Banpaku Memorial Park

Commemorating the success of the 1970 Japan World Exposition, the former site of the Expo was transformed into a “cultural park surrounded by greenery” with a Japanese garden, a nature and culture garden, and cultural, sports, leisure, and lodging facilities, covering a total area of 260 hectares.

After the World Exposition, the pavilions from around the world were removed and replaced by a natural forest of trees, plants, and flowers on artificial ground.

The “Nature Park” was designed around the “Tower of the Sun,” the symbol of the Expo by Taro Okamoto, with forests and satoyama on the west side and lawns on the east side to create the image of a plain, The “Plain,” with its festival plaza and green space, hosts a variety of events and festivals.

There are spots such as “Chazukuri no Sato,” a tea farm with 474,700 trees, which creates a rural landscape of a village; “Hana no Oka,” a hill of flowers with rape blossoms and poppies in spring and cosmos in autumn; “Shizen no Mori,” a natural forest where visitors can observe plants and insects and a learning facility, the Nature Observation Learning Center; and “Gendai The “Forest of Contemporary Art” was created to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Japan World Exposition.

Other cultural facilities include the Japanese Garden, which was one of the Japanese government’s exhibition facilities at the time of the Expo, and the National Museum of Ethnology, which collects and exhibits materials and information on all ethnic groups around the world.