• CULCON Homepage
• What is CULCON
• CULCON Mission Statement
• Membership of US CULCON
• CULCON Joint Statements
  • CULCON XXII, Joint Statement, July 24-25, 2006
  • CULCON XXI, Joint Statement, November 20-21, 2003
  • CULCON XX, Joint Statement, May 10-11, 2001
  • CULCON XIX, Joint Statement, February 18-19, 1999
  • CULCON XVIII, Joint Statement, May 8-9, 1997
• CULCON Working Groups
  • Digital Culture Resource Project – Cross Currents
  • Educational Exchange – The Bridging Project
  • Information Access
  • Media Cooperation
• Links
  • Japan-US Friendship Commission
  • Japan CULCON Homepage
  • US-Japan Bridging Foundation
  • ON THE RECORD re: JAPAN
• Contact CULCON

What is CULCON?

The US-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) is a binational advisory panel to the US and Japanese governments with origins in meetings held in Washington in 1961 between President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda. Since its first meeting in Tokyo in January, 1962, CULCON has served to focus official and public attention in both the United States and Japan on the vital cultural and educational underpinnings of the binational relationship.

Beginning in 1978, CULCON became a program of the United States Information Agency, reverting to Department of State oversight with the FY00 consolidation of foreign affairs agencies. In 1991, permanent secretariats were established in Tokyo and Washington to provide continuity to CULCON activities. Since then, US CULCON has become a high-level, proactive organization, emphasizing the implementation of recommendations. This has been possible only with the funding from the former USIA and the Department of State that provided the infrastructure necessary for constant attention to the issues at hand. CULCON has taken advantage of its unique mix of official and private representation to make inroads where organizations with homogeneous membership have failed. CULCON has become a major vehicle of the United States government’s mission to promote cultural diplomacy and understanding of the United States around the world.

In the 1990s, CULCON activities were focused in two areas: undergraduate educational exchange and information access. Among the many successful projects that developed during this period, the US-Japan Bridging Foundation was established to raise funds to send American undergraduates to study in Japan. There also was considerable activity in media cooperation. More recently, the Digital Culture Working Group was charged with harnessing the power of the Internet to its mission of improving educational and cultural relations between the two countries in the form of an interactive web site named Cross Currents. In November, 2003 in Sendai, CULCON identified a new area of priority, namely developing global leaders and established a new working group to explore concrete projects in this area. The most recent plenary session was held in Montana in July, 2006.