Osaka, Japan – Expo 2025 has opened to crowds of visitors in Osaka, Japan amid controversy over weak ticket sales and the event’s enormous cost.
Hosted inside the world’s largest wooden structure, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s Grand Ring, the mega event began on Sunday with more than 160 countries showcasing exhibits ranging from a Martian meteorite to a laboratory-grown heart.
Despite heavy rain and gushing winds, visitors queued for hours on the first day of the Expo to get a chance to visit some 80 pavilions on site.
Japan’s government has cast the event, themed “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”, as an opportunity for the world to work together to overcome “various crises of divisions”.
“At times such as these, I believe it is extremely meaningful for people from around the globe to come together to discuss the theme of ‘life’ and to be exposed to cutting-edge technology, diverse ways of thinking and cultures,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said at the opening ceremony on Saturday.
The run-up to the quinquennial event was marked by a series of setbacks, including a methane gas leak at the venue and Japan Airlines’s decision to pull out of a much-hyped air taxi demonstration.
But most embarrassing for the organisers has been the sluggish ticket sales relative to the event’s considerable cost.
Slightly more than nine million tickets were sold before the opening, a far cry from the target of 14 million.
The weak sales have cast doubt on the government’s estimate that more than 80 percent of operating costs would be covered by ticket revenues.
Meanwhile, construction costs nearly doubled from their original estimate of 235 billion yen ($1.65bn).
The prospect of heavy financial losses has revived uncomfortable memories of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when city authorities were forced to go cap in hand to the central government after the cost of the competition blew past estimates.
The Osaka Expo risks repeating the “failure” of the Tokyo Olympics, said Morinosuke Kawaguchi, a business strategist and former lecturer at the Institute of Science Tokyo.
“No one wants to talk about the Tokyo Olympics as it’s a traumatic experience [for the government], but this expo is likely going to be another trauma,” Kawaguchi told Al Jazeera.
“The Tokyo Olympics didn’t become a huge political issue after, but this time there are no excuses.”
Kawaguchi said the reception for the 2025 Expo is likely to pale in comparison to the fanfare that greeted the 1970 event in Osaka, which attracted some 64 million visitors.
“For that one, two years before the event, the TV showed that the pavilion of the US was completed, and people were excited,” he said.
In addition to weak ticket sales, the expo was beset by construction delays, with most of the pavilions still not completed in the final month before opening.
Kawaguchi said Japan’s older population is also not necessarily as interested in new technologies as it was in 1970.
Japan’s lawmakers, who are mostly aged above 50 years, “held on to the good memories” of the 1970 Osaka World Expo, Kawaguchi said.
“They thought it can be a trigger for an economic boost, but it’s just a hallucination,” he said.
Some observers fear that the Osaka Expo will follow in the footsteps of the 2000 Hannover World Expo, which received less than half of the 40 million visitors projected by organisers and racked up a deficit exceeding $800m.
Enthusiasm was so low for the event that the organisers had to slash the ticket price by more than 10 percent just a month after the opening, and the loss was eventually covered by millions of tax revenue.
The Japanese government last year estimated that the Osaka Expo would generate 3 trillion yen ($21bn) worth of economic benefits.
More recently, the private Resona Research Institute last month estimated that tourism generated by the event could boost the country’s consumption by 1 trillion yen ($7bn), with overseas visitors accounting for about one-third of that amount.
The Osaka Expo’s prospects, however, have not been helped by the trade tensions set off by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs policy.
Mega events such as world expos are often complicated by trade wars, said Tai-wei Lim, a professor of business and Japanese studies at Soka University in Hachioji, Japan.
“The ongoing trade wars and global uncertainties of a polycrisis [could] create challenging factors beyond Japan’s control,” Lim told Al Jazeera.
Counting in the expo’s favour is the fact that Japan has been riding a tourism boom. Last year, the country welcomed a record 36.9 million visitors, a more than 15 percent increase from the pre-pandemic record.
In January and February, tourist arrivals were up 28 percent compared with the same period last year.
“A fraction of these visitors would trawl in significant revenue,” Lim said.
Most attendees, however, are expected to be Japanese.
The Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition has forecast that nearly 90 percent of visitors will be residents of the country.
In a poll by Kyodo News last month, nearly three in four Japanese said they had no interest in visiting the event.
Kawaguchi, the former lecturer at the Institute of Science Tokyo, said the lack of interest could be attributed to changes in the tech landscape.
“It’s not necessary for people to gather in the real world. At home you can experience it,” he said. “These expos can move online.”
Lim, however, said the expo could still play an important role in tech development and diplomacy for the region.
“It’s important regionally as there are intentions and desires, especially on the part of China, Japan and [South] Korea, to [forge] regional economic ties,” he said.
As for the legacy of the expo, the government has said it plans to repurpose the Grand Ring after the event but has not provided further details.
Lim said the government could take inspiration from the Tokyo Olympics, whose venues were converted into condominiums, energy-charging stations and recreational facilities.
Japan will want to “sustain productive use of such spaces” after the expo ends in October, Lim said.
