Concerns raised over Osaka’s plan to cut sister-city ties with San Francisco

November 25, 2017

Osaka- Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura's plan to cut the western Japan city's sister-city ties with San Francisco has drawn concerns from a local civic group promoting exchange programs with the US city.

The Osaka city government has scrapped a plan to send five high school students to San Francisco for some 10 days next March.

The purpose of sister-city interactions is to boost exchanges among citizens free from politics, said Ryoichi Kuboi, head of Soynet, a civic group promoting exchange activities between the two cities.

"Dissolution is the worst choice. I'm really sad because the move will trample on the future of citizen's interactions and children," said Kuboi, professor emeritus at Osaka University.

Kuboi also expressed concerns about the potential disappearance of U.S. groups that have looked after Japanese students.

Yoshimura said on Friday that his municipal government will make a decision as early as mid-December to sever its six-decade-old sister-city relationship with San Francisco.

The mayor's comments came after San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee on Wednesday accepted a statue symbolizing so-called comfort women, mainly Koreans, who were forced into prostitution for Japanese troops before and during World War II.

Some question Yoshimura's plan to cut sister-city ties only with the U.S. city, as a similar statue has also been set up in Shanghai, another sister-city of Osaka.

The statue in Shanghai has been established by a university, not by authorities in Shanghai, Yoshimura said, expressing Osaka's intention to continue sister-city ties with the Chinese city. Jiji Press