KOBE, JAPAN 1981
Portopia '81
"Creation of a New City of Culture on the Sea"

Quick List Info

Dates Open - March 20 to September 15, 1981. Gates open 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Attendance - 16,000,000 total visitors, including 200,000 foreigners.

International Participants - 30 nations and other international participants in 4 pavilions.

Total Cost - Expo cost 280 billion yen. That's about $1.345 billion at the March 20, 1981 exchange rate of 207.17 yen to the $. Total cost of construction of the Marine city, which began in 1966, estimated at $2.5 billion.

Site Acreage - 106 acres. Some sources list 128 acres.

Sanction and Type - Unsanctioned by the Bureau of International Expositions. Essentially a Japanese regional expo with international participation.

Ticket Cost - Adult Full admission price - $10.

Photo top center: Overall view of expo site, Portopia '81 Postcard, 1981, Seikyokudo Postcards. Courtesy worldsfairphotos.com. Column Top: Package of Portopia '81 Postcards, 1981, Seikyokudo Postcards. Courtesy worldsfairphotos.com. Column Below: Historic image of Kobe and its port, 1880, Kimbei Kusakabe. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons via the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

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History of the Event

Was Portopia '81 a true world's fair? Probably not. It was a Japanese regional exposition meant to celebrate the completion of an island extension of the city Kobe called Port City. It did have some international flavor with thirty nations and international organizations participating in four exhibit pavilions, although one was really a shopping mall. However, its attendance, at sixteen million people, is hard to ignore, and the participation of other nations, while minimal, augmented by the thirty-two corporate and national pavilions of Japan, made it an exposition worth note. Even though it really gets little attention from the world expo community, perhaps it should to some greater degree. Japan has always loved their expos ever since Osaka, only eighteen miles away from Kobe, had hosted Expo '70 and Okinawa a smaller fair, BIE sanctioned, in 1975.

Portopia '81 was different than those, of course. The thirty-two corporate pavilions were large world's fair style exhibits that wowed the crowd. They were futuristic. They were spectacular. There was a large focus on energy and the environment. So it's not hard to see why the international exhibits took a back seat. On the just over one hundred acres of this new just over one thousand acre island eight miles long, there was an amuseument park called Leisureland, theme pavilions, an Earth Dome, prefecture pavilions, aquarium, planetarium, and a tram to the island that sometimes backed up three hours long. Now there's a different kind of traffic jam, but a traffic jam none the less.

The pavilions of the Japanese corporations, including Sanyo Solarium, Kansai Power Company, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Suntory, Sumitomo, Kobe Planetarium, UCC Coffee, Osaka Gas Wonderland, and Midori Seabottom spanned the site with architecture that was mostly odd angles and futuristic. The average wait time to see a pavilion was one hour. Imagine the wait time for the popular ones. There was also a thirty story hotel, called the Port City Island Hotel, and office complex in the center of the expo site. It could be seen from all over and needed tunnels to navigate through it.

Above photo. Site map of Portopia '81, 1981, Assumed from the Kobe Port Island Expo Association. Courtesy worldsfairphotos.com. Below: Portopia Stamp, Original Source Unknown. Courtesy Pinterest.



The exposition was a success by any grand measure with the sixteen million people in attendance blowing past estimates of four to six million. The legacy of the expanded acreage of Port City, augmented by the buildings and infrastructure of Portopia have remained important to Kobe City and its 2.5 million residents within the metropolitan area.

Unsanctioned Expo

International Participants
Nations and Colonies

Japan. Other international participants included Australia and Finland. Full list not available.

Japanese Domestic Participants (32 pavilions) - Kobe Port Island Expo Association Theme Pavilion "Cultural City on the Sea", Hyogo Prefecture, Kobe City, Kawasaki Steel Corporation, Kobe Steel, Suntory, Sanwa, The Taiyo Kobe Bank, The Deiei Inc., Sumitomo, Mitsubishi, Japan IBM, Sanyo, Kansai Electric Power, Osaka Gas, Fuji Bank and Fuyo Group, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Mitsui, Matsushita Electric, Uishima Coffee, and collective halls for smaller participants.

Note: It is sometimes difficult to tell whether nations or representative groups of nations actually participated in a significant way. Newspaper reports as well as the official guidebook may indicate participation when actual participation did not occur, or occurred minimally. Take the above as a guide, not gospel.

Expo Tidbits
One example of international participation was the production of Hanna Barbara's Flintstones on Parade, which included seventy-five dancers and crew.

Population of Kobe in 1981 was 1,372,500. Unsure whether that includes the entire metropolitan area or just the city proper.

Estimated daily population of the Port City island after the exposition was 70,000.

There was an unmanned computer operated railway to and around the site, taking visitors from downtown Kobe to Portopia.

A total of 16,617 people worked at the exposition and related enterprises.

Legacies
The Port City island is still there with many of the buildings intact from Portopia. In fact, the island has been expanded with an additional nine hundred and sixty-three acres. Today, the buildings and acreage of Portopia and environs includes hotels, a heliport, the UCC Coffee Museum, two universities ( Kobe Women's University and Kobe Gakuin University), the Kobe Convention Center, Kobe Animal Kingdom, World Memorial Hall, Meriken Park, plus lots of shipping containers and facilities.

None of the expo buildings from Portopia '81 exposition held on the reclaimed land were damaged during the Kobe earthquake of January 17, 1995.

Those in Charge

Tatsuo Miayzaki (Mayor of Kobe City), President.


Sources: Kobe Port Island Expo Authority; worldsfaircommunity.org; worldsfairphotos.com; New York Times; Wikipedia.

Photo column top: Article on Japanese on Portopia '81, 1981, Original Source Unknown. Courtesy Pinterest. Middle: Ticket from Portopia '81, 1981, Kobe Port Island Expo Association. Courtesy WorldsFairCommunity.org and Flickr. Bottom: Aerial view of Port City, Kobe City, Japan, 2003, NASA. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.