Edging Toward Japan: Expressing Solidarity with the 'Expo Lady'

The Mainichi

4 days ago

It was in the news recently that that a woman, Tomiyo Yamada, 76, colloquially known as the "Expo Lady" ("Banpaku Obaasan") had managed not only to attend the Osaka Expo every day since it opened in April, but also to gain admittance to every single one of the 188 pavilions. The last one to succumb was the Netherlands Pavilion, which commemorated her arrival with a special welcome from the Dutch Consul General and the presentation of a "Miffy" soft toy. She intends to keep visiting every day until the final day of the Expo in October.
News reports noted that that this was the latest in a series of Expo conquests by the indomitable lady, who had also attended every day of Expo 2005 in her native prefecture of Aichi, as well as the opening days of the expos in Shanghai and Yeosu, South Korea, and even moved, together with her husband and son, to a flat close to the Expo site in December last year.
It's tempting to scoff at the battiness of such obsessive behaviour, but I found myself quietly admiring her. For one thing, I must confess that I rather share her enthusiasm for expos. I have noted a lot of jaded attitudes towards the Osaka Expo: "A waste of billions of dollars that could have been better spent elsewhere" is how one friend dismissed it, while telling me it wasn't his cup of tea.
But I think the Osaka Expo is absolutely great. I went there on two consecutive days, walked my legs and hips into oblivion, and only got round less than half of it. If I had the time and money, I think I would make Facebook friends with the Expo Lady and keep going back every day as well.
How can you not like the Expo? It's like having the ability to travel round the entire world in a single day, exploring countries you might never be able to get to in real life and finding out a little about their regions, foods, traditions, clothing, industries and hopes for the future. One minute you are in Uzbekistan, the next minute in Belize, and then you are in a display of a country you never even knew existed (apologies, Palau). You discover that Hungary and Japan are connected in ways you never expected.
In this alternate universe, the real size of different countries and their populations is often disproportionate to the size, magnificence and inventiveness of their pavilions, and their contents often disconnected to anything you would expect. Spain, that hot dry country, has a display entirely devoted to oceanic ecosystems; Australia has weirdly gesticulating dancers on skateboards. So fantastical and fascinating was everything I saw over the course of two days that I never wanted to leave.
I felt exactly the same about the last Osaka Expo way back in 1990, which continues to reign in my memory as a dreamscape of magical gardens and lush pavilions. It's been worth the wait for the Expo to come home to Osaka once more.
But setting aside just for a moment my own enthusiasm for expos, I also have a sneaking regard for the Expo Lady in a different way as a next-level obsessive. The obsessives of this world often instinctively grasp that imbuing significance and attachment to something seemingly trivial can invest their own lives with purpose and meaning and sometimes yield the most spectacular results.
I am reminded of the film "The Lost King", in which a middle-aged lady at a loose end after losing her job randomly conceives an interest in the English Plantagenet King Richard III (r. 1483-85), whose final resting place after being killed in battle had been a centuries' long mystery. She decides to obsessively read every book she can about him and attend meetings of other enthusiasts, until finally her pursuit leads her to actually working out where his body is buried (under a car park). As she heads into a bookshop at the start of her journey, the film's director cleverly inserts in the shop window a copy of "Moby Dick", the ultimate tale of an all-consuming pursuit around the world of a "White Whale".
For the Expo Lady, the Expo itself is her "White Whale", but instead of chasing round after it on the high seas, she merely does daily circuits of a pretty, artificial island in Osaka Bay.
Properly speaking the Expo Lady is a subset of the Obsessive genre known as the "Completionist". And again, my sympathies and admiration are entirely with her. We may not all have posted a map of the world on our wall and put pins in every country we have visited, but most of us have some kind of mental checklist of the places we have got to and know where we still need to tick off before we kick the bucket.
A former British finance minister -- a fellow of no particular abilities or interest -- once gripped my attention when he revealed that he was spending his retirement attempting to visit every country in South America. This is the type of thing which every completionist can appreciate. Ticking things off, collecting things, getting a full set of something, these are all activities that human beings seem to be curiously drawn to.
For many years I tended to fly back and forth to Japan with the Dutch carrier KLM. In my 20s and 30s, I flew so many times with them that my air miles built up and, joy of joys, I could finally upgrade myself every now and then to business class. It's a ritual of business class travel with KLM that at the end of the journey the cabin crew come round and offer you one of their mini Delft Blue Dutch Houses (modelled on 105 real historical houses in Amsterdam) filled with Bols liquor. Whenever I used to receive one of these, I would take it home, crack open the seal on the chimney and drink it. Only when I had collected seven or eight of them did someone point out to me that I wasn't supposed to be drinking them: I was supposed to be collecting them.
The next time I wangled my way into business class, I observed a besuited executive take out a notebook with the list of dozens of numbers of all the mini houses he had collected so that he could carefully choose one that he did not already possess. I began to realize what an absolute amateur I was in the world of completionist collecting, merely picking out a Dutch house based on a vague memory of the ones I already had.
If you can't beat them, join them... Soon I too was showing up with the numbers of Dutch houses I already had at home, intent on adding a couple more to the set. And then, just when I had built up a small collection, I stopped flying as much and was peremptorily returned to economy on an almost permanent basis.
For most of us in life, we are lucky if we get to one or two South American countries, lucky to have a couple of pretty Dutch houses as souvenirs of travelling business class, lucky to spend a couple of days at Osaka Expo... But we can surely summon up admiration for those who refuse to compromise, who want the full set, and manage like the Expo Lady to get round all 188 pavilions.
When she got into the Dutch Pavilion, my only regret is that the Dutch Consul General did not present her -- instead of a silly "Miffy" toy -- with the full set of 105 Delft Blue Dutch houses. That would have been a truly suitable presentation to the amazing Expo Lady, that most superbly accomplished hunter of the White Whale.
@DamianFlanagan
(This is Part 66 of a series)
In this column, Damian Flanagan, a researcher in Japanese literature, ponders about Japanese culture as he travels back and forth between Japan and Britain.
Profile:
Damian Flanagan is an author and critic born in Britain in 1969. He studied in Tokyo and Kyoto between 1989 and 1990 while a student at Cambridge University. He was engaged in research activities at Kobe University from 1993 through 1999. After taking the master's and doctoral courses in Japanese literature, he earned a Ph.D. in 2000. He is now based in both Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and Manchester. He is the author of "Natsume Soseki: Superstar of World Literature" (Sekai Bungaku no superstar Natsume Soseki).