“A place for noise”: Dissonance, Protest, and Youth in Expo ’70 and its Representations

The 1970 World Exposition in Osaka (Expo ’70) has been critiqued as an ideological performance that assuaged and coopted political, social, and artistic protest movements in the 1960s through the mobilization of citizens behind economic development policies and the promotion of depoliticized consumer lifestyles. Recent research by Midori Yoshimoto and others investigating the expo as a site of multiple voices and interest groups has, however, challenged this view. This essay furthers this inquiry through an analysis of two contemporary expo-related texts: a photograph of the raku-gaki ko¯na¯ in Nicolas Bouvier’s Chronique japonaise (1975); and the Daiei monster movie, Gamera tai Daimaju¯ Jaiga¯ (1970). These depict the expo as both a contested event and, relatedly, an event for young people through the figure or device of “noise.” Literally, noise appears in these texts as cacography on designated walls of the site and as low-frequency sound used as a weapon against monster attack. In that, in both cases, noise is a means to protect the expo by regulating opposition, I argue that it represents the limits on meaningful political speech that Expo ’70 both itself embodied and proclaimed for post-1970 society.