Multinational Cultural Mission
draws up ASEAN - Japan Agenda
for strengthening Asian Culture

A Multinational Cultural Mission, composed of authorities and experts on culture from the ASEAN countries and Japan, is now undertaking a series of visits to various ASEAN capitals and Tokyo, after which it will draw up an Action Agenda for cultural cooperation between ASEAN and Japan.

The process was launched with a meeting in October last year in Singapore between representatives of the ASEAN Committee on Cultural and Information (COCI) and Japanese officials concerned with culture.

In a message specially conveyed on that occasion, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto of Japan observed that while the ASEAN members and Japan are now largely interdependent in terms of trade and investment, they are ready to address together the problems of the region and of the world. As countries enjoying such a close and cordial relationship, he said, ASEAN member and Japan should now "actively develop broad and various programmes for exchange and cooperation that will foster a better understanding of the cultures that each of us represent".

Earlier during the year, the Japanese Prime Minister had proposed in Singapore the launching of the Multinational Cultural Mission.

The task of the mission, he said, is "to provide basic policy orientations and make specific proposals, in order to satisfy the important task of actively promoting cultural exchange and cooperation between Japan and the ASEAN countries".

In his keynote statement during the same meeting, Mr. George Yeo, Singapore Minister for Information and the Arts, stressed that without cooperation in the political and cultural fields, the integration of ASEAN economies will not progress very far because economic links by themselves cannot lay the basis for regional peace and cooperation.

Minister Yeo described the culture of Southeast Asia as the most open and diverse in the world in which all the great religions and philosophies are represented. It has also been enriched, he said, through the outward orientation of Southeast Asian elite who were open to trade, often seeing intermarriage as a way to improve the stock and the culture.

"ASEAN", he said, " is the result of this common consciousness of Southeast Asians as Southeast Asians, and our determination to work with other regions in the world without becoming a part of them".

Like Southeast Asia, he said, Japan has a very strong consciousness of its identity. The two are therefore kindred spirits who can work together in the shaping of a pluralistic, multipolar Asia held together by political, economic and cultural links.

Both Prime Minister Hashimoto and Minister Yeo expressed high expectations that the Multinational Cultural Mission will help ring that envisioned new Asia.