Eighty-five years after his ticket was issued for a similar event, a man was allowed to use it at this year’s World Expo in Japan.
Fumiya Takawa participated in Expo 2025 in the city of Osaka with a ticket that was originally issued to the Great International Exhibition of Japan in 1940, this year’s event organizers said in a statement on Monday.
They added that the original event did not occur because of Japan’s “intensifying war” in the region. The Japan Empire broke into China in 1937 and four years later performed a surprise attack on the American Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Takenawa, 25, bought the old ticket in March on a on -line sale, he told Japan’s Mainichi newspaper, adding that he likes to collect things from the old exhibition and initially used it as home decor.
But after wondering if it could be used for this year’s event, he said he approached the organizers who agreed that they could use it.
“This is my first exhibition, and I feel part of the story,” he said, adding that he visited the Czech and Saudi Arabia pavilions at the exhibition. “The person who had this ticket before me waited 85 years, and now their desire has finally come true,” he said.
Although he lives in Tokyo, he said he would I would like to revisit the exhibition when he travels to Osaka to see his family.
Expo, also known as the World Fair, shows scientific, technological, economic and social progress throughout the planet. Launched in 1851, the Crystal Palace of London is now held every five years in different places under the supervision of an intergovernmental organization.
The event in 1940 is known as the “Phantom Expo”, as never happened, the organizers said, adding that those with tickets, as there were previously allowed to the 1970 Expo in Osaka and Expo 2005 at the Japanese City Hall of Aichi.
Other people with tickets from the exhibition canceled in 1940 would also be able to participate, they said.