Is our agreement with Uji worth it?

By MEL ROTHENBURGER

Thanks to CBC Daybreak Kamloops for providing me with the opportunity to meet and talk with Uji Mayor Tadashi Yamamoto, and for permission to use material from the Armchair Mayor Reports.

ANALYSIS — A 17-member delegation from Uji leaves Kamloops today, some members returning home to Japan, others heading east to Banff.

It happens every other year when our Sister City sends a group to take part in Canada Day ceremonies, see the sights and enjoy being hosted at civic dinners and events. And, every other year, a group from Kamloops heads over to Uji to do the same thing. Is it worth it?

The City generously budgets around $40,000 but the actual costs vary — the traveling delegation pays its own air travel while the hosting city pays the hotel bills, ground transportation and official dinners and tours.

That’s only for City councillors and staff, however. The rest of the delegations are made up of citizens — tourists, basically — who pay all their own expenses. In recent years, the number of Kamloops councillors taking advantage of the trips to Uji has diminished from the days when seven or eight members of council would go. At anywhere from $1,500 to $1,800 per council member, it adds up.

Spouses and other family members pay their own airfare, though they benefit from the hotel rooms being paid by the host.

Do Kamloops and Uji actually get any tangible benefits from being Sister Cities? What price tag, one might ask, can you put on international goodwill and understanding? Should the relationship be built on business rather than goodwill?

That’s what the “friendship” agreement with Changping, China was all about. I initiated that agreement during my terms as mayor at the turn of the new millennium. China was still emerging as a world economic power and was anxious to establish ties in North America. At the same time, B.C.’s forest sector was looking for new markets.

I reasoned that a variation on the Sister Cities theme, based strictly on business, could work all around. What better place to foster business than at the municipal, grass roots, level?

We were wooed by several cities in China, choosing Changping (a city a short distance from Beijing) because seeds of a business relationship had already been planted when Thompson Rivers University signed a deal with an educational institution there.

Unfortunately, what seemed to have huge potential has faltered in recent years from neglect.

Uji is a different situation altogether. It was conceived strictly on international goodwill at a time (after a couple of years of courtship the first agreement was signed in 1990) when Japan seemed mysterious and even a bit frightening to Canadians.

It remains today as a relationship based on cultural rather than business exchange. I remember spending a wonderful evening in 2005 eating sushi on a boat on the Uji River and watching a demonstration of torchlight cormorant fishing, and trying to encourage then-Mayor Isamu Kubota of the advantages of bringing business into the relationship.

It was a tough sell, and still is. That was confirmed this week when I met with the new mayor of Uji, Tadashi Yamamoto. I set it up for a segment of the Armchair Mayor Reports feature for CBC, which aired today (Friday).

My son Jacob first visited Japan when he was 11, coming along on a visit to Uji with me and his mom, Sydney. He fell in love with the country and has returned several times. He spent last year attending university in Kyoto, of which Uji is a suburb. I asked Jacob to come with me and translate during my discussion with Mayor Yamamoto.

After introductions, I began by asking the mayor why he thinks the bond between Kamloops and Uji has remained so strong for so long.

Former mayor Kubota is a very gregarious man; Yamamoto strikes me as more studious, but their views on the Sister City program are very similar.

It’s been very productive, he said. “We’ve managed to make connections on the level of the average citizen, for example, in the areas of sports and that kind of exchange and also in educational exchange. Because of that we’ve managed to build a very strong relationship over the years.

“I think it’s definitely the fact that our citizens have the same heart, the same way of thinking. We are able to share that connection with each other and that’s one of the things that has really helped us maintain that strong connection.”

I asked him about the benefits of the relationship.

“The biggest benefit has definitely been our ability to share of each other and our history, not only that but to share each other’s culture and to build a history with each other over time,” he answered through Jacob.

“In particular, for example, we have also had a lot of educational exchange such as with the junior high school students who have come to Kamloops and learn about Kamloops and about Canada. Opportunities like this definitely help the people of Uji to adopt a global mindset and this is definitely one of the most powerful benefits of this agreement.”

His words were full of conviction, and I found myself agreeing with him on the value of learning and understanding other cultures. Without that, harmony and prosperity are impossible.

So, are there opportunities for more business to be done between our two cities?

“Business is, of course, very important to both Uji and to Japan and, therefor it’s definitely something that we can think about as we continue to develop our relationship,” said the mayor.

“However, I would hasten to add that we can’t focus only on business because there are many other opportunities within the context of the Sister City agreement so it’s important that we pursue those as well.”

He wasn’t being evasive; he was saying that we’re in this for the long haul, that it’s still developing. He was, I think, advocating patience.

To us North Americans, of course, it’s all about hurry. I’m a big supporter of our friendship with Uji, and I don’t think it should live or die based on economics. Maybe the Changping Agreement stalled because of that very reason, that there wasn’t enough attention paid to building solid foundations of mutual understanding.

Yet, it’s also true that a good cultural relationship is good for business, and vice versa. We’re still working on the first — Uji and Kamloops are great friends, but not big business partners.

There’s also the political reality that an arrangement in which taxpayers pay for politicians to travel around the world building friendships is more palatable if some business is being done and some jobs being created.

As I tell CBC Daybreak Kamloops host Shelley Joyce on radio today, though, the future may yet bring us to that business connection. Jacob is a perfect example of the way the stars can be brought into alignment by such relationships.

I happened to be mayor when the 10-year renewal with Uji was signed. I went to Uji. Jacob came with us. Because he happened to be the son of a mayor who happened to go to Uji because of a Sister Cities agreement, he is now, in his 20s, an ambassador between the two cities. He’s made many friends in Uji. His ambition is to live and work for a corporation in Japan.

Similar stories play out year after year at TRU because of its emphasis on international exchange students, which couldn’t exist if not under the umbrella of culture-based agreements.

Those individual stories and one-on-one connections are capable of building both cultural and business ties that go way beyond signing a piece of paper and exchanging delegations.

So, is being the Sister City of Uji, Japan, worth it? I say it is.