How a Childhood Expo Inspired Hideo Kojima’s Most Iconic Games

Before stealth mechanics and strand-type gameplay, there was a boy wandering through the Osaka World Expo in 1970. Hideo Kojima, then fresh out of elementary school, describes the event as a seismic shift in his worldview. “Without that Expo, my future-oriented approach and globalism would never have developed,” he writes in a recent essay for Japanese magazine an-an. “Neither Metal Gear nor Death Stranding would have been created.”

The Expo wasn’t just a tech showcase—it was a ritual of global imagination. Kojima recalls meeting avant-garde artist Taro Okamoto, sci-fi writer Sakyo Komatsu, architects Kenzo Tange and Kisho Kurokawa, and fashion legends Hanae Mori and Junko Koshino. It was, in his words, a “close encounter of the third kind.”

“Hello” as a Design Philosophy

Kojima opens his essay by quoting Haruo Minami’s 1970 hit “Hello from Countries Around the World,” noting that the word “hello” is repeated 35 times. For him, it wasn’t just a greeting—it was a design principle. “It showed me the coexistence of different countries, races, religions, customs, and histories,” he writes. “It was the embodiment of ‘the past and future,’ ‘the world and harmony’ itself.”

That sense of global connection would later echo through Death Stranding, where players rebuild a fractured world through literal handshakes and digital bridges. Kojima’s Expo experience wasn’t just formative for his career; it low-key set the foundation for video games for decades.

Kojima’s Disappointment with Expo 2025

Fast-forward 55 years, and Kojima’s tone shifts. He’s less enchanted with the 2025 Osaka World Expo, calling it a missed opportunity.

“More than 70% of the visitors who said ‘hello’ to the 21st Century Osaka Expo were over 50 years old,” he notes. “In other words, they were people who experienced the Showa Expo.”

Kojima had offered ideas to the Expo 2025 committee, but was turned away.

“Young bureaucrats, who had no experience of that Expo, simply smiled wryly and said, ‘We don’t have the money.’ I haven’t had any contact with them since.”

A Personal Timeline: B.C. and A.D.

Kojima remembers the Expo fondly, as one should when it helped shape their career. He calls it the dividing line between his “personal B.C. and A.D.,” a moment that split his life into before and after. It’s a deeply Kojima sentiment: cinematic, symbolic, and emotionally charged.

And it’s not just nostalgia. It’s a blueprint. The Expo gave him a lens through which to view technology, storytelling, and human connection. It taught him that futurism isn’t just about machines—it’s about meaning.

What This Means for Kojima’s Legacy

Kojima’s reflection is a good look into how one moment can change the entire trajectory of your whole life. It reminds us that world-building starts with world-watching. That the seeds of genre-defining games can be planted in childhood wonder. And that sometimes, the most mythic stories begin with a simple “hello.”