Where Do Guiding Principles in Cultural Policy Go? Japan's 2017 Cultural Ec

Where Do Guiding Principles in Cultural Policy Go? Japan's 2017 Cultural Economic Strategy and the Case of Canada
About this Event

Abstract: In this talk, Professor Sakamoto will examine Japan's 2017 Cultural Economic Strategy, a national strategy that asks cultural policy to contribute to economic growth, regional revitalization and tourism. Drawing on examples of locally funded projects, he will show how a single grant is now expected to achieve many goals at once. He will then trace the origins of this approach to the Heisei era (1989–2019), the "lost decades" after the bubble economy, arguing that chronic underfunding led politicians, the bureaucracy and the cultural field alike to choose survival over founding principles. Finally, he will offer some preliminary reflections, prompted by his time at UBC, on why Canada keeps asking "What is Canadian culture?" while Japan has no comparable founding question, and what Japan might ask instead.

About the Speaker: Professor Takashi Sakamoto teaches economics and public finance at Kyoto Tachibana University in Kyoto, Japan, and is currently a visiting faculty member at the Centre for Japanese Research, UBC. He received his PhD in Economics from Kyoto University in 1999. His research focuses on cultural economics and cultural policy, especially the rationale for public support for the arts, and also covers higher education finance, including income-contingent student loans. He is President of the Japan Association for Cultural Economics and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Japan Association for Cultural Policy Research. He is a co-author of Cultural Economics (Minerva Shobo, 2005), supervising translator of David Throsby's The Economics of Cultural Policy (Minerva Shobo, 2014), and co-editor of The Frontiers of Cultural Policy Studies I–III (University of Tokyo Press, 2026). He has served as a temporary member of the Council for Cultural Affairs at the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

🍪Snacks and drinks will be provided!