Japan is a nation built on contradictions and juxtapositions, a place you'll find modern skyscrapers next to ancient temples, or Shinto couples being wed in Christian-style ceremonies. And for the record, here's another example: Cool Japan and Isolated Japan.

Good cultural diplomacy is always drawn from the unique.  American country music is one area that projects a wholly American image of the rugged hero sitting high in the saddle or a scorned yet powerful woman singing about lost love. Country songs are about what the French would call la condition humaine, universal stories strummed on a guitar. As such, country music has a vast global appeal.

How country music shapes America's brand status. 

Unique Japan opens a window to rare Japanese cultures, suggesting understanding of Chinese culture is limited there, since, while the classical culture is well-preserved by the Japanese, they tend to know little about modern Chinese culture.

Tunisia and Ishinomaki, one of the hardest hit towns, have over the past two decades developed a strong bond, albeit an unusual one in being between a country and a small town. Ishinomaki has named three streets after Tunisia, and as one Japanese blogger put it, the relationship is like "true love between lovers hailing from different classes."

In a sense, the surprise question in such a situation, and perhaps into the future, is whether France has stolen a march over the United States, perhaps in terms of public diplomacy, in trying to pull Japan out of its civil nuclear emergency.

The importance of people-to-people relations in disaster diplomacy shouldn’t be underestimated -- beneath the prickly problems of diplomacy and defence in the Sino-Japan relationship lay deep layers of people-to-people relationships.