This essay argues that Osaka/Kansai Expo 2025’s Grand Roof Ring, the Reception Hall and the “Forest” should be preserved as national treasures and transformed into a world-class botanical garden. Taking inspiration from Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden, the proposal envisions a sustainable, accessible oasis that allows visitors to enjoy seasonal plants, birds and insects. It positions the project as an enduring testament to sustainability and a permanent legacy of Expo 2025.

Last night, an idea came to me about how to use the Expo site after the event—an insight befitting “civilization’s turntable,” a place where today’s Kūkai and Nobunaga would dwell. I had decided that once summer arrived, with its clear skies, I would go to the Grand Roof Ring to take photos overlooking Osaka Bay and the city. Because of this plan I missed the chance to buy a season pass, but I can still purchase one and am considering doing so.

On August 2 the TV Tokyo (Osaka) program “Shin Bi no Kyojin” featured Fujimoto Sosuke’s “Grand Roof Ring of the Osaka–Kansai Expo,” where people involved in expos worldwide unanimously praised the ring. Westerners said, “It should all be preserved,” and people from Asia and Africa remarked, “Japanese construction technology is amazing—only the Japanese could make this.” The Grand Roof Ring, the Guest Pavilion and the Forest—three of Fujimoto Sosuke’s life‑work creations embodying his brilliant ideas—must be preserved as national treasures. I wrote this last night and shared it with the world.

It was after that that the idea mentioned at the beginning was born—the best and finest way to preserve this place forever.

In May 2011 I was diagnosed with a serious illness and told I had a 25 percent chance of survival. I spent eight months in the large Kitano Hospital, an affiliate of Kyoto University’s medical school. Thanks to the wonderful doctors and nurses, many of whom were my juniors, I was discharged fully recovered on 16 December 2011.

The following year, 2012, I spent 300 of the year’s 365 days at the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden, which is directly connected to Kitayama Station on the Kyoto subway’s Karasuma Line. Through all four seasons I photographed the park’s plants and flowers, kingfishers and other birds, black swallowtails, swallowtail butterflies and other insects, geckos and various creatures. This botanical garden was truly the best; every day offered fresh encounters and no two days were the same. At one point I even bought a monthly rail pass from Shin‑Osaka to Kyoto Station. One of the main reasons I fell in love with that garden was its convenience: I could be there fifty minutes after leaving my front door, and because the station was directly connected I didn’t feel tired at all.

Perhaps because of that experience, last night I had the ultimate answer for how to use the Expo 2025 site. There, under national and Osaka prefectural/municipal management, we should build the world’s greatest botanical garden inside the world’s largest wooden structure—the Grand Roof Ring, a heritage for humanity. Many national pavilions at the expo espouse sustainability. Creating the greatest botanical garden in human history would embody the spirit of Expo 2025. The expo is a limited‑time achievement, but this would be a permanent triumph. Not only people in Japan but visitors from around the world would come to spend the day in the garden beneath the world’s greatest ring and stroll along its sky‑high promenade. There could be no greater accomplishment.

Suntory’s wonderful water attractions and the “Ao and Night Rainbow” parade could continue as paid features. There should also be reasonably priced and delicious restaurants and rest areas with souvenir shops in the garden. Nation of Japan, Osaka Prefecture and Osaka City: let us, as a genuine sustainable project rather than empty rhetoric, build a national Expo 2025 Memorial Park inside the Grand Roof Ring, with cooperation between the prefecture and city. Let us make the Grand Roof Ring bloom with even more flowers than before. That is the true meaning of “Sukiyanen, Osaka.”

To gain support from people around the world for my entirely natural proposal, I have resolved to climb the big ring countless times between now and the expo’s end, to stroll and film the world’s finest promenade, and to share it with the world accompanied by my favorite music. (To be continued.)