The U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON)

The U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange(CULCON) is a bi-national advisory panel to the U.S. and Japanese governments that serves to elevate and strengthen the vital cultural and educational foundations of the U.S.-Japan relationship.

According to its website, CULCON’s mission is: “The U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) is a bi-national advisory panel that serves to elevate and strengthen the vital cultural and educational foundations of the U.S.-Japan relationship, and to strengthen connections between U.S. and Japan leadership in those fields. It works to ensure that the best of new ideas for cultural, educational and intellectual activity and exchange are implemented as operational programs.”

The U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON) is a program of the U.S. Department of State in the United States and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Japan CULCON originated in a series of discussions between President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda in 1961 as a high-level advisory panel to the two governments for educational and cultural exchanges. This arrangement was formalized by an exchange of memoranda between the two governments in 1968. Beginning in 1978, CULCON became a program of the United States Information Agency. In 1999, with the restructuring of USIA and the Department of State, CULCON returned to the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In 1991, permanent secretariats were established in Tokyo and Washington to provide continuity to CULCON activities. In the U.S., the secretariat was established within the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, an independent federal agency that supports reciprocal people-to-people understanding and promotes partnerships that advance common interests between Japan and the United States.In Japan, the secretariat was established in the Japan Foundation, Japan's first public institution dedicated to sharing Japanese culture and language with people throughout the world. Since then, U.S. CULCON has become a high-level, dynamic organization that has identified timely issues and responded with a range of creative solutions in areas such as educational exchange, media, digital culture, arts exchange and information access and global leaders. The solutions are a direct result of the gatherings and discussions of CULCON’s unique grouping of public and private sector members and the engagement of its Panelists. Most recently, CULCON convened a bi-national Educational Task Force to examine decreasing trends of Japanese students studying abroad in the U.S. The Task Force made recommendations to leaders in both nations to double the number of study abroad students in each country by 2020.

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