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.