The invitation from the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka (Minpaku) came around the time that I had become tired of the job at Saitama and was looking to return to my work as a conservator. For a while, I was absorbed in research work on folk technologies and conservation, away from the normal work of a museum. Nevertheless, I could not be rid of the museum specialist deeply ingrained in me, and I continued from time to time to volunteer at other museums.

What brought me back into the world of museums was the International Symposium on Art Museum education, Art Gallery and Promotion held at the Yokohama Museum of Art in June 1992. I was brought in as a person who had played a role some 15 years earlier in giving a jumpstart to the area of art Museum education, Art Gallery, which was now experiencing boom times. This served as an opportunity to renew old acquaintances, while at the same time my interactions with younger people revived me. At around the same time there was talk from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that it would create a program to reeducate museum workers in developing countries, so I decided it was time to once again return to the world of museum specialists. At the same time, it was decided that Minpaku would hold a seminar on international cooperation among museums.

I have long felt a psychological debt to Professor Coremans and my old colleagues, who formed the core of my being. The feeling that drew me to this big job is that at least through my current work I would like to pay off some of that debt, even it would only amount to the interest on the debt. I believe all of our readers are familiar with the basics of the museum studies seminar and the JICA program. Based on the things I have thought of over the preceding third of a century, they are intended to light some fires of their own through the experiences and exchanges that take place thereafter. Even so, to implement them I have in fact incurred other debts of assistance from many people. I hope to pay off at least the interest on these various debts, too, but I have no confidence that I will ever be able to pay them all off.

Kazuyoshi Ohtsuka
National Museum of Ethnology

The International Cooperation Seminar on Museology, which is entrusted to the National Museum of Ethnology from JICA, is held for three weeks every year. It consists of two weeks of lectures and practical lessons at the museum and a one-week study trip.

This year, the seminar was held at the museum, from October 7 to 18, then, from October 21 to 25 the participants went on the study trip, accompanied by myself, T. Iida for the first half and A. Nobayashi for the second half. The purpose of the trip is to deepen overall museum expertise, with reference to theoretical lectures, through the experiences of trips to a variety of museums and sites.

The specialized fields and preferences of the participants were taken into the consideration in selecting the sites to visit. Their prospective fields of study were focused on museum management, archeology, art, and preservation science, and their preferred destination was a historical site where one could observe preservation, protection and educational utilization of ruins. For this reason, we scheduled a visit to the Yoshinogari Historical Park, in Kyushu, despite the fact that our choice of the site had been limited to the Chugoku region of the main island of Japan. The following is the outline of our schedule.