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Youth exchange activities with Hanover City, Germany
～for the 50th anniversary of youth exchange activity～
(September 2018)
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by Dr. Kouki Inai
Chairperson, Hiroshima-Hannover Partnership Society
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The origin of youth exchange activities with Hanover City, Germany, goes back to 1968.
In that year, the late Toshihiko Hayashi (passed away October 2010), who was the secretary-general of International Youth Association Hiroshima, led the first youth group from Japan to visit Germany under the cultural agreement established between the German and Japanese governments.
The group visited Hanover City, and this was the start of exchange activities between the two cities.
The Mayor of Hanover at that time, Herbert Schmalstieg, proposed that rather than exchange activities at the national level, more effort should be devoted to developing exchange activities at the municipal level, and this marked the beginning of youth exchange between Hiroshima City and Hanover City.
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In 1970, a delegation of 22 young people was sent for the first time from Hiroshima City to Hanover City.
In 1971, 25 young people participated, and in 1972 a delegation of 32 young people visited Hanover City together with the Mayor of Hiroshima at the time, Setsuo Yamada.
From 1973, delegations from Hanover City started visiting Hiroshima City.
In 1978, which marked ten years since exchange activities started, the mayor of Hanover sent 3,000 mametsuge holly trees as a gift to Hiroshima, and as a result the sunken flowerbed garden "Hannover Garden" was made next to what was then the site of Hiroshima Municipal Stadium.
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Youth delegation from Hiroshima City visiting Hanover
City (1976)
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Signing ceremony for the sister-city relationship
between Hiroshima City and Hanover City (1983)
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In 1983, which marked the 15th year of these exchange activities, it was decided that Hiroshima and Hanover would become sister cities.
On May 27, a signing ceremony was held in Hanover City, attended by Hiroshima Mayor Takeshi Araki and Hanover Mayor Schmalstieg.
In Hiroshima City, the Hiroshima-Hannover Society was formed in February 1979, and it was decided to set up the secretariat for the organization within the International Youth Association Hiroshima.
Prior to this, in December 1978 a friendship society had been established in Hanover City, with its
secretariat in the Hanover City Youth Bureau.
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Since then, youth exchange activities were led by these two secretariats.
In 2005, based on a proposal put forward by the Mayor of Hiroshima at the time, Tadatoshi Akiba, and Toshihiko Hayashi, the International Youth Conference for Peace in the Future (IYCPF) was established.
Hiroshima City and Hanover City called on their respective sister cities to participate in this conference where young people gather together and look for ways that young people can conduct peace activities.
Hiroshima City and other cities then took it in turn to hold this conference.
To date, Hiroshima City and Hanover City have taken the lead and the conference has been held without interruption every year.
The mutual visits between Hiroshima City and Hanover City did lose momentum at one point in time.
However, I was invited to a memorial service in Hanover City in February 2011 for Toshihiko Hayashi, who had passed away the year before, and there I promised to revive youth exchange activities.
The activities of the voluntary Hiroshima-Hannover Society had been on hold, so in April 2011, when the International Youth Association Hiroshima became a general incorporated association, I became the representative director, and at the same time established the Hiroshima-Hannover Partnership Society, also a general incorporated association.
In order to expand the activities of the Society, from not only youth exchange activities but also cultural activities and exchange with the business world, I appointed as directors Mr. Sōkei Ueda (grand master of the Ueda Sōko-ryu tea ceremony), Mr. Masao Mukuda (president and representative director of Hiroshima Electric Railway Co., Ltd), Mr. Hiroshi Tsuboi (chairman of the Hiroshima Shinkin Bank), and the late Mr. Hiroyuki Watanabe (president of Dreambed Co., Ltd.).
After the inaugural meeting in December 2012, we started activities.
The visits to Hanover were re-started in April 2014.
The delegation included 14 youth representatives, 5 traditional Japanese musical instrument performers, 4 Hiroshima Electric Railway employees, and 3 employees of a bakery Andersen Co., Ltd., for a total of 31 participants.
In Hanover City, the group made a courtesy visit to the mayor, attended a memorial service at the war memorial Aegidienkirche, and more.
The young members participated in homestays, and there was a performance of western music at the city hall, and they visited Uestra Company, which operates the streetcars and buses.
In October 2015 a group of 12 people from Hanover came to Hiroshima, where they made a courtesy visit to the Hiroshima Mayor, visited the Cenotaph for the A-Bomb Victims, and attended a party which was an exchange event with the Hiroshima-Hannover Partnership Society.
There was another visit to Hanover City in 2016 by 22 people.
In 2018, marking the 50th year since the start of exchange activities, there were mutual visits, one to Hanover City by a group from Hiroshima City in April (34 people including 17 young people), and one to Hiroshima City by a group from Hanover City in August (9 people).
Both cities held commemorative tree-planting (at Hiroshima-Hain (forest) in Hanover City and Hannover Garden in Hiroshima City), thus adding a new page to our history of exchange activities.
In the future, I hope that we can continue to cherish these exchange activities, with the belief that the exchange of a diversity of people, including young people, will lead to mutual understanding and will become a step towards the achievement of world peace.
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Delegation visiting Hanover (2014)
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Profile
[Kouki Inai]
Graduated from School of Medicine, Hiroshima University in 1974.
Professor in the School of Medicine, Hiroshima University from 1990-2012.
Head of the School of Medicine from 2002-2006.
Specializes in human pathology.
Joined the International Youth Association Hiroshima in 1963.
From 2011, representative director of the Association, which had become a general incorporated association.
From 2012, Chairperson of the general incorporated association Hiroshima-Hannover Partnership Society.
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