Two Cultures in International Cultural Relations: Methodological Prolegomena

Cultural Perspectives and International Relations Studies

Abstract

This article aims at introducing a brief overview of the theoretical perspective of International Cultural Relations (ICR, Kokusai Bunka Ron). ICR employs two meanings of “culture”, one is culture sensu stricto (CSS), the other is culture sensu lato (CSL). In order to understand ICR as one of the new fields of study in International Relations, one would have to elucidate how CSS and CSL are applied into international relations respectively and how these two analyses could be integrated as ICR.
The study of ICR based on CSS has two traditions. Both regard ‘culture’ as elements from which the actor or some relations (composed of these actors) are constructed. Students of ICR use CSS in order to examine how ‘culture’ is used inside the reality of international relations.
One tradition generated by the study of diplomatic history in the United States from 1970s, was conducted by Akira Iriye and his successors. They insisted on the need to interpret international relations as intercultural relations, rejecting the realist, power oriented approaches which dominated the field. They also tried to change diplomatic history into ‘international history’, which seeks to overcome the somewhat narrow-minded nationalistic view of diplomatic history.
The other tradition was initiated in the study of International Relations in Japan from 1970s, launched by Kenichiro Hirano and his disciples. They borrowed their approach from anthropology, especially acculturation theory, which captures culture's dynamic changes and reconstructing processes. Basically they perceive international relations as cultural relations, which implies that international relations need not only to be interstate relations, and international relations are only one part of many cultural relations. They seek to establish ‘mobile International Relations’, which opposes traditional ‘immobile International Relations’.
CSL studies consists of two parts. One is ‘international relations (ir) as culture’; the other is ‘International Relations (IR) as culture’. Students of ICR use CSL when they want to understand how ir or IR would look like from outside of the IR discipline, from the historical point of view. Unfortunately, the research stock is not so abundant in the study of ICR based on CSL. However, some recent studies indicate that CSL will be one of the most important future fields of study.
Thus, ICR students have to deal with two notions of cultures. Sometimes they apply CSS, which focuses on how international relations could be explained by culture as elements of actors or groups of actors. Sometimes they adopt CSL, which explicates how and why international relations are generated in the history of mankind and International Relations invented in the history of ideas. ICR must deal with these two tasks, which could be accomplished both by the work of a single individual or though collaboration.