Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao carried on efforts to boost the friendship between the people of China and Japan by exercising with Tokyo locals in a park on Monday morning. "The friendship between China and Japan had its base at the non-governmental or grassroots level," the Chinese premier said on the three-day official visit to Tokyo, which ran from Sunday to Tuesday.

Putting aside their diplomatic rivalry, Japan and China agreed on Monday to hold joint animation and TV drama festivals to promote grassroots cultural exchange... As a first step, each country will hold a festival or a special week next year to introduce the other's screen offerings, such as animation and TV drama series, the official said.

There is one area, however, where Japan could engage in a strategy that would simultaneously help its economy and give it an edge over China. This is immigration. Japan is unique among economies that are highly developed and in demographic decline in having so few immigrants.

One of the best mine actors from Japan Iimuro Naoki will give solo performances in Hue Festival 2010 and in Hanoi for the first time...According to the organiser, which is the Japan Foundation Centre for Cultural Exchange in Vietnam, the show is hoped to entertain not only adults but also children with its universal body language, which is sublimed in the art of silence.

There is concern in Washington over the future of the Japan-U.S. alliance at a time when the two countries should be working close together on a broad range of international issues, including North Korea and Iran, U.S. foreign policy experts said at a recent symposium in Tokyo.

American journalist Douglas McGray's 2002 Foreign Policy essay "Gross National Cool" crystallized for many not only evidence that contemporary Japan had become hip and attractive, but also a nifty phrase to go with it. But that was eight years ago. And like most bits of journalistic shorthand, the phrase "cool Japan" is as convenient as it is vague...

Japan's prime minister visited Okinawa and delivered an unpopular message Tuesday: it will be challenging to move a U.S. base off the island. Okinawans say the U.S. military has been responsible for a number of blights in the city, from serious crimes like rape and drunken driving, to environmental and noise pollution.

We all know Japan and the United States share close cultural ties. What I had not realized as a young American academic taking up my first job in Britain in 1996 teaching Japanese art history at the University of East Anglia is that Japanese-British cultural relations are in fact much deeper.