Sister City Agreements on Japan’s International Cooperation Agenda

Abstract

The general objective of this paper is to discuss sister cities on Japan's international cooperation agenda, seeking to understand the extent to which the central government encourages Japanese municipalities to sign agreements with international sub-national actors. Sister city agreements correspond to arrangements between cities in different countries, which enhance cooperative relations, especially in soft areas such as culture, education and trade. Data from the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations, a foundation linked to the government of Japan that supports Japanese municipalities wishing to internationalize, shows that there are approximately 1,809 sister-city agreements between Japanese municipalities and foreign municipalities, 47 of which are with Brazil. The data also shows an increase in the number of such agreements between Japanese cities and other international cities from the 1990s to recent years. The qualitative research, carried out through primary and secondary sources, with an exploratory purpose, contributes to the scarce literature on sister cities, based on the Japanese case, as well as answering the following question: to what extent are sister cities cooperation tools on Japan's contemporary foreign policy agenda? The study suggests that Japan is a country that recognizes the model of decentralized international cooperation of sister cities, delegating to the cities themselves the initiatives and incentives for such agreements that contribute to the country's presence on the international stage.