Osaka Expo Visit #38: FINAL DAY October 13th & What Comes Next...

Scenes from the day....laughter, joy, and tears.

Expo 2025 Osaka is over! Over the past month, since it ended (after I stopped crying), I’ve been reflecting on what this extraordinary global gathering revealed: that connection, communication, and collaboration remain our most powerful innovations. Expo created thousands of “micro-moments of cultural diplomacy,” - small human gestures that ripple out and create broader understanding and large-scale dialogue, reminding us that progress begins with understanding one another and focusing on our shared goals for a better future.

What will be done with the momentum and exposure that Expo created?  With the issues it revealed? With the connections made? With the lessons learned?

How will Osaka, Kansai, and Japan use this strategic moment'?

Expo served as a launchpad — elevating regional visibility, accelerating global engagement, and revealing a renewed sense of leadership potential. It created the conditions for new ventures, deeper transformation, and a broader global mindset.

How will this momentum manifest now that the spectacle of Expo is over?

In a surprising turn of events, Japan elected a female Prime Minister just weeks after Expo ended — a milestone that arrived before the United States. What does it mean about Japan’s approach to leadership going forward, to gender representation, and what true female empowerment could look like in the years ahead?

This may also be the moment for Japan to export more than products — to share its sensibilities, values, and collaborative culture more intentionally on the global stage. The country now stands at a point of meaningful opportunity: a time to create new narratives, accelerate advancement, and strengthen its leadership role internationally.

No (major) project is ever perfect — but every project leaves behind insights, relationships, lessons, and momentum that are invaluable if we take the time to capture them and act on them. As the plus/delta reviews of Osaka Expo begin, my hope is that Osaka, Kansai, and Japan will look ahead and focus on…

1. Economic - continue with the action plan to position Osaka as a global business and innovation hub, attracting new (foreign) investment opportunities and collaborations

2. Soft power - keep spreading Japanese cultural diplomacy internationally in bigger ways.

3. Regional pride and power - continue promoting Osaka/Kansai innovation and entrepreneurial uniqueness for foreign investment and promoting its businesses internationally.

4. Global responsibility - share/export even more Japanese sensibilities worldwide — harmony, precision, integrity, hospitality. It needs it! Step more powerfully into a global role and responsibilities to fill the global power vacuum that seems to be forming.

   
   

The next chapter is not about what happened at the Expo — but about what Osaka, Kansai, and Japan choose to do because of it. And that will make all the difference.

Thanks for letting me share my Osaka Expo 2025 journey with you.

NOTE: I wrote, gave talks, and was interviewed about my Expo visits to share the wonders, innovations, inspiration, and cultural richness of EXPO Osaka 2025 with those who are interested but unable to attend. Here is the link to the post containing links to all my expo talks, podcast interviews, and Forbes.com article features.

*All pictures and videos by Yvonne Burton