To the Culture Markets of an Industrial Colossus
Cultural Agreement, Exchange Consultations and Finland’s Cultural Diplomacy in Japan, 1977–2000
Abstract
The role of culture in fostering Finland’s foreign relations in East Asia is poorly known from the late Cold War to post-Cold War period. This article fills the gap by examining Finland’s Cultural Agreement with Japan – negotiated since 1977 and put into force in 1980 – and the ensuing exchange consultations until the year 2000, to provide an example of Finland’s bilateral cultural agreements in Asia. Why did the neutral Finland, while tied to the Soviet sphere of influence but aiming to deeper cooperation with the integrating Western Europe, wish to conclude a cultural agreement with the distant economic giant and an ally of the United States, Japan? What kind of a mechanism of influence did the agreement offer to the Finnish authorities, and what opportunities of interaction did it open to people’s everyday lives? The article answers the questions by studying archives of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry for Education of Finland using the method of historical source criticism and literature-backed contextualization. To analyze the case in the broader frame of Finnish cultural diplomacy, the concepts of soft power and cultural statecraft are used and the idea of the ‘West’ as Finland’s target reference group is reconsidered. The article takes the Eurocentric study of Finland’s western relations in a new geographical direction and argues that the effort to strengthen Finland’s cultural exchange with Japan was part of Finland’s overall foreign and trade political objective of westward integration – within the limits the dissipating policy of neutrality allowed for – and that the U.S. and West-Europe were not the only tracks for Finland to westernize.
Keywords: cultural diplomacy, cultural agreement, exchange consultations, Finland, Japan
