Islamabad : Ambassador Kuninori Matsuda has said that since Japan and Pakistan share many cultural similarities, Japan Festival 2019 will definitely provide a window of opportunity for the Pakistani people to discover many facets of Japanese culture and its age-old traditions.
The ambassador expressed these views during Japan Festival 2019 at the premises of the National University of Modern Languages on Tuesday. The festival was organised to celebrate A Month of Japanese Culture together with the Pakistani people.
The daylong Japan festival was inaugurated by Kuninori Matsuda, the Ambassador of Japan in Pakistan, together with the NUML Rector Maj Gen (r) Muhammad Jaffar.
The Ambassador reiterated that the year 2022 would be celebrated to mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Pakistan and a variety of such events would be organized to commemorate this auspicious occasion.
Ambassador Matsuda stressed upon the need of making continued efforts to further flourish the strong bond of friendship between Japan and Pakistan.
Japan festival which was organised with the cooperation of National University of Modern Languages began with the Japanese Language Speech Contest among the students of Japanese language department at NUML and was followed by other colorful cultural performances such as Kendo demonstration, Taiko performance, Karate and Judo demonstration, Ninja performance, Origami workshop, Bonsai and Ikebana demonstrations.
Also, a robotic performance by the Robotics department at NUST greatly entertained the viewers at the festival. The visitors in the festival were also served with the delicious Japanese cuisine Tampura, Sushi etc..
As a part of the activities organized to celebrate A Month of Japanese Culture, an exhibition of photographs titled “Japan through the lens of Pakistani photographers” will be inaugurated on 21st November at the National Art Gallery of PNCA.
Around 35 photographs captured by the photographers of the Photographic Society of Pakistan (PSP) would be displayed in the exhibition, which they had captured during their recent visit to Japan.
Also, Japanese films such as Grave of the Fireflies, His Master’s Voice and Samurai Cat would be screened at the Islamabad Club auditorium on 22nd, 27th and 28th November during the film festival being organized by the Pakistan National Council of the Arts during the Islamabad Art Festival 2019.
On November 24th, Japanese music show titled “Nihon Unplugged-Cultural Music Performance” would be held at the auditorium of PNCA where artists arriving from Japan featuring with local musicians would demonstrate their talent.
