By Shigeru Saito / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
14:47 JST, April 28, 2025
KAWASAKI — Using virtual reality technology, students at the Nippon Institute of Technology have reproduced the 1970 World Exposition’s Theme Pavilion in its original form, including the Tower of the Sun, symbol of the expo and a representative work of artist Taro Okamoto.
An 18-minute-long video featuring the pavilion is being shown at “Taro Okamoto and the Tower of the Sun,” a temporary exhibition at Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki which began Saturday.
The museum came up with the idea of producing VR content of the pavilion in 2018 with the “hope of conveying creators’ intentions to future generations by reproducing works in VR.”
The museum asked the university located in Miyashiro, Saitama Prefecture, which has digital video production technology, to produce the video. Students in the Department of Information Technology and Media Design in the Faculty of Advanced Engineering worked on the project.
When the ’70 Expo in Osaka was held, the Theme Pavilion was an exhibition space integrated with a 70-meter-high tower, the Big Roof — built as if to cover its surroundings — and artwork was placed in various locations of the pavilion.
The Tower of the Sun remains preserved at the Expo ’70 Commemorative Park in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, with its interior restored and made open to the public. But most of the art pieces placed on the Big Roof and on the underground and other levels have been removed.
Although there were photos taken facing the front of the pavilion, photos taken from sides were fairly limited, with the exact size of the work exhibited on the Big Roof and its distance from the background unknown. So, this was calculated by the students using various information collected from photos and the surrounding landscape. They also looked over relevant drawings and other materials, and aimed to create three-dimensional images of even the smallest artworks in the virtual space.
Successive college seniors have taken over the production and worked on it as their graduation project.
Minato Suwa, a 22-year-old senior in the department, said, “We have tried to improve upon the work through handover from past seniors, and were able to raise the level of perfection.”
In the completed footage, the Tower of the Sun, which first appears in the distance, gradually looms large as one advances toward it slowly through an open space. As one proceeds down to the underground level where the Underground Sun and other exhibits were located, one can see the Tree of Life and other exhibits that are placed as if penetrating the interior of the tower.
After going up onto the Big Roof and taking a look at the works exhibited outside the tower, then going down to see the exhibits on the ground level, the virtual tour will come to an end. The museum screening features two-dimensional images rather than three-dimensional as the number of VR goggles available at the museum is limited.
A museum curator in charge of the exhibition says, “It is epoch-making to be able to see the entire scene of the Theme Pavilion with visual images along the tour route taken at that time.”
Prof. Junko Sugimori, who is supervising the project, said, “After enjoying the Osaka-Kansai Expo, we hope that people will come here to see the visual images created with the students’ great effort and enjoy slipping back in time to 1970 to experience the world of Taro Okamoto.” The project will be further improved in the future, she said.
The temporary exhibition will run through July 6.
