The 2025 Osaka-Kansai Japan Expo is set to kick off in one and a half years — but not a single national pavilion has been built yet.
Amid a labor shortage and a global increase in the price of building supplies, the expo’s estimated construction cost has nearly doubled from an initial ¥125 billion in November 2018 — when Osaka won the right to host the event — to at least ¥230 billion now.
The labor shortage in particular is creating growing problems. Some in the government and the expo association fear that the event will not be ready on time unless pavilion construction workers are exempted from a scheduled legal cap on overtime hours set to go into effect in April 2024. The laborers oppose an exemption.