Japan Society Free Admission Friday

Free Admission Friday at Japan Society of New York - see INFO below. Japan Society of New York was one of the pioneers of cultural exchange in the early 20th century. Begun in a time when few Americans knew anything about Japan, it quickly reached a wider audience than the few learned societies that focused on Asia at the time. Japan Society not only hosted leading Japanese visitors to the United States, it sponsored the first important exhibitions of Japanese art, published important books on Japan written by American experts, and promoted the study of Japan in American schools and universities by distributing learning materials and providing funds for prizes at the collegiate level. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, it became the leading forum for Japanese to encounter their American counterparts abroad. Advertisement for Society-sponsored trips to Japan, circa 1913. As political and racial tensions worsened between Japan and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, the Society steadfastly refused to take a political stance, preferring education to advocacy. Nonetheless, Japan Society worked with other internationalist groups, such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or the America-Japan Society of Tokyo, to increase contact between Americans and Japanese at all levels. The Societys Annual Dinner became a venue for leading Japanese statesmen to give major addresses on the state of the U.S.-Japan relationship. Despite the Societys efforts, political crisis exploded into war in 1941. The Society closed its doors, as did all other Japan-American exchange groups. Yet the seeds of cooperation and goodwill were not extinguished by war, and in 1952, at the end of the American Occupation, the Society was reborn, largely through the efforts of President John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Executive Director Douglas Overton. The newly revitalized Society redoubled its efforts to educate Americans about Japan by expanding its lecture series, continuing to publish respected works on Japan, and by facilitating the study of Japanese More Info below.