A Quick Trip to Japan
Recently I went to Japan for three days in order to meet some important people in the government, and to discuss Egypt’s hope that Farouk Hosni, our Minister of Culture, will be the next Director General of UNESCO.
We hope that Japan will announce its support for Farouk Hosni because Egypt has a very good relationship with Japan; over the years we have cooperated on projects such as the Cairo Opera House, the Grand Museum, excavations in Saqqara, and the boat museum project at Giza. Also, it is very special for us to have such a brilliant man as the Japanese Ambassador to Egypt, Kaoru Ishikawa, here; he is very eager to bring Egypt and Japan’s relationship to its peak. Both the Japanese Ambassador and I thought that it would be very important for me to go to Japan to meet the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Ito Shintaro, in order to explain the background of Farouk Hosni, and how Hosni would work after Koichiro Matsuura, the current Director General of UNESCO, leaves his position. I wanted to explain that if Hosni becomes the next Director General he will continue the work that Matsuura did to reform UNESCO; that he will support all the good work that he did, and help to improve the already good relations that exist between Japan and Egypt.
I could see that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs is a very intelligent man who understood the situation, and it was the same with all the directors that I met: Kenichiro Sasae, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs; Yoshio Ando, Director of the Multilateral Cultural Cooperation Division of the Public Diplomacy Department; Kenjiro Monji, Director-General of the Public Diplomacy Department; and Toshiro Suzuki, Director-General of the Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau. After meeting these people, I can see that Japan will give their support to Farouk Hosni.
Although the main reason for my trip was to meet with the Japanese ministers, at the same time I also had the privilege to meet many other interesting people. I met with Takasha Hara, Head of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFG ltd. as he hopes to support the Tutankhamun exhibition if it goes to Japan after closing in New York. At the same time I met the director of Asahi television , because if the exhibition does go to Japan, his television company would like to sponsor the event.
Tutankhamun went to Japan forty years ago, and we hope that he will go back there in 2011 to capture the hearts of the Japanese again.
Further information:
Celebrating Forty Years of Japanese Excavations in Egypt
Further information:
Dr. Hawass and the Japanese Ambassador Kaoru Ishikawa Location
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