Leaders celebrate Hawaii-Japan sister partnerships at Waikiki summit

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii has a new sister state relationship with Japan.

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Okayama prefecture became Hawaii’s seventh sister state from Japan, following Okinawa, Hiroshima, Ehime, Fukuoka, Hokkaido and Yamaguchi.

The governors of Hawaii and Okayama celebrated with a signing at the Hawaii-Japan Sister State & Sister City Summit on May 21 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

The event brought together governors, mayors, and business and community leaders from across Japan this week to expand long-standing ties with their Hawaii counterparts and shape the future together.

“We really wanted to be as close as possible to Hawaii,” said Okayama Governor Ryuta Ibaragi. “This is such a beautiful, wonderful place to come, and now from now on, I can come to Hawaii for the job.”

“Each time we do these, we bring more leadership partnerships. We get ideas from different regions. One region works on energy, another may work on tourism, another on the environment,” said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green. “A lot of our best ideas have come from the relationships we have with Japan.”

Ibaragi said he’s excited to introduce Hawaii residents to his home.

“Okayama Prefecture is very famous for the fruit, the peach and grapes are the best,” Ibaragi said. “Some people claim that other peaches are as good as peaches from Okayama, but they’re not lying, but they’re wrong.”

“Four colleges in my prefecture has the connection with four different universities in Hawaii,” Ibaragi added. “I would like to expand that cooperation and I would like to go into high schools. I would like to make as many sister schools between local high schools and high schools in Hawaii so that these schools can exchange students to learn Hawaiian culture, English, and so forth, and maybe we could offer something for Hawaiian people.”

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Green said meetings like the ones taking place at the summit are more than talk story sessions, but also ways to exchange ideas and come up with action plans.

“With Fukuoka, they have special expertise in what they call One Health, which is a global philosophy that health is both health like physical health for human beings It’s about the environment’s health and the health of other animal species, and that of course is relevant because disease can spread between us and animals, and it’s an impactful way to look at healthcare,” Green said.

“They started the idea and then we did a memorandum of understanding a couple of years ago and now we’re we did a memorandum of understanding a couple of years ago and now we’re rolling out principled policy that’s based on one health like our climate impact fee, the green fee, takes a healthy environment, does prevention to prevent future disasters,” Green explained. “That is an example of how we actually took some of these meetings and relationships and turned it into policy.”

The summit is hosted by Japan-America Society of Hawaii (JASH) and the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism (DBEDT).

“Building on the extraordinary success of the inaugural 2023 Summit, the largest Hawaii-Japan international convening in more than two decades, this next chapter promises even greater impact,” said Reyna Kaneko, JASH president.

“Japan is Hawaii’s most important global partners and this summit creates an opportunity to identify practical areas for collaboration.”

Breakout sessions focus on six different topics:

There will also be a marketplace that is free for the public to attend, featuring a variety of vendors selling products and promoting travel to Japan.

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Visit jashawaii.org for more information.