The development of a theory of international cultural relations can be traced back to Benjamin Schwartz’s study of Yan Fu (In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West, Harvard University Press, 1964). Yan Fu translated some of the 19th century Western European works into Chinese as a way for China’s modernization. To analyze Yan Fu’s cultural struggles, Schwartz applied a path-breaking methodological framework, defining a culture to be “a vast, ever-changing areas of human experience” and proposing to deal with the encounter between two cultures as a vantage point for taking a new look at both cultures. After reading the Schwartz’s work carefully and translating it into Japanese, this author formulated a theory of international cultural relations that considers cultural contacts and changes themselves to be important aspects of international relations.
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