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The Activities of the Japan Foundation

Dialogue: Japanese Studies and Intellectual Exchange
Intellectual Exchange

In order to provide opportunities for experts to engage in dialogues on global issues and topics, and to further deepen their intellectual exchanges, we support international conferences and symposia, as well as mutual visits by public intellectuals. We seek to make a contribution toward global development and stability by promoting mutual understanding in international society, and by fostering the next generations necessary to advance future intellectual exchange.

Japan-Germany Symposium "Tokyo and Berlin — Universal Design in Urban Development"

In November 2019, we held a symposium in Berlin on inclusive and accessible urban development. Together with their German counterparts, five Japanese universal design experts who represent researchers, the disabled, governments and private companies, actively engaged in the discussion and assessed the latest design initiatives in Tokyo, the host of the next Olympics. Many in the audience praised the application of universal design in the urban development scenes of Japan.

Photo of Berlin city tour as part of the symposium on inclusive and accessible urban development

Photo of symposium on inclusive and accessible urban development

Inviting Chinese Intellectuals to Japan

Photo of Zhang Feng

Columnist Zhang Feng, who actively reports on people and places related to sports

To deepen an understanding of Japan and to build an intellectual network (between Japan and China), the Japan Foundation invites influential young and mid-career researchers and intellectuals from China to Japan. Zhang Feng, who was invited in FY2019, studied the Japanese perception of sports in Japan and has published his findings. He published 15 articles in media outlets in China. One of these articles was translated into Japanese and published in Japan.

Augustin Berque Symposia

Augustin Berque, a retired professor at the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, who is an expert in Fudo (a tight interaction between natural environment and culture) and received the Japan Foundation Award in 2011, gave talks at two symposia in Paris. In the symposia, he held lively discussions with the audience. His theory about the coexistence of nature and humans, which he has established through his studies in Japan, has attracted a great deal of interest worldwide including Japan, which had been affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Photo of Augustin Berque (left)

Augustin Berque (left) giving a lecture at a symposium commemorating the publication of a French translation of HATAKEYAMA Shigeatsu's Mori wa Umi no Koibito