Expo 2025 Overexposure

Tracing Mega-Event Media Narratives and Official Discourses of the Expo and the Olympics in Japan

Bibliographic Data

ID24147405
AuthorsIsaac Gagné (0000-0003-2381-603X, Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien Tokyo), Barbara Holthus (0000-0002-9600-5046, Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien Tokyo)
Year2026
Volume24
Publication date2026-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJapan focus (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1557-4660 • E-ISSN: 1557-4660
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/apj.2026.10041
OpenAlexW7213465335
LanguageEN
References cited28

How was the Expo 2025 in Osaka spun and marketed to the public vis-à-vis the news media discourse? We focus on the issues of power play, politics, scandals, imaginaries, nostalgia, and sustainability, adding a comparative angle with the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics. While mega-events globally have similar features, some are particular to Japanese mega-events: in the ways they become a crystallization of utopian cosmopolitan imaginaries of a peaceful global society with Japan as its benevolent retainer, and in how they serve as an arena for domestic nostalgia-politics that attempts to relive the postwar glory days for the aging political-industrial elites.

Celebrity culture · Focus (optics) · Glory · Narrative · Power (physics) · Soft power · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Japanese History and Culture · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts