Press Releases

1. On June 5th, the 28th Plenary Meeting of the United States-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) will be held in Washington DC, the United States. The purpose of this conference is to hold discussions by experts from both Japan and the U.S. on the issues related to cultural and educational exchanges between the two countries, and to make recommendations on necessary measures and policies to the governments and societies of the two countries.

2. This plenary meeting will be co-chaired by Mr. Ryozo Kato, Japan CULCON Chair (Former Ambassador of Japan to the United States) and Mr. Harry A. Hill, U.S. CULCON Chair (Member of the Board, New Business Development, Oak Lawn Marketing. Inc.), and will be participated in by the panelists representing the governments and various fields such as business and academia, as well as Mr. Shinsuke Sugiyama, Japanese Ambassador to the U.S., Ms. Marie Royce, Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. (see the attached list of the panelists of CULCON).

• CULCON Panelists (PDF)

3. Through this conference, the subjects, such as the follow-up of the goals of “doubling two-way student exchange by the year 2020”, mentioned in the Annex of the Joint Statement issued at the Japan-US summit meeting in 2014, Japanese language education in the U.S., exchange in the field of arts and nurturing the next generation of U.S-Japan leaders will be mainly discussed, with a view to promoting cultural, educational and people-to-people exchanges for the upcoming 2020 Olympics and Paralynpics in Tokyo. The outcomes of the discussions will be issued as a joint statement on counter-measures for the issues to be solved.