B.E. TOKYO...
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CONFIDENTIAL
13.
The October Event at the Royal Society should provide an opportunity to take stock across the board, in technology as well as the pure sciences, If the event succeeds (as I think it must) we will have to think carefully about follow-up; indeed I am encouraging my colleagues here to anticipate that outcome. I am not sure at this point that a Government-sponsored technology exhibition would really fit the bill, as commercial interests are already so active and a longer lead-in time than about six months would be unrealistic given the speed of technological development.
14. I want to build bilateral S & T exchanges further while I am here
Exchanges on the building of the Information-based Society of the 21st century and on railway transport (a fairly one-way I
interest the Japanese in BR's tilting train" as an alternative to the Shinkansen are still remembered with some embarrassment in Chiyoda-ku) are welcome notions and form an important link between Technology and your next subject.
perhaps more than I guess: earlier attempts to
Quality of life ate
15. Yes. There are things to talk about, ageing being one (where the UK could offer its expertise to mutual advantage, for example in Pension Fund management, medical equipment and health care). I recall however that our proposal to make discussion on the common problem of an ageing society a theme for EC/Japan relations during the British Presidency was shot down in flames in London (Hugh Davies' letter of 20 May to my predecessor). We welcome the overall thrust of the Quality of Life debate: Japanese taking longer holidays, spending more, travelling further afield offer us obvious economic and commercial advantages. A broader sociological discussion is right. But we must avoid strengthening the Japanese perception, essentially from the SII talks with the Americans, that outsiders are simply trying to make them less competitive. We have some building blocks. But we can learn from the Japanese too.
Academic Exchanges
16.
mainly for post-doctora) ~
!
:
We have discussed this with the British Council. There are of course the British Council Fellowship awards which are reserved
generally under 35; and various other grants and awards offered by the Council, the Japanese Ministry of Education and Science, the Japan Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and various foundations, principally the Daiwa and the Sasakawa Foundations in London. These cover, fairly flexibly, a wide range of academics, from fairly junior research workers to senior professors. They tend to favour the Natural rather than the Social Sciences, in particular through the Council's achena for joint research projects.
17.
Inevitably these scholarships and awards, however generous and flexibly deployed, cannot cover the total number of young post-graduates from either country who wish to carry out advanced study or research in the other. There is a particular weakness in the provision for students studying for PhDs, and in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (English Language and Literature alone are well provided for).
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