on space and space technology, in addition to the life of V. I. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, whose 100th birthday was commemorated on April 22, 1970.
Expo 70 featured numerous visions of the future. For example, the telecommunications pavilions offered “dream telephones”—wireless handheld telephones giving visitors an opportunity to call any part of the country. The Furukawa Pavilion presented a world of cashless shopping using customer voice prints. The Expo had a lost-and-found department utilizing “TV-telephones” that one could browse to find lost articles or communicate audiovisually when a child was located. And the Expo site was interlinked with moving sidewalks that were covered and air-conditioned.
The staging of the exposition was highly significant for Japan. It represented and demonstrated many significant things for the country, exemplified by three key themes mentioned by the participants of this study. First, there was a national self-realization of hope that Japan had emerged just 25 years after the complete devastation of World War IIII. There was a developing sense of being able to be on the world stage in a positive way, with pride in the country and connection with the world. Second, 1970 marked a time of unprecedented economic growth and development and a period of historic prosperity (see Nakamura 1995). Expo 70 was both a marker of the beginning of considerable prosperity and also a contributor to the rapid economic growth of the area, since the exposition opened up more business and trade opportunities between Japan and the rest of the world. Third, as a consequence of the association of Expo 70 and Japan’s rapid economic growth, most participants of working age (particularly males) have memories of the Expo 70 as a period when they were extremely busy in their business and work life, with little time for leisure activities.