The World’s Biggest Picture @ EXPO2025: Looking Back
The huge event ‘The World’s Biggest Picture @ EXPO2025’ has come safely to a close!
With 1,350 people involved, it became a grand festival worthy of the name ‘Matsuri’: mikoshi processions and ceremonies unfolded throughout the day.
From morning until night it was one whirlwind after another. As the person overseeing the event, I was on tenterhooks throughout, but we were able to bring it to a close as a great success.
That was all because
the wish ‘to make the time of everyone involved something wonderful’ came together as one.
My heartfelt thanks to all the volunteers, performers, production and operations teams who helped us. Thank you!
For me personally, the most moving moment was being able to declare, under the concept of ‘Water of Life’, that we who live on a water planet can resonate with one another like water, in a form that joins heaven and Earth.
The sound of the crystal bowls played by Yasushi Yamaguchi resonated as if cleansing the whole Earth, bringing a deep calm like being held within a mother’s womb. Hikaru Yamashita, a graduate of ROCKET, also expressed an extraordinarily beautiful world through film.
We were also delighted to introduce Director Nishijima’s film pale blue dot: If You Smile, and to share a warm message from Professor Rumiana Tsenkova, a researcher of water.
Our deepest thanks to everyone who joined us so generously.
During the Earth Day Declaration, circumstances meant that I did not stand on stage, but it was a great joy to make the declaration together as ‘Earth people’ on the stage of the Expo. Here we share the declaration delivered by Yuko Kawahara, representative of The World’s Biggest Picture.
Draft by Tetra Tanizaki; declaration and slides by Rie Fukumoto.
We declare, as people living on Earth.
Across borders, across species, across time,
we are Earth people connected to this planet.
The Earth is our home,
and the cradle that nurtures our souls.
When we listen to its heartbeat,
turn our hearts towards its pain,
and give thanks for its beauty,
we remember that we are Earth people.
Earth Day is every day we think of the Earth.
Wherever we are, and with whomever,
we can feel, pray for and act for the Earth.
May every day, for every person,
be a day to love the Earth.
Every Day, Every One, Earth Day.
For me, Expo was also a place where, amid unconditional love, displays of technology, national prestige and countless egos, a prayer for humanity’s evolution began to emerge while carrying the pain of an older age.
Through ‘Water of Life’, what I wanted to share in front of the children’s pictures was a new set of values rooted in water and life.
Water is life, and life is water.
Existence itself has value and should be nurtured within compassion.
Where do human beings come from, and where are we going? What is life?
At this turning point as we approach those profound questions, the Expo gave me an opportunity to share the message that we must recover our relationship with the Earth.
Strangely, today, after the Expo has ended, I have arrived in London.
I feel there is deep meaning in being guided to stand here a few days later, in the place where the first Great Exhibition was held in 1851.
The Expo began as a stage for a ‘spherical gaze’ that displayed the achievements and hierarchies of modern civilisation.
With that history in mind, I feel that a door has now opened quietly towards an age in which life itself becomes the measure of civilisation.
The completion ceremony of ‘The World’s Biggest Picture @ EXPO2025’ created many wonderful new connections. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who joined us.
What begins here is not an ending, but a new beginning. I hope we can continue to walk together along the journey of the soul’s evolution.
Text by FUKUMOTO, Rie