Kanemitsu Tanaka, the head of the embassy’s cultural affairs section, and his assistant Elena Diaz Suarez are on mission to introduce Japan to Luxembourg. The pair organise events, create online content and also welcome visitors to the embassy. There, fans of Japan can borrow books to learn about the language and culture, as well as find information about travelling to the island country.

Tanaka tells Delano about the challenges of hitting the right balance of cultural components to import and promoting tourism when borders are only just opening up again.  

Japan is a large country with many contrasting regions and cultures. How do you decide what to bring to Luxembourg?

Kanemitsu Tanaka: Yes, Japan has many, many facets in terms of culture and it’s very hard to decide what parts to represent. There are all the traditional arts, like ikebana (flower arrangements), sadō (tea ceremony), but you also have martial arts. These traditional things are very popular in Europe. Surprisingly, there are a lot of clubs around these arts, like the bonsai club in Differdange. So, many people know them already and for many they see some common ground with their own culture. For example, bonsai is like gardening, in a sense.

But we try to focus on both the popular culture of Japan and the less known aspects of it. For the less popular side, we want people to look at it. Last year, for instance, we organised two screenings. The first one was an LGBT movie--about a gay couple struggling to live in Japan--and the second one was a film about the indigenous Ainu people living in Hokkaido, who try hard to make their traditions survive in modern Japan.

Japan is now slowly starting to open its borders to tourists from abroad again. As the head of cultural affairs, who also provides information about travelling in Japan, what was it like, during the pandemic, to promote a country that was closed to the outside world?

It was very hard. Not just for me, but for the ambassador and the staff too. We were always asked by locals when Japan would open up again. It was hard for me to have to answer ‘Sorry, it’s currently closed; it’s not possible to go for sightseeing’. Also, the cultural field was perhaps the most seriously affected field in the pandemic. To be present, to promote culture, we have to meet people in principle, but it was impossible to organise events, like screenings, tea ceremonies and things like that…

It was a hard time, but we could manage to do some events online, which ended up being successful too. It was a very good experience for us because we hadn’t tried this kind of activity beforehand. By the time I arrived in Luxembourg [in June 2020, editor’s note], there wasn’t much on our online platforms, so I decided to focus on online activities to turn a crisis into a chance. It worked well because we could reach more people who hadn’t been our target group in the past. The pandemic has been exhausting for the cultural sector but at the same time, it opened new gates.

Now we’re focusing on the real-life events again, because the cultural section here only has two people, so we can’t do all the things.

Can tourists go back to traveling to Japan normally? 

Not in the way Europeans tend to consider travelling. In Europe, it’s more customary to just travel wherever you want on your own, but currently that isn’t possible in Japan. For now, visitors have to be part of organised group tours.

Next week, the natur musée will launch its You’re also organising a there. Why did you go with origami for it?

Because it’s a simple art, you don’t need special skills to learn how to do this. You just need paper and a table. There are origami professionals, but even without their level, we can teach people how to do it. But also, origami is wonderful, you create so much with it. So we hope participants can pick up the hobby and experience something new.