The Japanese Music Summer School was held August 20-28, 2008.

Like the Ceramics Summer School held in July, this summer school is a short-term program of training in Japanese music (Ikuta School koto music) that, as part of the Asian arts declaration project, welcomes students from two schools in each of China (the Central Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Conservatory of Music) and South Korea (the College of Music at Seoul National University and the School of Korean Traditional Arts of the Korea National University of Arts). Such efforts are intended to help implement the arts declaration issued last October. In that statement, 11 arts schools in Japan, China, and South Korea called for international cooperation to contribute to artistic development and to enrich international society through the arts.

The eight participants are undergraduate and graduate students majoring in various fields of study, including the gayageum, komungo, erhu, and biwa instruments, as well as musicology. While all entered the program as beginners in Japanese koto music, they made rapid strides, thanks to their existing knowledge of musical instruments. They assimilated the training and learned how to express themselves at a pace that astonished the instructors.

In addition to seven hours of lessons per day, students practiced individually for three to four hours, with much time devoted to the koto. In a mini-concert held on the 27th, students performed parts of "Sakura (variation)" and "Rokudan," as well as koto arrangements of folk music from their own cultures: "Jasmine" (China) and "Arirang" (Korea). The sound of these two works performed with refreshing Asian vocals alongside the notes of the koto conveyed a clear sense to the participants of the commonalities among the musical cultures of East Asia and imparted to the audience a clear sense of the absence of borders in the world of music.