Professor Mayuko SANO

1. Research on the History of Cultural Policy

Japan’s debut in international society, which started as it opened in the mid-nineteenth century, presented the country with the following question: how should it understand and articulate to the outside world its own culture? This became the starting point that led actors to think about what we would today call “cultural policy,” namely, how Japan should, as a modern state, approach, utilize, and orient its people’s culture—including everything from ordinary lifestyles to refined artistic endeavors. With an eye to continuity, I am working on grasping the history of Japanese cultural policy from then until today and uncovering issues from each era. I took an important step on this journey by writing about Japan for a cultural policy paper collection published in 2011 by the French Ministry of Culture’s History Committee (entitled Pour une histoire des politiques culturelles dans le monde/Toward a history of cultural policies in the world).

The history of cultural policy has entered a stage in which international cultural policies, primarily originating from UNESCO, have grown stronger. Japan and other countries’ cultural policies now—whether consciously or not—take on the role of sustaining individual parts of the world’s cultural diversity. I am particularly interested in critically examining this new direction.

 Research on the History of Cultural Exchange (the Cultural History of Diplomacy)

I attach great importance to research on the history of cultural exchange. This research focuses on the concrete aspects of different societies’ cultures changing as, with the above-described public policy developments in the background, they actually came into contact with and influenced each other. By extensively reading through all kinds of extant materials—not only public documents but also the likes of individuals’ journals and correspondence—such scholarship unearths the experiences of the people who lived as they embodied their eras’ cultures.

As someone who began my studies at the intersection of international relations and comparative cultural history, scholarship that in particular focuses on the mid-nineteenth century Western diplomatic representatives who faced an entirely new culture in an opening Japan, as well as the Tokugawa shogunate officials who had similar cultural experiences in dealing with them, still serves as my foundation. Histories of states are nothing other than accumulations of individuals’ acts and deeds inseparable from their lives. This perspective leads us to reconsider the history of diplomacy as the endeavors of humans. At the suggestion of my beloved former teacher, I refer to it as “the cultural history of diplomacy.”

3. Research on the History of Expos (Expo-logy)

The mid and late-nineteenth-century expos frequently held in Europe and the United States were the most prominent stage on which Japanese people came to think about their country’s culture with international society in the background. As a student, I began researching how Japan participated in nineteenth-century expos and then gradually developed an interest in the history of expos as a whole, including the people holding and running the expos and the new expos of today. In 2020, I published a diachronic expo history that I had written from a new perspective.

While this research area might appear to be different from the others listed here due to its focus on the concrete events of expos (the individual aspects of expo history research relate, of course, to areas 1 and 2 above), upon thorough probing, these official events of international society, which have continued for a century and a half while mobilizing a massive amount of resources, not only provide us with an infinite number of research topics but also serve as a highly-sensitive wide-angle lens through which we can view the people and worlds of each era. In this sense, expos occupy a unique, important position in my research.

This mode of expo research has been greatly shaped through many discussions in the on-going joint research projects that I have been continually organizing since 2010. These discussions have included researchers in diverse fields and specialists working on the ground in expo-related spheres.

The Society for Expo-logy (Formerly the “Expos and Human History” Research Team)

A joint research endeavor, launched at the time of Expo 2010 Shanghai, developed into Japan’s expo research hub. It is now creating a network that extends worldwide. In 2020, we both presented the concept of “expo-logy” and changed our name. The society engages in research led by its thirty current members while offering a space for discussion that is open to all.

The Society for Expo-logy
https://cp.educ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/expo-logy/

4. Research for the Construction of “Broad Cultural Policy Studies”

“Broad cultural policy” refers to cultural policy in the most inclusive sense possible—expansive, permeating a multiplicity of spheres, and constitutive of the base layer of society as a whole. When taken together, the nation-building efforts during modern Japan’s formative years, when the concept of “cultural policy” did not exist, were nothing other than contemplating Japanese culture’s future. However, subsequently the sphere of “cultural policy” appeared and, with increased specialization, such undertakings contracted in scope. They turned into measures for promoting cultural activities in a narrow sense and discussions of the amount of funding for them. “Broad cultural policy” shifts this stunted perception and reframes cultural policy as something that relates to all human endeavors. In terms of Japan’s compartmentalized government administration, for example, it not only refers to the jurisdiction sphere of the Agency for Cultural Affairs but also sets its sights on all other policy areas.

Therefore, the “study” of such “broad cultural policy” both enables and requires the involvement of practically all kinds of academic fields. I want to create this truly-comprehensive new field as Kyoto University’s cultural policy major. We could describe it as an interface on which wide-ranging humanities knowledge attempts to involve itself with society. This is both one of my research areas and a long-term challenge that incorporates the above research areas and my own work experience.

As part of this endeavor, I have launched the below project. Therein, scholars and practitioners with knowledge of various academic and real-world fields explore, without preconceptions, the potential of this new concept and engage in discussions regarding related issues.

New Cultural Policy Project

This is an undertaking, launched in 2019 with the support of the Cross-sectoral Research Platform Development Program run by Kyoto University’s Center for the Promotion of Interdisciplinary Education and Research, that serves as an important foundation for the development of “broad cultural policy studies.”

New Cultural Policy Project
https://cp.educ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/cp-pro/