The Case of Akira Shirahama

"Bi-Cultural Education/Cross-Cultural Research" has become one of the central multicultural education concepts in the field of art education (Tomhave, 1992). Cross-cultural research in art education is seen as a two-way street (Okazaki, 1985a). While a vast ocean has separated Japan and the United States, it can also be a bridge by which Eastern and Western worlds encounter each other and become integrated into one (Okazaki, 1984, 1991). Japanese art educators have compared American and Japanese ideas for more than a century (Okazaki, 1992, 1994, 1995). American art educators have similarly synthesized Japanese and American culture of art in their theories of art education (Okazaki, 1985b, 1997, 2000). This paper portrays the process of cross-cultural interpretation as a way of making sense of ones world in relation to the worlds of others.


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