The 1970 World Exposition in Osaka was the first Expo to be
held by an Asian country, and until recently, was the largest and
most attended Expo in history. While political and economic
narratives of prosperity can most clearly be swept into a unified
ideology of progressive Japanese society and culture, a closer
examination of the dissonant voices: the state, the architects, the
artists, and protesters involved in the Expo enables a new way of
interpreting the relationships between public events, public
space, symbolic art, and engagement with anti-sentimentalities.