Reading Walkabout in Osaka: travel, mobility, and place-making

Abstract: Travelling by nostalgically hyper-modern monorail, I arrived at Suita in Osaka in search of Australian modernity. The Expo 1970 site is now a commemorative park, dotted with concrete infrastructure and brutalist architecture amongst gardens filled with autumnal colour, or spring sakura, depending on season. Its entrance is marked by an enormous two armed primitivist sculpture-The Tower of the Sun (1970) by Taro Okamoto-that looms 70 metres above the viewer, with three faces whose light-up eyes prove a disconcerting sight for night-time arrivals. The Osaka Commemorative Park is also home to the National Museum of Ethnology (known as Minpaku), which houses an extraordinary collection of ethnological artefacts from around the world and a well-stocked anthropology library.