Yoshitaka Amano
Lucca Comics & Games, partner of the Italian Pavilion, begins its activities in Osaka at the 2025 Universal Exposition. As part of the week dedicated to the Tuscany Region, entitled "Tuscany: Endless Renaissance," Lucca Comics & Games will be participating of Italian excellence, a bridge between Italy and Japan.
Among the guests the Sensei Yoshitaka Amano, ambassador of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, 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, 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.
On another note, the legendary master Go Nagai, creator of characters such as Mazinger, Goldrake, 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," commented Emanuele Vietina, director of Lucca Comics & Games, "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. Ttoday, 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."
He continues: "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, will aim to connect the two most important comics traditions."
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