S P O T ／ SPOT-011

Tower of the Sun (Interior)

太陽の塔（内部）たいようのとう

Okamoto Tarō's 70-meter concrete colossus has presided over the former grounds of Expo '70 since it was erected for the 1970 World Exposition — too strange to demolish, too iconic to ignore, it simply stood there for 48 years with its sealed interior unexplored, its internal world a rumor. In 2018, that interior was finally opened to the public, revealing what may be the most extraordinary thing a famous exterior has ever been hiding. Inside the Tower of the Sun, a structure called the "Tree of Life" spirals upward through the tower's core: a 45-meter sculptural column bearing 183 models of creatures representing the evolution of life on Earth, from primordial single-celled organisms to modern primates. The models escalate in complexity and in strangeness, reaching the tower's crown in a tumult of primates and proto-humans, with Okamoto's characteristic aesthetic — vivid, raw, confrontational — applied at biological scale. An additional exhibit reconstructs the "Face of the Earth" (the Black Sun), a fourth face that was once displayed on the tower's base before being lost; its restoration adds a mythological dimension to an already overwhelming experience. Visiting the inside after knowing only the outside feels like discovering that a familiar landmark has been secretly a living organism all along.