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Mrs SUZUKI Ritsuko
Director of Office for International Cultural Exchange
Agency for Cultural Affairs
Japan

Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to express my sincerest gratitude for the invitation to this inspiring gathering and the excellent organisation of this meeting. The ACCF is offering a great opportunity to everyone here for dialogues and opinion exchange on cultural policies.

It is my great privilege that I could give my speech on the cultural policies of Japan in this wonderful occasion. First, let me touch upon our cultural relationship with Hong Kong. The cultural exchange between Japan and Hong Kong is now becoming closer and closer. The signature event of our exchange is the Japan Autumn Festival in Hong Kong, which has been held every year since 2016. Last year, in total 170 events were held, and more than one million people were mobilised for the events of the festival. We hold this festival with the purpose of expressing our appreciation for Hong Kong citizens, and further encouraging them to fully enjoy the charm of the Japanese culture.

In this year's Autumn Festival, we made a play of our Odori traditional Japanese folk dance of 400 years of history in Hong Kong Disneyland. I believe that people of Hong Kong were able to have an enjoyable time with our Odori dancing.

Now, I would like to move on to my main subject, recent updates of our cultural policy. We have just started a drastic reform of our cultural policy and cultural organisation. My presentation will focus on the introduction of the concepts of the reform, and some of our efforts towards realisation of the new policy and the new agency.

In 2017, we enacted the new act for cultural policies, the Basic Act on Culture and the Arts. We have also formulated a Basic Plan on the Promotion of Culture and the Arts in 2018. The Basic Act and the Basic Plan have two key concepts. The first one is for more effective utilisation of our cultural assets to produce new values, and the second one is for more focus on local communities other than Tokyo.

More effective utilisation of cultural assets

Regarding the first concept, throughout 50 years of cultural administration, we mainly focused on the preservation of our cultural assets in order to protect their inherent value. However, the value of our culture and the arts is not limited to the value of the cultural heritages to be preserved, but also their potential to create new values, such as the social and the economic ones, if we utilise our cultural assets better and vitalise our cultural activities. So, we now put more focus on economic values created by cultural activities to  produce a creative, vibrant, spiritually-rich and diverse society through vitalising our cultural activities. Then, such economic and social values created by cultural activities could be used for the better inheritance, development and creation of culture and the arts.

The aim of our new cultural policy is to realise this virtuous cycle for more sustainable cultural activities. In order to achieve this, we are having organic collaboration between our cultural policies and policies in other areas, such as tourism, urban development, social welfare and industry. For example, we are promoting various cultural projects for the promotion of tourism by collaborating with tourism agencies.

The Japan Heritage is a leading example. This is a unique project which promotes the branding of local culture and traditional attractions, and contributes to the promotion of tourism in the local area and the sustainability of local culture.

Also, I'd like to mention here the importance of utilisation of advanced technology that promotes the first objective. We are trying to promote our cultural resources more effectively by using advanced technology. High-definition replicas of cultural heritage are enabling people to directly touch and appreciate cultural assets. We are also offering virtual reality (VR) of our heritage with related information to tourists. Now, people can access to and enjoy cultural resources more easily without damaging their values with the support of advanced technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology will also be used for more effective preservation of cultural heritages in the near future.

More focus on local communities

To realise the second concept of our reform, more focus on local communities other than Tokyo, our Agency for Cultural Affairs will be relocated to Kyoto soon. Such relocation aims to strengthen our regional and local perspective in promoting cultural policies so that we can further enrich our culture and the arts in Kyoto and all across Japan. The complete relocation is planned for the Japanese fiscal year 2021 at the latest.

Now I'd like to introduce a  story of success about the integration of local attractions and modern art in Japan. The Setouchi International Art Festival has been held once every three years since 2010, and the fourth edition has been held this year. More than 1.17 million people from all over the world have visited the Setouchi region during festival period. However, before the festival began, Setouchi was a region which suffered from depopulation and aging despite its impressive traditional culture and beautiful nature. But it has recovered its vitality after people there began to accept and interact with so many visitors from other parts of Japan and overseas. Now the attractions of the Setouchi region with modern art have spread all over the world through those visitors. To create stories of success like this, the local government and localswho know very well about the charm of their land, traditions and cultural heritage should play a leading role in the establishment of local cultural communities and platforms. From  this point of view, we have revised our law so that local governments can promote systematic protection and utilisation of their own cultural assets, and strengthen the promotion capability of regional administrations of cultural property protection.

The Japan Heritage, which I mentioned before, is also a project to promote local cultures. Local governments and industries are playing a leading role to build a brand of their own cultures and heritage by promoting their own historic and cultural attractions. I assure that you will find out interesting local stories which have unique attractions when you access to the Japan Heritages.

Lastly, I would like to mention the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games next year. We recognise the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games as the celebration of culture as well as sport events. Now we are planning a number of cultural events, including the Japan Cultural Expo in 2020. Our cultural events in 2020 will be held across Japan. In this occasion, please visit not only Tokyo but also other regional areas, and fully enjoy the varieties of our culture and the arts.

Thank you.