Modern Living: World's Fair, Asian Style

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THE soft, bamboo-covered Senri Hills, which slope gently skyward beyond the city of Osaka, have for centuries been home only to snakes and a host of insects. Not any more; at least, not for the moment. Today the Senri range, the site of Japan's gaudy Expo '70, throbs with life. After only four weeks, the turnstiles at the 815-acre, 73-nation exhibit have clicked off 8,500,000 visitors. The one-day high: 441,000, about equal to the entire population of Buffalo, N.Y. Before the rising sun sets on the 183-day extravaganza, some 50 million Japanese (plus 1,000,000 foreigners) are expected to have visited the grounds. Without a doubt, Expo '70 will be one of the most popular world's fairs in history.

The fair has plenty to offer the Japanese and wondrous sights to please the eye of the international fair-hopper. The U.S. Pavilion, where the lines and the wait (as much as five hours) are the longest, is most popular. Sports and space —sure winners in Japan—dominate the "Images of America" theme. By far the biggest attraction of the pavilion—and the fair—is a moon rock brought back by Apollo astronauts. The crowds are also taken with an Andy Granatelli turbocar and, in baseball-crazy Japan, by Babe Ruth's old Yankee uniform and locker. The space display is understated and effective. Alan Shepard's Freedom 7 Mercury spacecraft, Gemini 12 and the command module of Apollo 8 are suspended just above visitors' heads; a lunar landing vehicle perches like a water bug near the moon rock. There is plenty of Pop art, courtesy of Andy Warhol and sundry American artists, but they have been upstaged by an American exhibit (Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, among others) from New York City's Metropolitan Museum.

Siberian Forest. If the U.S. Pavilion is subtly propagandistic, the Soviet (two to three hours' wait) is strictly hard-sell. The visitor is immediately overwhelmed by an Orwellian film of Lenin haranguing a crowd. Since Russia is pushing the centennial of Lenin's birth (TIME, April 13), there is an inevitable glass case filled with Lenin artifacts, including his Communist Party ID card. Perhaps the most startling experience for a visitor is to step off an escalator and find himself in a remarkable, lifelike Siberian forest, complete with cool breezes and chirping birds. The Soviet space exhibit, emphasizing the Soyuz complex, is decidedly more dramatic than the U.S. display.

Canada's exhibit ranks next in popularity. It boasts soaring mirrored walls and rustic wood facing under colorful revolving umbrellas, and is the best-managed exhibit of the fair: 4,000 people move completely through it each hour. Five separate films underscore Canada's youthful exuberance, a theme reinforced by the hard-rocking discotheque that opens late in the afternoon at the Quebec Pavilion.

Inside other pavilions, there are some adroit and intriguing touches. The Mexican Pavilion features Aztec relics from the Mexico City National Museum of Anthropology, set off by a mariachi band. The Indians and Hawaiians have improvised a pacifier for impatient queues: luscious dancing girls in native costumes. For comic relief, there is the Cuban Pavilion, festooned with love portraits of Castro and Che Guevara counterpointed by hate pictures of Batista and bloated capitalistas.