Material wealth that we have today is unparalleled in history. Nevertheless, it has also brought about critical problems, such as economic inequality, violation of human rights, peace issues, and environmental destruction. To resolve these, we must cross our cultural boundaries, and move beyond ethnocentric ways of thinking. In other words, intercultural communication is a key concept, and, at the same time, a big challenge in front of us.

In reality, issues mentioned above do not arise in isolation, but they are all closely interrelated. Without intercultural understanding, imagination, and communication, any effort to solve those urgent matters would be fraught with contradictions.

Why?

Because all the issues, whether they are social, global, or environmental, are situated in political, social, historical, and cultural contexts in which they occur. That is, it is impossible (and even dangerous) to define problems that we face from one particular cultural point of view. If we take this perspective, we need to reconceptualize natural environment -which, traditionally, has tended to be seen as mere resources for human beings- so that its system and how local people give meanings to it are both fully taken into consideration.

Many issues that we have to deal with today are all concerned with "sustainability." The concept of "sustainable development" encompasses four aspects -environmental, economical, political, and social-, and its scope ranges form environmental preservation, appropriate development and democracy, all the way to multicultural coexistence, peace and equality, and human rights.

Needless to say, intercultural communication will play a crucial role in achieving sustainable future. The idea of intercultural communication, as mentioned above, is not limited to interaction among people from different cultural backgrounds, but also includes communication with nature. As a discipline concerned with interactions in the midst of "difference," we believe that founding Intercultural Communication Studies upon the idea of "sustainable future" can make a great contribution to our global society.

Since its inauguration in 2002, Rikkyo Graduate School of Intercultural Communication has committed to redesigning Intercultural Communication Studies. Based on the keywords of "interdisciplinarity," "integration of theory and practice," and "transdisciplinarity," the School offers four unique concentrations; Language Communication,Interpreting and Translation Studies, Intercultural Communication Studies, and Environmental Communication.

By having the concept of "sustainability" at the core of our program, these four (seemingly different) fields have become one coherent whole. In 2005, our curriculum proposal entitled "Research Workshop for a Sustainable Future: Toward New Challenges in Intercultural Communication Studies" was adopted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) under the Initiatives for Attractive Education in Graduate Schools. Research and educational programs at Rikkyo Graduate School of Intercultural Communication is now under drastic development, and Research Workshops (RW) are functioning as a hinge that connects two undetachable dimensions; theory on the one hand, and practice on the other.

Rikkyo Graduate School of Intercultural Communication aims to expand the traditional framework of Intercultural Communication Studies, based upon the concept of "sustainable future." The School seeks to combine the latest theoretical development and diverse, contextualized, local practices. Such an approach will give rise to a new type of knowledge in which collaboration between theory and practice is internalized.

Global society today is in need of professionals who can understand intercultural communicative phenomena based on proper theoretical groundings, and mediate cultural boundaries at the site of interaction. That is, researchers are required to shed light on interactions among different types of people, thereby creating a new framework of practice befit to each context. Rikkyo Graduate School of Intercultural Communication is at the forefront of cultivating such talents who can hold leadership positions in the governmental offices, international organizations, NGOs, and corporations.