From Kishi to Kokusaika: Japan's Reinvention of Cultural Diplomacy after Empire

Nissim Otmazgin (Professor of Japanese Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyoto) will give a lecture entitled “From Kishi to Kokusaika: Japan’s Reinvention of Cultural Diplomacy after Empire”, as part of the Kyoto Lectures, organised by the EFEO, ISEAS and the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.

The lecture will be held in English, both in person and online via Zoom (meeting ID: 811 1064 5150).

After 1945, Japan was reluctant to promote its culture abroad, especially in Asia, where memories of empire remained vivid. This lecture traces the shift from postwar restraint to the more confident cultural diplomacy of the 1970s and 1980s. Following this transformation from the early postwar decades through the “internationalization” (kokusaika) campaign, it shows how Japan responded to the widening gap between its growing economic power and limited international legitimacy by recasting cultural promotion as reciprocal “cultural exchange.”

Nissim Otmazgin is Professor of Japanese Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyoto. His research focuses on cultural diplomacy, popular culture, and Japan’s relations with Asia.