[Expo 2025 Report] Rethinking “Death” at the Dynamic Equilibrium of Life Pavilion

2026.10.05

In short: at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Shin-Ichi Fukuoka’s “Dynamic Equilibrium of Life” pavilion changed how I see death: like a ring that climbs back up a slope by breaking down slightly more than it builds, life keeps its balance — and living, and even dying, is itself altruism. By Mika Tanimoto, owner of Bar Little Happiness in Hiroshima, Japan.

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Death, too, is altruism

I went to the Kansai Expo before it closed.

Here is an experience that shook — and changed — my view of life and death.

I visited them in this order: Future of Life → null² → Dynamic Equilibrium of Life.

It was just the order I happened to get reservations for, but what looked like chance may have been meant to be.

My article on Future of Life is here

My article on null² is here

A new view of life and death shown by dynamic equilibrium

At the “Dynamic Equilibrium of Life” pavilion produced by Shin-Ichi Fukuoka, I encountered a completely new way of thinking about death.

In the 3.8-billion-year history of life drawn in particles of light.

Life defying entropy

In this universe there is the “law of increasing entropy”: everything breaks down and falls apart.

But while living things are alive, they seem to keep order and balance.

For a long time, I had thought:

“Why are we born, when we’re going to die anyway?”

It isn’t that I’m afraid of death. I just wondered why we put so much energy into something that will eventually disappear —.

The metaphor of a ring climbing back up a slope

What impressed me most was Mr. Fukuoka’s metaphor of a ring.

A ring rolling down a slope keeps breaking down on one side and building on the other. If it breaks down just slightly more than it builds, the ring climbs back up the slope it should be rolling down. This is the state of dynamic equilibrium.

Eventually breakdown wins, the ring grows shorter, and disappears.

That meant that life always comes to death.

The inevitability of death, and altruism

Until now, I had thought of “altruism” as something you consciously do for someone else.

The Dynamic Equilibrium of Life pavilion proposed a different message.

Living itself is altruism, and dying itself is also altruism.

Not through effort or intention, but as the result of a system built into 3.8 billion years of life.

Just as the ring climbs back without “intending” to climb, we contribute to the whole simply by existing.

Even the death that comes at the end connects to what comes next in the flow of life.

The answer to “Why were we born?”

Why are we born, when we’re going to die anyway?

The answer to that question was this:

Being born, living, dying — each is itself a way of taking part in the 3.8-billion-year flow of life.

Death is not the end of life, but its completion.

That lightened a question that had weighed heavily on me.

Being part of a flow that has lasted 3.8 billion years already had deep meaning in itself!

The answer woven by three experiences

Future of Life

null²

And at Dynamic Equilibrium of Life, the idea that even death is altruism finally fell into place for me.

An age in which AI manipulates symbols and everything is being digitised.

AI is evolving faster than humans.

That’s exactly why I feel our way of understanding “life” within this great whirlpool is being questioned.

Humans have acquired the “bonus” of cleverness that makes us live bound by all sorts of common sense and symbols.

But in the history of Homo sapiens, that is only a moment.

Beyond it, I could see the irreplaceable beauty of existing, living — and dying.

That’s why tonight, too, at the counter of Bar Little Happiness, I want to cherish every moment with my guests.

Believing that time, which may never be recorded, will shine a little in the flow of someone’s life.

This moment is precious and beautiful precisely because it is fleeting.

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Every encounter is meant to be. Welcome to the world of Rum&Whisky.

Mika Tanimoto, Bar Little Happiness

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