Writer, playwright and film maker Roger Pulvers will give the Koyo Oration at the 2024 Koyo Matsuri Festival on Friday.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The festival is Cowra's Japanese Garden's celebration of autumn.
"I've been associated with Australia-Japan ties in one way or another since 1972" says Pulvers, making light work of a long career in translation, directing films, writing novels and plays - as well as serving on former Japanese PM Jun'ichiro Koizumi's task force on public diplomacy.
As the guest speaker for the Koyo Festival, he wants guests to look more broadly at how the Australia - Japan relationship has changed over the years, and see it as something other than a relationship defined largely by conflict both as allies or adversaries.
"The relationship is unbalanced if we begin to see each other only as strategic partners," Pulvers said.
"I'm involved in culture; and I don't mean only calligraphy and origami and things like that," says Pulvers, (who stresses both are still important, and will be available at the Koyo Festival) but "people's mindsets, how people think: do we understand each other and why we react the way we do?"
Pulvers' background in writing, entertainment, education and diplomacy lend themselves to speaking to the more nuanced nature of our relationship, which he said in recent years, has only been discussed in strategic terms.
"If we don't understand how we think, having the best guided missiles and submarines is not going to do you much good."
For a relationship initially defined by conflict, Cowra's Japanese Garden of Friendship presents an opportunity to examine progress.
"Do Australian and Japanese people truly understand each other, or do we still bandy about cliches, have we been boxed in by certain ways of thinking?" Pulvers asked.
"I think it's the most crucial, perhaps along with that of the United States, the most crucial bilateral relationship we have.
"Though I don't think I want it to be too critical" said Pulvers, who said the modes of thinking can move past political actors.
He says he wants guests to examine the nature of how we will move forward for the next "30 to 50 years" as neighbours who share a deeper relationship than just the strategic.
"In the place that we are in the world, with our resources, wealth and history in the coming years, and that's what I want to talk about."
Pulvers' presentation will be held at the Koyo Matsuri Festival at 3:45pm on May 3.
For more information visit https://www.cowragarden.com.au/
