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The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Linas Linkevičius continues his working visit to Japan. He visited the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Museum Memorial Museum in Yaotsu – the home town of the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister also met with the Mayor of Yaotsu Masanori Kaneko and the Governor of Gifu Prefecture Hajime Furuta. The town of Yaotsu and Gifu Prefecture have established “friendship city relationships” with Lithuanian cities, including Kaunas, where Sugihara issued the so-called ‘life visas’, with which he is believed to have saved the lives of about 6,000 Jews.

The head of Lithuania’s diplomacy welcomed very close and mutually beneficial ties between Kaunas and Gifu Prefecture, discussed further cooperation and invited the Mayor and Governor to participate in the events of Sugihara Week in Kaunas on 2-8 September.

“Sugihara not only taught all of us, especially today’s diplomats, a powerful lesson that human life is very important, but his memory continues to bring Lithuania and Japan closer together”, said Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, when signing the album of visitors.

Linkevičius also presented the museum a Lithuanian postage stamp and a special envelope dedicated to Sugihara to remind the museum of the Minister’s visit.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister met with the Mayor of Nagoya Takashi Kawamura, who also expressed a wish to establish a relationship with Kaunas. Linkevičius called on this industrial hub for the region, famed for housing the headquarters of the Toyota Motor Corporation, to make use of the people-to-people contacts that had been established thanks to Chiune Sugihara to build business relationships.

Lithuania is one of the few countries in Europe and in the world that have signed cooperation agreements with all the three major Japanese organisations that support research – Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, Japan Science and Technology Agency, and Japan Society for Promotion of Sciences.