4- Keynote Speaker

Dr. Noriko Aso

Aquapolis, Aquarium, and Aquafutures at the 1975 Okinawan Ocean Expo.

The 1975 Okinawa International Ocean Exposition was officially a celebration of the recent reversion of the islands to Japanese sovereignty after almost three decades of U.S. military governance. Less officially, the exposition was supposed to be an opportunity to address ways in which both powers saw the prefecture as an economic and political problem. The solution was to capitalize on the island nature of Okinawa. The exposition’s slogan was “Umi: sono nozomashii mirai” (the English version was “the sea we would like to see”), its crowning symbol was the offshore “floating city” called the Aquapolis, and its most lasting institutional legacy, the Churaumi Aquarium. Even within the exposition, however, there was more than one vision of Okinawa’s future, and they were not always in harmony.