GREEN×EXPO 2027 Kanagawa Pavilion: Vibrant INOCHI Forest's Mascots, Gardens and Musical

Kanagawa Prefecture is exhibiting the “Vibrant INOCHI Forest Kanagawa Pavilion” at GREEN×EXPO 2027. The pavilion has an indoor exhibition building and a garden, and is meant to convey the prefecture’s basic philosophy, “Vibrant INOCHI, where every life shines,” to visitors from around the world. The prefecture held a groundbreaking ceremony for its exhibit on 15 April 2026. On 8 September 2026 it held a “six months to go” announcement event and gave the public a first look at the logo, the mascots and part of the exhibits.

Logo and mascots: VIBRANTs and Momon

The official logo shows Kanagawa’s 33 cities and towns as overlapping leaves. The design expresses a sense of unity between the prefecture and its municipalities. It was created by designer Yuji Oda, known for spatial art work for companies in Japan and abroad.

Two mascot characters were introduced together. “VIBRANTs” is the collective name for a group of leaf characters, each with its own personality. They were born from the Vibrant INOCHI tree and represent life. “Momon” is a curious young Japanese dwarf flying squirrel that lives in the same forest. The two are described as close friends, and will promote the pavilion both inside and outside the building. Kanagawa Prefecture has not published official English names for either character, so we write them as VIBRANTs and Momon, following the Japanese names (バイブランツ and モモーン).

The theatre film and permanent exhibits

The indoor building’s theatre screens an original film starring VIBRANTs and Momon, titled “Vibrant INOCHI Forest — You, Life and the Future —.” The story begins with a change in the forest, which leads Momon to set off with VIBRANTs on an adventure across time and space.

Some of the permanent exhibits have also been revealed. One is the skull specimen of a baby blue whale that was stranded at Yuigahama beach in Kamakura in the summer of 2018. The discovery of plastic waste in the whale’s stomach was what prompted Kanagawa’s “Declaration of Zero Plastic Waste.” Other exhibits include a touchable digital globe, a corner where visitors can try devices certified under the prefecture’s “mibyo” (pre-symptomatic health) index and the ME-BYO BRAND scheme, and “Tomoiki Art” works that will be rotated during the Expo.

The garden: flower beds, Expo 2025’s Grand Ring timber and inclusive farming

The “Kanagawa Flower Bed” at the centre of the garden is planned to be filled mainly with flowers grown in the prefecture: canola flowers at opening, pansies afterwards, and sunflowers planted by children in July. The flower bed reuses timber from the Grand Ring at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai.

The garden also has an aquaponics system that combines fish farming with hydroponic plant cultivation, and its seedlings are raised by users of facilities for people with disabilities. There are wheelchair-accessible raised beds for gardening, and a smart-farming display that pairs robots with “joint training,” a method Kanagawa developed for growing fruit trees in straight rows. Five of the prefecture’s agricultural high schools, working together as the “GREEN LEADERSHIP CLUB,” are also building a garden where visitors can see the seasons change.

Uniforms and the Kanagawa Flower-Blooming School Project

The uniforms for exhibition attendants and operating staff have also been unveiled. Attendants wear the prefecture’s signature blue, while operating staff wear designs based on trees and leaves. The material is mainly Pieclex, a plant-derived polylactic acid fibre. After the Expo closes, the uniforms will be collected and composted. They were designed by costume designer Kana Koshiba.

The “Kanagawa Flower-Blooming School Project” has schools across the prefecture grow pansies, violas and tulips so that they all bloom at the same time. At the six-months-to-go event, the governor gave flower seedlings to children from four representative schools. Photos of the growing process are planned to be shown inside the pavilion as mosaic art and slideshows.

The original musical Vibrant INOCHI

Kanagawa is also presenting an original musical, “Vibrant INOCHI,” to promote its basic philosophy to visitors from around the world. Its tagline is “Shine toward the future! A harmony of life.” It is produced in a stage version and a film version, and runs about 45 minutes. It is planned to be performed during the Expo at a venue facility inside the GREEN×EXPO 2027 grounds, provisionally named the organiser’s venue. The performance schedule is still being worked out.

The lead character is Gyarubii, a girl from Yokohama. The story is about environmental issues, and other characters include a young polar bear, Kuu-chan, with her mother, and a popular idol unit called “CO2.” In the film version, Gyarubii is played by Yuki Yoda and Kuu-chan by Yuriyan Retriever. Naoto Takenaka plays the environmental scientist in both versions; in the stage version he appears on screen. The stage version double-casts Ai Tenshou and Yuka Akino as Gyarubii. The theme song, “Hoshi no Ko,” was written and composed by GRe4N BOYZ. It is sung by Atsuki Masuko and Shuya Sunakawa, who play the in-story idol unit “CO2.”

From the groundbreaking ceremony to the six-months-to-go event, the announcements went like this:

Our take

We think what makes the Kanagawa Pavilion distinctive is that local agricultural high schools and facilities for people with disabilities are helping to build its garden. Reusing Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai’s Grand Ring timber in the flower bed gives visitors who saw that Expo an easy point of connection. The musical has a notable cast, but with its performance schedule still unannounced as of September 2026, it is not yet something visitors can build a visit around.

Our pavilions feature lists the Kanagawa Pavilion together with the other pavilions.