ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the general development of the phenomenon of international fairs and exhibitions. It discusses their role in setting out a global agenda to which countries would aspire and contribute as they took their turn, first to display within them, and then to host them. The chapter focuses on the specific part played by the Japanese in this global discourse, and the powerful way in which European ideas were adopted and overturned by their increasingly lavish participation. It looks briefly at some of Japan's own precedents for exhibition and cultural display and then the last part will re-evaluate one interpretation of Japan's contribution to the last universal exhibition of the twentieth century, in Seville, before drawing a brief conclusion about the way expositions themselves have evolved. Harvey argues that new forms of technological display such as the Fujitsu one, a laser show that created computer-generated flamenco dancers over the Lake of Spain, and 'the ubiquitous holograms'.
