[Q&A with Partner Companies #5] What questions and realizations do you want the pavilion to inspire in society?
A large number of companies are taking part in the signature pavilion, Future of Life, each of which endorses the themes of the pavilion and the approaches of Producer ISHIGURO Hiroshi. In this series of articles, we intend to showcase what ideas, visions, and initiatives these companies have come up with in response to the themes of the pavilion and of the Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan as a whole. For this fifth article, we asked partner companies the following question: What questions and realizations do you want the pavilion to inspire in society?
HASEKO Corporation
We will invite visitors to the Future of Life pavilion to envisage a society in which humans and robots coexist in harmony. Through this experience, we hope they will discover accepting diversity and expanding the possibilities of life empowers us to live the lives we aspire to. Aiming to become a corporate group for housing to create great living, we will work to deliver life and the future going forward.
KOKUYO Co.,Ltd.
Humans have entered an era in which they can continue to develop regardless of their age. As technology advances and as the boundary between virtual and real continues to blur, humans will be empowered to experience and learn new things more than ever before. Present-day divisions—of age, gender, and nationality—will cease to exist, allowing individuals to freely celebrate the virtues of learning and create a more abundant future. In such a future, how will we want to live? How will we want to connect to society? This is an ideal opportunity to consider these questions once again.
Shionogi & Co., Ltd.
https://www.shionogi.com/jp/ja/
Throughout this co-creation project, SHIONOGI has considered what society and life should be like 50 years from now from the perspective of health. We will invite visitors to the pavilion to explore technologies that will expand the possibilities of life and to understand SHIONOGI’s vision for human health. Additionally, we hope that the pavilion will encourage visitors to reflect on the preciousness of life and to consider the importance of an abundant and healthy lifestyle.
Sysmex Corporation
In the future, when present-day physical restrictions of “body” and “place” have been eliminated, how will humans live? We hope that this pavilion will serve as a foundation for the next 50 years, encouraging people worldwide to rethink their concepts of “life” and “mind,” while offering them an opportunity to face up to their own futures. For younger generations in particular, we aim for the pavilion to inspire them to reflect on the future of “life” and to consider what sort of future they wish to create.
Japan Federation of Kaigo Business Providers Consortium Expo 2025
Although humans will continue to be born and to die as humans, the ongoing evolution of AI technologies is likely to transform how we live and how we die. In such a society, there will be more opportunities for us to consider how we should live and die, like the decadence-inspired pessimism of the Kamakura period. We hope that this pavilion will inspire visitors to think about how they wish to embrace the concept of “life.”
DENSO CORPORATION
We believe the goals of future mobility are to create a society where people connect, respect one another, and lead empathetic lives. In such a society, empathetic lives would stir up our imaginative powers and engender the cycle of creating and spreading happiness. We will invite visitors to explore with us the new possibilities that such mobility will bring and the future of mobility as a whole.
Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc.
https://www.hankyu-hanshin.co.jp/
We hope that people will see the age of VUCA not as a threat to humankind or a source of anxiety, but as an opportunity to inspire hope—by expanding the possibilities of life and by realizing a future in which diversity coexists. As a company involved in transportation-centric urban planning, we aim to show visitors to the pavilion the joy of future mobility and the new values that future public transportation will inspire.
KYOCERA Corporation
Throughout history, humankind has devoted itself to developing scientific technologies to achieve happiness in both body and mind. Scientific technologies possess a limitless potential for progress, creating further possibilities for our lives and happiness. We should seriously consider which possibilities should be chosen and how they should be utilized. We intend to communicate this message by developing new technologies for the pavilion.
HEART-S CO., LTD.
We are rapidly increasing our interactions with robots, androids, and avatars. Through their experiences at the pavilion, we will encourage visitors to reconsider their responses to AI, the metaverse, and other cutting-edge technologies that make use of big data, and to reflect on how such technologies can be meaningfully incorporated into their everyday lives. We also hope the pavilion will showcase a future lifestyle that inspires hope and anticipation.
Fujikin Incorporated
We aim for the pavilion to draw attention to the possibilities inherent in the “life” that resides in robots and AI. We are extremely interested in how these forms of life will evolve going forward and how they will be incorporated into our everyday lives. Semiconductors are indispensable to AI—and our products are used in the manufacture of these semiconductors. As robots and AI continue to evolve, how will our lives change? This is a question that we ourselves would like to consider through our participation in the pavilion.
HORIBA, Ltd.
There are connections between the diverse lifeforms that make up our global environment—not just between humans, but also between the lives that exist today and those that will exist in the future. We want visitors to sense the worldview presented by the “Amplification of Lives” through the measurements and analysis of the global environment in which we currently exist. Together, let’s listen to the “voices”—or “wavelengths”— of our planet and think about ways to create a future in which diverse lives can flourish.
Iwase Cosfa Co., Ltd.
Ever since our founding, our corporate philosophy at Iwase Cosfa has been “beauty & health .” We believe that the pursuit of a healthy life, both physically and mentally, is one of humanity’s eternal aspirations. By interacting with various robots and androids at the pavilion during the Expo, we hope that visitors will be inspired to reflect on the meaning of life and on what “being alive” means. More importantly, we want visitors to consider how to make their own lives shine, and to reexamine their own approach to the concept of “life.”
TOYO BEAUTY CO., LTD.
The evolution of societal technologies over the next 50 years will lead to changes and new possibilities. We hope that this pavilion will encourage as many people as possible to consider what impact they will have on human lifestyles and work styles, and on family and societal ideals.
SHIONO KORYO KAISHA, LTD.
Scents can enrich scenes and human emotions in a quite unexpected manner, and help etch them in our memories. As innovations expand the possibilities of life, the importance of communicating through nature and culture will doubtless increase. We have high hopes that the medium of smell will enrich the exciting scenes of the “Future of Life” presented by our pavilion, and leave a powerful impression on visitors.
