To: Colleagues
From: Keiko Yokota-Carter, NCC Chair and Vickey Bestor, NCC Executive Director
Re: CULCON Recommendations
With apologies for cross posting

The 25th Joint Plenary Meeting of the US-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange
(CULCON) met in Tokyo in April celebrating CULCON's 50th anniversary. As you may know, through a biennial plenary session and symposia in Japan and the US, CULCON convenes policymakers, scholars, and business leaders to address emerging issues related to educational, cultural, and intellectual exchange.

The Joint Statement, Summary of Discussions, and General Policy Recommendations endorse a number of issues that NCC has long advocated to strengthen our field. These include the following:
. CULCON urged strengthening Japanese studies in
the US and improving access to Japanese language resources for US students, including lowering or eliminating user fees to digital resources;
. CULCON also encouraged an increase in
development of Japanese education materials with subtitles (including through the subtitling of existing works); CULCON's joint statement encourages the marshaling of greater financial resources to invest in building the infrastructure for cultural, educational and intellectual exchanges, and noted that the resources provided to the Japan Foundation now critically lag behind those of parallel institutions in peer nations.
NCC continues to provide critical infrastructural support to the field of Japanese studies and looks forward to working closely with members of CULCON in the future.

Please visit CULCON's newly redesigned Website to read the full text of the recommendations of CULCON XXV:
http://culcon.jusfc.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CULC
ON-XXV-Joint-Statement-Final.pdf
http://culcon.jusfc.gov/plenary-session

Please see both CULCON and NCC on Facebook (and please like us both!) http://www.facebook.com/U.S.CULCON
http://www.facebook.com/NCCJapanInfo

Thanks, Vickey

Victoria Lyon Bestor
Executive Director
North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources
149 Upland Road
Cambridge, MA 02140
Tel: 617-945-7294
Fax: 617-812-5854
Website: http://www.nccjapan.org/