The Japan Foundation Award 50th Anniversary Messages from Previous Awardees - Kenneth B. PYLE
2008 The Japan Foundation Award
Henry M. Jackson Professor of History and International Studies, University of Washington
Kenneth B. PYLE
[U.S.A.]
Japan Foundation Award 50th Anniversary
For the past fifty years I have observed from my own experiences the remarkable role that the Japan Foundation has played in sponsoring and promoting cultural interchange. I have had many opportunities to see the good works of the Japan Foundation. For many years I served on the American Advisory Committee for Japanese Studies and participated in the Committee’s funding of new positions in Japanese studies at universities around the country. As a result, the teaching of Japanese studies which in the early postwar period had been limited to relatively few prominent universities became commonplace around the US.
In the year of its founding, the Japan Foundation administered the $10 million grant for Japanese studies in the U.S., announced by the Japanese Government, which gave to each of 10 universities a $1 million endowment to support Japanese studies. My university, the University of Washington, used part of its endowment to establish the Journal of Japanese Studies of which I was the founding editor. For many years the Japan Foundation distributed to various universities around the world copies of the Journal which has become the leading journal outside of Japan for scholars and students.
In my role as Chair of the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, I served for several years as Co-Chair of CULCON, (U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange), a binational advisory panel to both governments, which serves to focus official and public attention in both the United States and Japan on the vital cultural and educational underpinnings of the binational relationship. The activities of the Japan Foundation have been a great inspiration to the activities of CULCON over the years.
It is a pleasure to congratulate the Japan Foundation as it marks the 50th anniversary of the Japan Foundation Awards. It was my great honor to have received the Japan Foundation Award of 2008.
Kenneth B. Pyle
(Original text in English)
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