Public Diplomacy

Matsukawa Town in Nagano Prefecture started a relationship with Costa Rica by welcoming JICA’s trainees from Costa Rica in the framework of JICA’s technical assistance programme for life improvement. This led to the registration as a Host Town in December 2016. Initially, many local residents had questions; "What is the Host Town?" or "Where is Costa Rica?"
As the Tokyo 2020 Games had been getting closer, various Host Town projects had started working to let them know about Costa Rica, such as serving Costa Rican food at local events, selling of polo shirts designed by junior high school students to promote their friendship with Costa Rica and inviting Costa Rican Judo players to the Town.
Matsukawa Town also launched "Costa Rica Club" initiated by citizens’ volunteers. The Club held the "Costa Rica Study Tour" for local children and made an opportunity of Costa Rican Paralympic gold and silver medalist visit to the town. The series of events could work for both of them to feel the kindness of local people including young people and children.

We would like to introduce Mr. Joost Kralt from the Netherlands, Coordinator for International Relations (CIR) for Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture. Mr. Kralt was so engrossed in Japanese language as he was practicing Japanese Hiragana and Katakana letters behind the back of teachers during class when he was a high school student. He decided to major in Japanese Language in the University then to go to Japan to keep studying further. After the internship experience in a Japanese company’s office in the Netherlands, he selected to learn Japanese Language in a master course in his country. At that time, he got to find an attractive job offer “CIR for Koriyama City”. Since then, Mr. Kralt has dedicated his life in Fukushima for 7 years having diverse experiences as an interpreter or a translator, or sometimes as a vocalist of “Gakuto-kun Band” etc. Through his whole experiences in Fukushima, he has always been touched by Fukushima’s strong solidarity, deep kindness and solid determination towards the reconstruction from the disaster. At the end of March, Mr. Kralt will leave from the current post but will keep conveying the Fukushima’s attractive points so that many people can see, come to, feel and enjoy Fukushima.

The Osaka Castle has a friendship agreement with the famous castles in the world such as Eggenberg Palace in Austria and the Dukes of Brittany (Bretagne) in France. The first friendship agreement with a foreign castle was started from an old folding screen found in Austria. It was a screen painting in the collection of Eggenberg Palace, and it unmistakably described solemn Osaka Castle built by TOYOTOMI Hideyoshi and its castle town at the time.
In correspondence to this unbelievable discovery, a joint research project was co-launched by three parties, namely, the Joanneum of the Styria State Museum holding jurisdiction over Eggenberg Palace, the Naniwa Osaka Heritage Research Center of Kansai University, and the Osaka Castle Museum. The research and study are still ongoing. Several international symposiums and exhibitions have been held, and there is even proposition of another friendly castle affiliation with a castle in Milan, or other grand scale projects are currently carried on.

The year 2021 was the 60th anniversary of the sister city affiliation between Kobe City and Marseille City. Even though it was difficult to conduct exchanges with people coming and going between two cites due to the COVID-19, the cities had been making efforts to promote sister city relationship by holding local events and online exchanges. For example, a promotional event was held in conjunction with the opening of UNIQLO stores in Marseille. These promotions were contributed on by energetic efforts of two cities and local residents, and it was truly an opportunity to realize the solid connections between the two cities and people over the years. Based on the ties that have been warmly cultivated over the years, Kobe City will continue to engage in sister city exchanges.

From the Consulate-General of Japan in Ho Chi Minh City, the city which is the driving force behind Vietnam's southern economy, we would like to introduce the advantages of Vietnam's southern provinces and cities in terms of business and investment ! Following on from the previous article introducing Long An Province (November 2021), this time, we would like to introduce Binh Duong Province, which is located in the east side of Ho Chi Minh City. Binh Duong Province has been selected as a destination of foreign companies as the business base since the 1990's. Japanese companies have taken part in its urban planning and development, and will keep contributing to its infrastructure development in the future.

Paper Cranes deliver the messages from local children across the Pacific Ocean.
The tweet that gained the most attention this month was the one which introduced the paper crane exchange between students in both Toba City in Mie Prefecture and in Santa Barbara City in California, the U.S.A. Since the two cities allied as sister cities 50 years ago, they have developed their exchanges such as junior high school students visit programme etc. Their strong relationship makes our hearts warm even under COVID-19 conditions!