for the World Exposition], Nihon bankoku daihakurankai: Kigen 2600 nen kinen [Japan's Great World Exposition: Commemorating the 2600th Year of the Imperial Era] (Tokyo: Nihon bankoku hakurankai kyōkai, 1935). Haryū mentions two well-known slogans of the modernizing spirit of the period: Shokusan kōgyo (Promoting Industry and Enterprise) and Fukoku kyōhei (Wealthy Nation, Strong Military). I. Haryū, 'Kurutta ideorogī: Kokuisen'yō to keizai gōri shūgi (Bankokuhaku: Kokumin fuzai no saiten. Tokushū) [Deranged Ideology: Enhancement of National Prestige and Economical Rationality (World Fair: A Festival of Civic Absence. Special edition)]', Asahi jānaru 11, no. 3 (1969): 5–10. Part of the letter of application to host the Expo 70, from the Osaka International Exhibition Preparatory Council, April 1965. Japan Association for the 1970 World Exposition (Japan World Exposition, vols. 1–3; Osaka, 1970: Official Report, vol. 1 (Osaka: Commemorative Association for the Japan World Exposition, 1972), 1, 38. Since the prewar period, the central government has efficiently used spatial integration logic to advance modernization on a national scale. This has continued to be enforced during the postwar period. T. Mizuuchi, 'Development Policies and Spatial Integration in Japan from 1868 to 1941′, Nation, Region and the Politics of Geography in East Asia, ed. T. Mizuuchi (Osaka: Department of Geography of Osaka City University, 1999), 30–42. The 'Convention Relating to International Exhibitions' was first created in 1928 and has been regularly amended until the present day. Even though the country was planning to host an International Exhibition since the late nineteenth century, the reasons why Japan has not acceded to this regulation until 1963 are not clear. In 1966, after Japan had started preparations to hold Osaka Expo 70, the original convention was amended, succeeding a prior amendment of 1948. Bureau International des Expositions, Protocol Signed at Paris on 30 November 1972 Relating to International Exhibitions (Revising the Convention Signed at Paris on 22 November 1928) (Paris: Bureau International des Expositions, 1985). Haryū, 'Kurutta ideorogī: Kokuisen'yō to keizai gōri shūgi', 6. Also translated as Kinki Region Improvement Law (KRIL). See description and analysis of the law in S. Nakazawa and Kinki toshi gakkai [Kinki Association for Urban Studies], Kinkiken seibi to toshi: Nakazawa Seiichirō sensei koki kinen toshi ronbunshū [Kinki region maintenance and cities: 70th birthday commemorative collection of urban studies works of Prof. Seiichirō Nakazawa] (Tokyo: Taimeidō, 1968). The detailed plans are collected in Kinki kaihatsu shiryōshū seihenshū iinkai, Kinki kaihatsu no keikaku (Osaka: Osaka toshi kyōkai, 1962–1963). T. Kitayama, Local Government Policy Initiatives in Japan (Washington: The World Bank, 2001), 5–6. Municipal Office Osaka, The City of Osaka and Its Planning, 1st ed. (Osaka: Comprehensive Planning Bureau, 1966). The French Geographer Jean Gottman (1915–1994) coined the term Megalopolis in 1961. The term is now currently used to refer to a region of a multinuclear characteristic constituted of several distinct urban systems well integrated through a network of transportation and communication with a population of a minimum of 25 million inhabitants. The Tokaido Megalopolis or the Pacific Belt was a result of the intensive urbanization of the area surrounding the ancient Tokaido road main route of travel to Edo during the medieval period. At present, it extends from Ibaraki Prefecture on the north until Fukuoka Prefecture in the south with more than one thousand kilometers. One interesting analysis of the central and management function of those cities in comparison to all other Japanese cities, places Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya at the top ranking. At the same time, when Osaka is placed within a metropolitan network its rate is further improved. T. Yamaguchi and The Japan Section of The Regional Science Association, 'Japanese Cities: Their Functions and Characteristics', Papers and Proceedings of the Far East Conference of the Regional Science Association, vol. 3 (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1969), 141–56. Shiga Prefecture, within which 98% of the entire Lake Biwa and its catchments area lies, was economically underdeveloped up until middle of the 1970s. The strong desire of the watershed communities for economic and regional development of the lake watershed was partially fulfilled by the Kinki Region Improvement Law (KRIL) of 1963 in which the lake watershed was designated as a development zone within the framework of the national development plan for the Kinki Region. T. Kira et al., Lake Biwa: Experience and lessons learned brief, in Lake Basin Management Initiative Report. IW:LEARN, http://www.iwlearn.net/publications/ll/lakebiwa_2005.pdf/view (accessed February 19, 2010), 60–1. Many improvements on the Kobe Harbor's facilities were completed between 1965 and the opening of Expo 70. This included the reclamation of Eastern Sea N.4, of Shinko Pier N.8 and the construction of Eastern Domestic Trade Wharf. In 1966 started the reclamation of 'Port Island' to be finished in 1981 with the opening of the 'Pôtopia Exposition' regarded as a strategic project of urban redevelopment of the time. K. Sasayama, 'Potopia 81 to Kobe no machizukuri [Portopia 81 and the Urban Planning of Kobe]', Toshi keikaku. Tokushū: machizukuri shuhō toshite no ibento [City Planning Review. Special Issue: Events as a method of producing city] 164 (1990): 16–20. Japan Association for the 1970 World Exposition, Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970: Official Report, vol. 1, 1970, 34–7. J. Hasegawa, 'The Rebuilding of Osaka: A Reflection of the Structural Weakness in Japanese Planning', in Rebuilding Urban Japan After 1945, ed. C. Hein et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 74. A. Sorensen, The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the Twenty First Century (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 111–2. M. Muramatsu, F. Iqbal, and I. Kume, eds., Local Government Development in Post-war Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 11. A. Ueda, Letter Sent to Andrea Flores Urushima in Response to a Questionnaire Written by the Author (Kyoto, 26 March 2006). Ibid. Moriaki Hirohara, Professor of Urban Policy in the Faculty of Law of Ryukoku University, was a student of Nishiyama during the Expo 70 period and former board chairman of the 'Uzo Nishiyama Memorial Library'. M. Hirohara, Interview by Andrea Flores Urushima at Ryukoku University (Digital recording, 9 May 2006). Tōjirō Ishihara was a professor of the Department of Civil Engineering of Kyoto University who was very influential in the Civil Engineering Public Administration of the Kinki Region. Later in 1965 he became part of the 'Site Planning Committee' for the Expo 70 Site Planning process. A. Ueda, Interview by Andrea Urushima at Kyoto Daigo Plaza Hotel Cafe (Digital recording, 24 March 2006). In Japanese universities, professors are responsible for the supervision of the work of a group, generally called a 'laboratory', whose members are undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers, and sometimes also include assistant and associate professors. Independent of the area of study or the type of activity, this denomination can be used by groups which carry on research in humanities or in fundamental sciences, for example. Most important, the use of the term 'laboratory' carries the notion that the research of one specific group maintains a theoretical unity centred on the ideas of its founder professor. He was in 1959 the vice-president of the Architectural Institute of Japan and wrote extensively on urban-related themes; see more in A. Flores Urushima, 'Genesis and Culmination of Uzo's Nishiyama proposal', Planning Perspectives 22 (2007): 393–4. Central government representatives and other business circles of the Kansai region considered some ideas of Nishiyama polemical, nevertheless, he was a representative public personality known in the inside circles of specialists and also by the general public. For example, in 1967 the most important Japanese television channel NHK, broadcasted a drama entitled Kenchi to sumire influenced by Nishiyama's book 'Chronicle About Ways of Living' Sumikata no ki. A. Flores Urushima, 'Genesis and culmination of Uzō Nishiyama's proposal of a "model core of a future city"'. As an example, between 1967 and 1972 the central government required a general plan for the national land development to refer the future intervention in metropolitan areas, medium and small-sized cities, and rural districts. Among the 19 groups that submitted proposals, nine groups have finally been selected to receive during three years the financial support of more than nine million yens each. The great majority of the selected researchers were affiliated to institutions in Tokyo inside a network of researchers closely related with the central government ministries of Construction, Agriculture, Home and Foreign Affairs. The only exceptions were the Nagoya group from the Nanzan University and the Kansai group, headed by Uzō Nishiyama, which counted with a planning team of 12 members, supported by a multi-disciplinary team of more than 160 researchers from the Kansai region. The compilation containing a total of 20 volumes is entitled 'Japan of the 21st Century: A Future Vision of the National Land and Citizen's Life'. Naikaku kanbō naikaku shingishitsuhen [The deliberation room of the Cabinet Secretariat], ed., Nijūichi seiki no Nihon: kokudo to kokumin seikatsu no miraizō no sekkei [The future vision of the national land and people's life in the 21st Century] (Tokyo: Naikaku kanbō naikaku shingishitsu, 1971), 1–20. Japan Association for the 1970 World Exposition (with cooperation of Dentsu Advertising Ltd. and the Mainichi Newspaper), Exposition Quarterly 2 (1966). R. Hamaguchi, 'The Japanese Construction Industry VI', The Japan Architect (May 1968): 81–6. According to Asahi jānaru henshūbu, the Osaka Expo total cost was about five-fold higher than the Tokyo Olympics. Moreover, 25% of the two hundred-million yen total cost was financed by the Central Government. Asahi jānaru henshūbu, 'Bankokuhaku he no kitai', Asahi jānaru 9–44 (1967): 96–108, October 22th. Municipal Office Osaka, The City of Osaka and Its Planning. Municipal Office Osaka, The City of Osaka and Its Planning, 2nd ed. (Osaka: Comprehensive Planning Bureau, 1969). D.A. Farnie and T. Nakaoka, 'Region and Nation', in Region and Strategy in Britain and Japan: Business in Lancashire and Kansai 1890–1990, ed. D.A. Farnie et al. (London: Routledge, 2000), 37.