Expo '70: Osaka's $2 Billion Blowout

THE theme of Expo '70 is progress and harmony, but last week the fairgrounds seemed to reflect paltry progress and considerable confusion. Workmen darted among unfinished buildings. Girl guides drilled in mini-toga uniforms. Postmen roared around on scarlet scooters, learning their routes. Policemen studied plans for coping with the expected influx of pickpockets and prostitutes.

No one doubts, however, that Expo will open on schedule. Pandemonium also prevailed before the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, practically up to the hour that the flame was rekindled. Then, in a final frenetic burst of activity that the Japanese refer to as a kamikaze construction charge, the workers finished everything down to the last doorknob. The same is expected at Expo.

Japanese fairgoers, along with 1,000,000 foreigners who are expected to visit Expo during its 183-day run, will be assailed by a stunning diversity of sights, sounds and smells. The pavilion area, where 72 nations are exhibiting, features what observers call "the battle of the rooftops." Among the combatants, naturally, is the Soviet Union, with a bold red and white sickle-shaped structure that soars 339 ft., and the U.S., with a ground-hugging elliptical Fiberglas Beta-fabric roof that is inflated with air and anchored with cables to concrete embankments.

Burma's building is shaped like a royal catamaran barge, Hawaii's like a volcano, the Ivory Coast's like elephant tusks. Even the tiny Persian Gulf sheikdom of Abu Dhabi has a pavilion--because, the Expo guidebook notes, it "hopes to gain new friends in the world by taking part." Japanese Architect Kenzo Tange, in charge of overall planning, claims that he likes the clashing effects. The only building that really angers him, he says, is a traditional seven-story pagoda erected by Japan's Furukawa conglomerate.

Exhibits are as disparate as the architecture. Emphasizing its lunar conquest, the U.S. will display genuine moon rocks, space suits and a model of the Apollo 11 lunar module. Russia, observing the centennial of Lenin's birth, will stress Soviet culture, history and science. Pursuing techniques pioneered in Montreal three years ago, the fair features several dazzling, multiscreen light shows, and psychedelic sound shows as well. The Japan steel-and-iron-industries building has 1,300 loudspeakers embedded in the ceiling and walls to stun visitors with a "Song of Steel."

When Expo visitors tire of the exhibits, they will be able to retreat to a 64-acre Japanese garden filled with twisted pines, bamboos, cherry trees, ponds, bridges and teahouses. At 210 restaurants, geared to dispense 235,000 meals per day, they can sample anything from Algerian cous-cous to Siberian snow grouse. Entertainment will range from the Bolshoi Opera and the New York Philharmonic to a three-mile roller coaster called the daidarasaurus. Offering a different sort of show, radical Japanese students plan demonstrations to show their opposition both to the Establishment responsible for the fair and the expected renewal in June of the U.S.-Japanese security treaty. They may also time protests to coincide with the planned visits of foreign dignitaries like Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

Government and industry have spent $2 billion on Expo, much of it on facilities to transport and house visitors. Even so, the crowds may be more than Expo can handle. Already all hotel rooms within a two-hour radius of Osaka are booked, and families are being asked to take in visitors. The worst problems may come on a new highway built to move 25,000 cars a day but facing an estimated influx of 35,000. Police are warning Expo-bound motorists to pack two meals, drinking water and a portable toilet before they set out.

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