Asia-Pacific Week 2006 Japanese Studies Graduate Summer School ABSTRACT

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Public diplomacy is defined as a government's process of communicating with a foreign public to bring about understanding for its nation's ideas and ideals, its institutions and culture, and its national goals and current policies. This can be done via daily communications through the news media; strategic communications via official government pamphlets, books and websites; and the establishment of stable, long-term relations through scholarships, exchanges, training, seminars, conferences, and access to the media. This study focuses on Japan's use of public diplomacy to influence public opinion in China and Korea. Despite the assumption of mainstream International Relations theory that domestic factors have no influence on foreign policy, the Japanese government has substantially increased its efforts and commitment to providing information and increasing personal exchange so as to can create the intellectual and political climate in which its policies are acceptable.

However, despite years of public diplomacy, continuing negative images of Japan in China and Korea persist. The costs of such images have been most obvious in negotiations regarding economic and security issues at the international level. Using a social cognition perspective focusing on foreign policy attitudes and enemy images, this presentation argues that the overt use of public diplomacy has actually assisted in creating greater negative images of Japan because the mass publics of China and Korea have discredited most new information so as to be consistent with their belief systems. In my future research, I intend to use an experimental study to assess whether increasing and improving communications and personal interactions have had any effect on stemming anti-Japanese sentiment in the target countries. This presentation is part of my dissertation in which I address the larger question of whether public diplomacy is an effective approach to foreign policy.

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