Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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Those tasked with American cultural diplomacy gave surfing another chance not long afterward. The year was 1970, the place was Japan, and the setting was the first world’s fair ever to be held in Asia: the Japan World Exposition, or Expo ’70, in Osaka. Running for six months, the exposition was spread over 815 acres and featured the participation of seventy-seven countries, more than two dozen Japanese and foreign corporations, several U.S. and Canadian local governments, and three multilateral organizations. It drew an estimated 64 million visitors.⁴⁵ The general purpose of Expo ’70, like the purpose of all world’s fairs, was to showcase various nations’ geographies, economies, cultures, and societies. Yet such exhibitions, regardless of their innocuous facades, are always political.⁴⁶ In 1970, deep into the Cold War, there was no question that the United States was competing with the Soviet Union over which country would mount the most impressive national display. “Whether we like it or not,” wrote the chief of the American delegation to the director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), “we really are being thrown into a competition with the Russians over here.”⁴⁷ American officials thus took their cultural work very seriously.