Thursday 30th July 2020 at Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt
Mrs. Setsuko Hashimoto - 25th Anniversary message, July 2020
Setsuko Hashimoto at the opening of the Hashimoto Memorial Walkway, Riddiford Gardens, Lower Hutt 2009.
Kia Ora!
Good evening everyone. I’m honoured to be here to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the friendship between Lower Hutt City and Minoh city.
I sincerely thank those who made this happen.
In July 1995 I remembered we had shown traditional culture activities which include tea ceremony, Ikebana, Japanese dance, Koto, Calligraphy and Kamishibai at the Lower Hutt city hall.
I still remembered that many people attended to this event. I look forward to continuing this friendship between the two cities for many years to come.
Thank you,
Setsuko Hashimoto
Mayoress, widow of former Mayor Takashi Hashimoto
Ms. Miyoko Rokkaku - 25th Anniversary message, July 2020
Ms. Miyoko Rokkaku - Vice President, Hutt Club 2020
“Kia Ora” dear Hutt Citizens –distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is a great honor and pleasure, to offer our most sincere celebrations on the 25th Anniversary Cocktail Party of mutual city exchange from Minoh Hutt Friendship Club (Hutt Club).
I am Miyoko Rokkaku, Vice President of Hutt Club. I still remember the many events with delegations from Lower Hutt city and Minoh citizens on the 20th anniversary in 2015.
In consideration of the human interaction between the two cities so far, after the 25th anniversary, we hope the development of both cities, and we wish to continue our good relations for a long time to come.
I hope the Covid-19 will heal in the world, and wishing for the progression of Sister Cities NZ, and if possible, I would like to visit Lower Hutt city and meet the citizens. Finally, through the exchanges between two cities, I sincerely wish for the glory and happiness of Hutt citizens.
Nga mihi, Thank you.
Miyoko Rokkaku
Minoh Hutt Friendship Club Vice President
Mr. Kazunari Maeda - 25th Anniversary message, July 2020
Mr. Kazunari Maeda, President of MAFGA
Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to express my congratulations on the 25th anniversary of the friendship between Lower Hutt and Minoh. My name is Kazunari Maeda. I took office as president of MAFGA (Minoh Association of Global Awareness) on July 1st.
MAFGA has been supporting the international exchanges and citizen-to-citizen interactions between both cities over the quarter century.
As a personal note, I am privileged with opportunities to visit Lower Hutt four times; one for the signing ceremony of the Friendship Agreement in 1995 and three more trips during the period. At the signing ceremony I still remember many smiles of people who enjoyed the Japanese culture presentation. Since then I continued to work at the Minoh City Office to help international exchanges.
At my retirement, Mr. Ray Wallace, then-mayor of Lower Hutt, kindly sent me a letter of appreciation for my service, and I keep it as my treasure.
The Minoh Hutt Friendship House was built with financial contributions by over 700 private citizens and corporations in Minoh, including myself and my family. I hope the friendship house will be actively used as a Japanese culture center there.
Let me conclude my speech by wishing more active communications and interactions between the two cities and their citizens.
Thank you very much.
Kazunari Maeda,
President Minoh Association for Global Awareness
30 July 2020
Mr. Kazuhiko Kawashima - 25th Anniversary message, July 2020
Kia Ora, ladies and gentlemen.
I’m pleased to acknowledge all the familiar faces and good friends of ours. Today I’m especially happy as we are here to celebrate 25 years of sister city relationship. It’s our great pleasure to renew our friendship with you.
Personally, when I look back into the past, it was 2009, more than 10 years ago, that I first joined the Minoh Hutt Friendship Club. For short, we call ourselves just Hutt Club.
Right after I retired from the job I joined the Hutt Club. So far I was lucky enough to visit your beautiful city two times, first in 2012 and the second time in 2018. In both cases we were cordially welcomed.
We met many friends and we paid visits to a number of beautiful places. I was especially impressed when we visited the local winery and tasted the quality wine of New Zealand. It was a time of my life.
In our Hutt Club, we have a number of events that we do both monthly and annually. This year, however, because of the pandemic situation of the Covid-19 we were forced to give up some of the regular events. Very often we had to communicate each other over the email correspondence. We only hope that we will get rid of this nightmare and return to normalcy.
One more thing I’d like to mention here is that we could finally complete the translation of your book, Lower Hutt -The First Garden City and published its Japanese version only a couple of months ago. We sent some copies to your city hall and if you are interested we would like you to take a look. Looking back into the past five years those were the days of hard work. It took us five years from the day we started the translation to the day we finally published the book. The leading figure of this project is Mr Sato, our former president. Let’s give him a big hand.
Thank you for your attention and once again I would like to propose a toast. Congratulations on the 25th anniversary and God bless you. Cheers!
Mr. Kazuhiko Kawashima
Hutt Club Member
July 2020
Mr. Todd Sato - 25th Anniversary message, July 2020
Hutt Club Members 14 June 2017.
Standing persons from left to right: Mr.Urahama, Mr.Kubo, Mr.Ichida, Mr.Kato, Ms.Higashi, Ms.Yamaoka, Mr.Kitamura, Ms.Kawabata
Sitting persons from left to right: Ken Katashiba, Mr.Kawashima, Ms.Rokkaku, Mr.Sato, Ms.Kimura, Ms.Toyoshima.
Hello everybody, I am very happy to be given a chance to say a few words at this special occasion.
I was the President of the Minoh Hutt Friendship Club (Hutt Club) for 12 years. During that time we initiated a few events such as ‘English Conversation Get-together’ with Kiwi teachers, ‘New Zealand Wine Tasting’, ‘New Zealand lamb cooking and tasting’ etc.
The culmination of these was to translate your history “Lower Hutt: The First Garden City” into Japanese and publish it. We got it done just last month. You must have seen it by now. We thought that in order to understand people with different culture deeply, we should know their history. We formed a translation team consisting of six club members. It took us three and a half years for translation and one more year for fundraising and publication. It was a big challenge for us.
Thank you very much for your big help. The Hutt Minoh House Friendship Trust gave NZ$2,000.00 donation to the project and we were taught lots of useful local knowledge by a few Hutt citizens.
It looks like the project was a joint-venture of the citizens of the two cities. After reading the book we now understand how your people have developed your community over nearly 200 years. Struggling to overcome each difficulty arising, you have never given up. It is a moving story. The title of the book “The First Garden City” sounds very attractive. Led by this concept we looked into the history of our own city and found that Minoh was also one of the first garden cities in Japan. What a coincidence! We were struck by this fact very much.
Now I really hope that both cities will endeavor to regain the old fame and become today’s garden cities. Congratulations on the 25th anniversary of our friendship.
Mr. Todd Sato
Former President of the Hutt Club
30 July 2020
My connections to Japan, Osaka & Minoh House - Rosemary McLennan
Rosemary McLennan and Hine Kahu with the Taniwha of Wellington Harbour kamishibai at Saito-no-Oka Gakuen in 2014.
Thanks to Expo 70, Osaka has always been the most important city in Japan for me.
Growing up in Canterbury, our district was so proud when our champion sheep dog trialist, Bob Wilson, was invited to put on displays at Expo in Osaka.
That year was the first time Japan had hosted a World Expo and the first time New Zealand had taken part. Our involvement was partly prompted by Britain joining the EEC. We needed to find new markets for our primary produce and Japan was showing signs of becoming a major trading partner for us.
Screening to packed audience in the New Zealand Expo pavilion was a 20-minute documentary called This is New Zealand which showcased our nation to the ordinary citizens of Japan.
There were no words and the film’s three screens simultaneously showed pictures of New Zealand’s culture, landscape, art and ordinary people to a backing track of the majestic orchestral music Karelia Suite written by composer Sibelius.
It later screened in New Zealand’s four main centres where audiences and politicians alike shed tears of pride.
At Wellington’s Embassy Theatre the film made a big impression on a young Pukerua schoolboy named Peter Jackson.
It would later be written that when This is New Zealand opened in Japan in early 1970 no one could have known that this would also be a watershed moment in New Zealand film-making history.
Fast forward to the 1990s,when I was interviewing the descendants of Normandale’s early settlers for a book to be published by the local residents’ association.
In Wellington, doing research I found myself chatting to an elderly man, Tod Hoggard, who was researching his family. When I told him I was writing a book on Normandale, he told me his uncle had farmed there and that an aunt and uncle had once owned the former von Zedlitz house called Norbury above the Western Hutt Road. We worked out that was now 38 Normandale Road, then leased to the Wellington branch of Youth for Christ.
Tod was able to connect me with Wanda Hall, von Zedlitz’s daughter, and so a chapter on the house was added to my book.
Youth for Christ bought their own premises (which I contributed to) and the residents’ association lobbied for something useful to be done with the building whose history had been unearthed by my book.
Around this time a sister cities agreement was signed between Lower Hutt and Minoh, Osaka, and I became involved in John Terris’s successful mayoral campaign in 1995, partly to lobby him about Norbury.
Mayor Terris suggested to his Minoh counterpart Mayor Takashi Hashimoto that Norbury would make an ideal Japanese cultural centre and after an impressive restoration funded by the Minoh and Lower Hutt councils and a grant from the Expo 70 fund (funny that!) it was opened in 1999 as Hutt Minoh Friendship House.
Later I was asked to join the Minoh House management committee and felt a little like Moses’ mother being handed back her own baby to look after.
I certainly enjoyed my time of about 15 years on the Minoh House management committee as our team facilitated establishment of various Japanese cultural classes including language, calligraphy, tea ceremony and origami and created and ran public events that attracted hundreds of visitors.
Japan and New Zealand established diplomatic relations in 1952 and our countries have much in common. We are both democracies with a monarch and we share similar values, interests and geography.
Japan is New Zealand’s fourth-ranked export destination (after China, Australia and the United States) and I believe it is the ideal doorway to understanding Asian culture.
During my involvement with Minoh House, I have travelled to Japan at my own expense five times, the first to the 2005 World Expo near Nagoya. Each trip has included Minoh where visiting the beautiful Expo 70 park (Banpaku Koen) was obviously special for me.
On one trip I was accompanied by a friend, the late Hine Kahu. The Hutt Club in Minoh had asked for a Maori legend they could translate into Japanese. The obvious choice was The Taniwha of Wellington Harbour written by Stokes Valley resident Moira Wairama, illustrated by Bruce Potter and published in English and Te Reo Maori. Permissions from them and their publisher were obtained and a Hutt Club member did the translation.
We got it finished in time for Hine and I to make presentations to several primary schools in Minoh where children heard the legend in their own language, English and Te Reo Maori (Hine’s first language).
While my fulltime work commitments now preclude me from being involved with Minoh House I do stay in touch with friends in Minoh and continue to value those friendships very much.
Mun's tribute to Todoromi Junior High School 2020
Lower Hutt brothers Pyong-Hwang Yun & Pyong-Mun Yun were Assistant English Teachers (AETs) in Minoh between 1996-2006 with their friend from Minoh-shi.
Pyong-Mun Yun, aka Big Asian Kiwi, is from Lower Hutt and lived in Minoh-shi from 1996 - 2006.
He has an Education degree from Victoria University of Wellington and Diploma of Teaching from Wellington College of Education. He currently lives with his wife and two daughters in Bengaluru, India where he works as a PE Specialist at Canadian International School Bangalore. Mun is a K-12 PE & Music teacher; a strength & conditioning coach; sports coach; bodybuilder; musician, and multicultural aficionado of food and language. In 1996 - 2006 he was based in Minoh-shi on the sister city Assistant English Teacher (AET) programme. Here is his musical tribute with his daughters to one of his old school’s in Minoh - Todoromi Chugakko (Todoromi Junior High School).
Reflections of Minoh - Angela Cole 1997-2007
I was an Assistant English Teacher (AET) in Minoh from 1997 to 2007, and during that time, I worked at three different junior high schools, six elementary schools, and made regular visits to local kindergartens.
Together with the other AETs from New Zealand, I attended numerous cultural events, including Kiwi camps, Rotary Club evenings, Sunday English conversation classes, and more. Working in Minoh was more than just a job. It was full immersion into a wonderful culture and the experience of living in a vibrant city possessing many of the same qualities as my hometown of Lower Hutt.
When I arrived in Minoh all those years ago, the Hutt City- Minoh exchange programme was still finding its feet. However, due to the dedication of Mayor Takashi Hashimoto, the sister-city relationship flourished, and awareness built among local citizens of both Minoh and Lower Hutt. As AETs, we were proud to represent Lower Hutt and New Zealand, and we were fortunate to be there at a time when there was an incredibly pro-active local government led by a mayor who loved New Zealand. His wife, Setsuko Hashimoto promptly took us under her wing and made the transition very smooth for us. To this day, she has remained a dear friend, and we felt it deeply when she lost her beloved husband. Visiting the Takashi Hashimoto Memorial Walk in Lower Hutt, dedicated to this great man, further reinforces the fact that what he nurtured will never be forgotten.
Some of my best memories of Minoh include walking up to the breathtaking waterfalls (Minoh Taki) in autumn when the maple leaves blazed with their fiery colours. Being accosted by monkeys along the way added to the excitement. Overlooking the city from the vantage point of the Minoh Hotel was an additional reminder of the influence this small, but significant corner of the universe had on my life. To this day, I carry with me the beauty, culture, and warmth of the people in my heart.
A couple of years ago, I visited Minoh, and I was struck by how little seemed to have changed on the surface. I then met up with Kazunari Maeda, another person instrumental in the promotion of the Hutt-Minoh relationship. He accompanied me to the new MAFGA headquarters, and I was delighted and impressed at how the relationship and awareness had developed since my time there. Maeda san`s daughter, Miho, who I remember as a very cute and genki five year old when I was there, is currently doing great things in New Zealand and has become an honorary Kiwi in the process. This proves that the work that was done in the early days has been far-reaching and successful.
As for our students, I sincerely hope that what we, as AETs, contributed in the classroom has served them well in their lives. Team- teaching was a relatively new concept for the Japanese teachers of Minoh, but steps were being taken to establish a strong and confident teaching staff who were sufficiently equipped to implement an effective English curriculum. Students were not accustomed to the emphasis on oral English at first, but over the years we could see the progress the students made, especially when they began learning English at elementary school. Our goal was to “internationalise” the students and help them become comfortable using English while also learning about other cultures.
The diversity of the AETs was also an accurate reflection of the make-up of the New Zealand population. We were all from the same area, but within our small group, there were several different cultures, languages, lifestyles, and ways of thinking. This could only be a positive thing for our students to see, and this is the beauty of our country, New Zealand. We have all moved on in our lives, but I don`t think any of us will ever forget that very special time when we all came together with a common goal.
For myself, I have taken all I learned in Minoh and applied it in many other areas of my life. I now teach in Taiwan, and I am a better teacher as a result of what Minoh has taught me.
I have so many people to thank for the opportunity I was given, and I realise this was a unique chance that didn`t come around often. I encourage the current AETs and their successors to keep building on what has been established and to go into the position with open hearts and minds. Minoh is a special place, and I will always feel connected to it wherever I happen to be.