Photo/Illutration Construction continues on the Grand Roof, a wooden ring that is expected to become one of the symbols of the 2025 Osaka Kansai Expo. (Takuya Tanabe)

OSAKA--With a year to go before the start of the Osaka Kansai Expo, there’s still a lot of empty space on the sprawling construction site.

Type A pavilions, which are the most prestigious, are considered the centerpiece of any expo because they are a celebration of the culture and history of the nations they represent. In such cases, the country being represented pays for all the construction costs.

But in about 30 percent of the cases, the countries planning such elaborate pavilions still have not decided on a company to construct them.

Initially, 56 Type A pavilions were to be built.

The Asahi Shimbun has learned that plans for eight pavilions have been scrapped. Seven nations decided to switch to less expensive pavilion options, and Mexico pulled out of the expo entirely.

Three nations will use Type X pavilions in which they pay only for interior work while using a prefabricated structure built by the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition. Four nations will go for Type C pavilions in which they rent out space within a structure built by the association.

But of the 48 Type A pavilions still on the drawing board, 16 have not yet selected a construction company.

As of April 12, construction has begun on only 14 Type A pavilions. Construction companies have been chosen for another 18 Type A pavilions, but construction work has not yet begun.

Much of the construction site, ringed by a circular centerpiece above-ground wooden walkway, resembles a muddy field.

This partly reflects a worker shortage in the construction sector that was behind the delay in finalizing deals between the nations planning to build pavilions and the construction companies.

Under guidelines for Type A pavilions established by the association, construction, as well as work on the exterior, needs to be completed by mid-October, with all other work on the interior to be finished by mid-January.

The basic plans for Type A pavilion construction must be submitted to the Osaka city government as an initial procedural step, mainly on environmental grounds. But as of April 12, only 40 or so countries had submitted plans for their pavilions to the city government. The other 10 or so Type A pavilions have still not even completed that first step.

In most cases, it has taken about three months for the Osaka city government to approve the basic plans to pave the way for the start of construction. On that basis, the nations that have not yet submitted their plans may have to wait until summer at the earliest for construction to begin.

To complicate matters, the construction industry has fallen under the provisions of the Labor Standards Law from April which place an upper limit on overtime hours workers can put in. That means construction companies face the prospect of even tighter staffing problems.

There appears to be a growing likelihood that construction work will not get under way as initially planned for nations that have already chosen a construction company.

(This article was written by Shinji Hakotani and Tatsuya Harada.)

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