This study examines the continuity and transformation of Japan’s international cultural exchange policy between the prewar and postwar eras, focusing on the role and philosophy of Kano Hisaakira. As President of the Society for International Cultural Relations (Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, KBS) during the Occupation period, when subsidies from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) were suspended, Kano sought to remake KBS into a ‘purely private’ organization. A former international banker and viscount, he articulated a philosophical foundation for cultural exchange grounded in mutuality and universality, yet ultimately failed to position KBS as a leading institution in the field. Upon assuming the presidency, he struggled to recruit a management team and to reform KBS, which had previously functioned as a MOFA-affiliated propaganda body. Drawing on his ideas of “Commercial Culturalism” and “Socialist Culturalism,” he emphasized reciprocity in cultural initiatives and the gradual cultivation of humanism. In late 1951, he approached John D. Rockefeller III, who sought to institutionalize Japan–U.S. cultural relations. However, he failed to secure a central role in this endeavor, which instead culminated in the establishment of the International House of Japan outside KBS. When MOFA subsidies resumed in 1953, Kano resigned from KBS, which thereafter reverted to a government-affiliated organization.

  This paper analyzes Truman Capote’s The Muses Are Heard and argues that it marks his emergence as a political and social critic. Writing from the margins—the “backstage” of the cultural Cold War—Capote exposes the staged “front” where states use art to “fence in” history. He loosens the fixed U.S.–Soviet ideological binary by presenting two vantage points: a Norwegian traveler who notes psychological affinities between the two peoples, and a young female secretary whose daily work, cultural frictions, and brief romance reveal realities that official scripts omit.

  A core element of his critique is the contrast between the magnificent but lifeless “dead art” sponsored by the state and the “living art” of improvised jazz performed by the African American cast. This visceral, improvised music addresses the body before the mind; its rhythms connect strangers across language and ideology, exceed official state intentions, and leave durable traces in personal memory. It is another “voice of the muses.” By tracking these unscripted moments, Capote develops a critical method for finding truth in peripheral voices and everyday scenes. The Muses Are Heard thus stands as a pivotal step toward the form he would later call a “nonfiction novel.”

  This article examines the memory of Southern Internment in post-war Japan through the case of the Rempang Island internment, where more than 110,000 Japanese soldiers and civilian employees were held between 1945 and 1946 under British supervision. Despite its scale, the Rempang internment has been almost absent from Japan’s collective memory, in contrast to the Siberian internment. The study argues that this absence resulted from two interrelated processes: “literary purification” and “disconnection from locality”. First, memoirs written by former internees framed the experience as a contribution to national reconstruction, while professional writers transformed it into fictionalised accounts emphasising “Robinson Crusoe-like” island life or alternative moral values. This literary purification marginalised the harsh realities of hunger, forced labour, and military hierarchy. Second, because the internment was preceded by the forced removal of local inhabitants, and because physical traces of the camps quickly disappeared, later commemorative visits lacked interaction with local society. This disconnection prevented the renewal of memory through local engagement. The combination of purification and disconnection rendered Rempang an isolated memory, perpetuated only within limited circles of former internees and their families. The article concludes by proposing a transregional approach that situates Rempang within South-East Asian post-war history and Japanese memory studies.