Masking or Marking Britain’s Decline? The British Council and Cultural Diplomacy in Japan, 1952–1970

Abstract

In a study of German—American cultural relations in the post-war period, Manuela Aguilar defines cultural diplomacy as ‘the way a government portrays its country to another country’s people in order to help achieve certain foreign policy goals’.¹ Interestingly Philip Taylor, focusing on ‘cultural propaganda’ during the interwar period, sees its purpose in similar terms — ‘the promotion and dissemination of national aims and achievements in a general rather than specifically economic or political form, although it is ultimately designed to promote economic and political interests’.² The establishment in 1934 of the British Committee for Relations with Other Countries, a title shortened to ‘British Council’ in 1936, represented the belated realization in British political circles that cultural propaganda issued by other nations, particularly fascist regimes, was weakening British influence in strategic areas. However dramatic an innovation the establishment of the British Council may have seemed to those involved, they must also have been only too aware that Britain was embracing cultural diplomacy very late in the day — long after other governments had done so — and that there were many in government circles, particularly in the Treasury, intent on judging it against very exacting criteria.