The Establishment of the Inamori Foundation:

From the Context of the Cultural Policy, Economic, and Academic Worlds in Kyoto in the Early 1980s

Abstract

This paper aims to locate the establishment of the Inamori Foundation by Kazuo Inamori in 1984 within the context where the relations between the cultural policy, economic, and academic worlds in Kyoto converged in the early 1980s. The Inamori Foundation developed from “Kyoto Kaigi,” a private organization that Inamori, Toru Yano, and Kishio Sakakida formed to foster academic communication between the economic and the academic worlds in Kyoto. Starting from the relations among them and tracing the relational threads, the paper attempts to clarify the historic and social conditions in Kyoto that the autobiography written by Inamori and other literature did not show sufficiently. Following the establishment of Kyoto Kaigi, Inamori, Yano, and Sakakida made “Hiei Kaigi,” an organization similar to Kyoto Kaigi with Ryuichi Kotani and Tadao Umesao.

The establishment of the Inamori Foundation paralleled two related big projects, “Kansai Bunka Gakujutsu Kenkyu Toshi” (Kansai Science City) and “Kento 1200-nen Kinen Jigyo” (Kyoto 1200th Celebration). The former was a project to build a city for science, technology, and culture in the middle of Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. The latter was a project to celebrate the 1200th birth of Kyoto by developing several projects and events. They were committed by the Kyoto prefecture, the Kyoto city, “Kyoto Keizai Douyukai” (The Kyoto Association of Corporate Executives), “Kyoto Shoko Kaigisho” (The Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry), and scholars leading cultural policy in Kyoto since the 1970s.

The Inamori Foundation emerged from the network of the people driving the projects “Kansai Bunka Gakujutsu Kenkyu Toshi” and “Kento 1200-nen Kinen Jigyo.”