［July 2022］
A New Era of Sister City Exchange

I arrived in Sydney in mid-June. As our readers may know, one of CLAIR’s main missions is to support exchange between local governments in Japan and Australia/New Zealand. Since arriving in Sydney, l was fortunate to have opportunities to go on two business trips within a two-week period. The first was to Chatswood to visit Willoughby City Council and the second was to Lismore to visit the City Hall and disaster-affected areas and to attend the Lismore Lantern Parade. Both of these trips were for sister city-related events.

There are 1786 sister city relationships between local governments in Japan and other countries as of July 1, 2022. Within this, Japan has 107 sister city relationships with Australia and 44 with New Zealand. For Japan, Australia is the country which Japan has the fourth largest number of sister cities with and New Zealand is the tenth largest. There is a long history of sister city relationships between Japan and Australia/New Zealand. The first sister city relationship between Japan and Australia was established in 1963, and the first between Japan and New Zealand was established in 1973. It is pleasing to see the large number of friendly relationships Japan has with Australia and New Zealand.

I have heard that people in Australia and New Zealand generally have a good impression of Japan, and I believe this is due in part to the interactions and exchange activities under the many sister city relations.

Much like the rest of the world, physical interactions and exchange between Japan and Australia/New Zealand had been restricted over the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the three countries have been gradually relaxing their restrictions, I anticipate that the interactions between Japan and Australia/New Zealand will gain momentum and steadily make up for lost time. On the other hand, I think that online interaction will be more active than ever before. I believe that a combination of in-person and online interactions will become the new standard style of interaction in the future.

CLAIR Sydney will continue to support and facilitate the further development of partnerships between Australia/New Zealand and Japan, and I will make all efforts to accomplish this goal.