Posted in: Events, Lucca Comics & Games, Pop Culture | Tagged: Expo 2025 Osaka, italy, japan, Lucca Comic & Games 2025

Lucca Comic & Games Takes Part in Expo 2025 Osaka

Lucca Comic & Games took part in Expo 2025 Osaka this month as one of the many examples of Tuscany culture, both past and present

Organizers for Lucca Comics & Games visited Japan this month for Expo 2025 Osaka, as they are an official partner of the Italian Pavilion and a participant in the event. Members of the convention were present as part of the week dedicated to the Tuscany Region or Italy, which was called "Tuscany: Endless Renaissance," and featured many cultural items from the region on display, both historical and modern. LC&G  will be one of the participants serving as an example of Italian excellence and as a bridge between Italy and Japan. We have more info from the announcement, as well as a quote from LC&G for you here.

Lucca Comics & Games at Expo 2025 Osaka

Among the guests the Sensei Yoshitaka Amano, ambassador of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, a title bestowed upon him during the last edition of Lucca Comics & Games – donated reproductions of three of his operas inspired by Puccini, created for the posters of Lucca Comics & Games 2024, to the highest Italian institutional officials: the work inspired by Tosca was given to the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella; the one dedicated to Madama Butterfly, a symbol of the relationship between the two cultures, was given to the Italian Ambassador to Japan and Commissioner for Italy at Expo 2025, Mario Vattani; the one dedicated to Turandot, the masterpiece by Lucca native Giacomo Puccini, whose centenary will be celebrated next year, was dedicated to Eugenio Giani, President of the Tuscan Region. A special fourth reproduction, depicting Pinocchio, a symbol of Italian culture, was finally donated by Amano to the Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli, a great enthusiast of Sensei's art: an initiative that follows their meeting last March in Rome on the occasion of the opening of the Amano Corpus Animae exhibition, produced by Lucca Comics & Games and currently underway at Palazzo Braschi (until October 12, 2025).

At Expo 2025, legendary master Go Nagai, creator of characters such as Mazinger, Grendizer, and Devilman received the prestigious Pegasus Award for Culture from the Tuscany Region. Go Nagai, along with Emanuele Vietina and Tullia Carlino, coordinator of the Casa di Dante Museum, held an engaging panel dedicated to the influence of Dante Alighieri on his work. Go Nagai's manga version of the Divine Comedy—the drawings of which are inspired by the 19th-century version by French painter Gustave Doré—is in fact the only comic book in the Florentine Museum's collection of Comedies, the largest in the world. Lucca Comics & Games' presence at the Osaka Expo was an opportunity to present the Lucca International Comics Museum. The first renderings of the structure that will celebrate and study comics and all the languages of international popular culture and modern forms of storytelling and visual narration were presented in Japan.

"Last year, Ambassador Mario Vattani signed a protocol to partner the Italian pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka with Lucca Comics & Games. For the first time an Italian institution acknowledged in such a major way a community event dedicated to contemporary mythologies," commented Emanuele Vietina, director of Lucca Comics & Games, "Today, at the opening of the Tuscany Region Week, we explained how these narratives create a bridge between Japan and Italy, embracing generations of new citizens through cultural enjoyment. And in such a prestigious context, we presented the Lucca International Comics Museum project, which we are developing together with the Ministry of Culture, the Tuscany Region, and the City of Lucca. This future permanent comics factory will be located in the old Tobacco Factory—a key industrial site for the Lucca community between the 19th and 20th centuries—and will become a key hub for creative industries. Our friends from the Kyoto International Manga Museum attended our presentation and inspired us. This ambitious journey, which began in Osaka, aims to connect the two most important Comics traditions on the planet: the Italian and the Japanese."

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