Bath and Body Works

I had to laugh when I saw the Panasonic Group’s pavilion for Expo 2025 in Osaka. When you visit the pavilion— aka “The Land of NOMO” — you’ll walk on almost 750 square meters (that’s about 8,100 square feet for those who don’t speak metric) of interlocking paving blocks made out of recycled glass from around 4,600 drum-style washing machines.

The irony, though, is that at Expo ’70 in Osaka, a washing machine was also the center of attention at the Sanyo pavilion (Panasonic now owns Sanyo). Over a 15-minute cycle, the bather —in full view of the packed of the crowds who came to watch- — soaked in water the hi-tech bathtub set at different temperatures, while a blast of hot air and bursts of infrared and ultraviolet light killed off any remaining germs.

Fifty-five years later, everything new is old again as the saying goes. The Osaka Healthcare Pavilion is spotlighting the Mirai Human Washing Machine, an evolved version developed by Science Co. of the exhibit that attracted so much rapt attention at the 1970 World Expo. Not only does it wash the whole body with a fine foam without using detergent, but it also measures the heartbeat and plays videos and music according to the user’s state of mind.

It isn’t just mere coincidence that the latest fair in Osaka has the same attraction as the one from more than half a century ago.

Yasuaki Ayama, the chairman of Science Co., was a fourth-grader back in 1970 when he encountered the futuristic bathtub that looked straight out of “The Jetsons” cartoon. Like Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Paul Gauguin, and so many others, a trip to the World Expo was where a life-changing idea took hold of him.

The more things change …