科学技術理解増進からサイエンスコミュニケーションヘの流れ

抄録

　 In Japan, there has been a long tradition of activities for Public Understanding of Science and Technology (PUST). In this paper I discuss about the PUST movement and its history. While it is difficult to specify the starting point of such activities, we can recognize one of the most important year for the PUST movement in Japan. It was 1960 when the science week was established and Japan Science Foundation was founded. Japan Science Foundation is the first foundation that specialized to promoting public interest and understanding of science and technology. The second important year was 1996 when Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) was founded and PUST Team was set up in it. JST is one of the biggest funding agencies of science and technology in Japan. During those years there was little influence of overseas movements on Japan. But from around 2000 "Science Communication Movement" has been introduced from mainly UK. Now Japan's policy for promoting public engagement or awareness of science and technology has turned to Science Communication. In such a situation we should try to create Japan's way of science communication.