Tower of the Sun 1970

Taro Okamoto’s ‘Tower of the Sun’ is a monumental sculpture that was erected for the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan. The tower is adorned with several faces, most prominently the golden face at the top, symbolizing the future. Consider the sun motif, a symbol stretching back to ancient Egyptian deities like Ra, the solar deity, often depicted with a falcon head and sun disk. The sun is also a universal symbol of life, energy, and rebirth. The tower’s anthropomorphic features, with its faces, are a powerful reminder of the human connection to nature. Much like the ancient Greek god Atlas, burdened with holding up the heavens, the Tower of the Sun embodies a similar mythical quality, bearing the weight of cultural memory. The re-emergence of these archetypes speaks to our collective unconscious, reminding us that cultural symbols are never truly lost.