Rencontre Franco-Japonaise de probabilites [Paris, 27 Novembre-1ER Decembre, 2000] - A few words about its origin and its aims

There have been strong historical ties in Probability Theory between France and Japan for a long time, as any reader of Ito-McKean's book can confirm, if only from the dedication of this book to Paul Levy. More recently, a nu mber of visits of French probabilists in Japan have taken place, partly thr ough participation to Taniguchi Symposium. Coming closer to this Rencontre, there bas been a predecessor organized by the late Professor M. Metivier and S. Watanabe, which led to the publicatio n of Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 1332, Springer. The present Rencontre took place following the wish of some Japanese probab ilists to discuss with French colleagues about several topics, of particula r importance in our recent researches, among which Malliavin calculus, Brow nian motions on homogeneous spaces and/or exponential functionals, Brownian -like filtrations and noises, diffusion processes in random environments an d so on. Practically, the Rencontre could be held thanks to the travel facilities of fered by the Ministry of Education in Japan, while the Laboratoire de Proba bilites of Paris VI took care of the current expenses during the stay in Pa ris of the Japanese participants. The scope of the exchanges which took place during the Rencontre is partly illustrated by the following list of lectures.