City Stories: When Porto Became Nagasaki's Sister City

2023 marks the 45th anniversary of the twinning agreement between Porto and Nagasaki. The relationship between the two cities has been lavish in bilateral meetings and joint initiatives aimed at promoting peace, human rights, and humanist values.

The rumours of the April Revolution were still heard in the country when, at the end of May 1978, a delegation from the Municipality of Nagasaki landed at the then called Pedras Rubras Airport. The images of the time show open smiles, complicit looks and energetic hugs between Portuguese and Japanese laced with the loose suits and lush ties of the 70s. The high dignitaries of the municipal power of Nagasaki, martyr city of the 1945 nuclear bombing, were warmly welcomed by the local representatives of a city still experiencing the first sensations of democracy and freedom. After all, the democratic municipal government in Portugal was less than two years old...

The arrival in Porto of the Nagasaki entourage ended for a weighty reason: the signing of the twinning protocol between the two cities. Against the backdrop of the agreement were efforts by the only nation in the world to suffer a nuclear attack, Japan, to promote peace within the international community. On the other hand, there are strong historical and cultural ties with Nagasaki, a city founded by the Portuguese in 1571 and which was at the centre of our influence in Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries and was even administered by the Society of Jesus.

The twinning agreement was initiated by the first democratically elected Mayor of Porto, Aureliano Veloso, and his Nagasaki counterpart, Yoshitake Morotani. In addition to the signing of the agreement at the Office of the Mayor on the Town Hall and a ceremony in the Sala das Sessões, the visit program also included official meals at the restaurant Varanda da Barra and Solar do Vinho do Porto. The Japanese guests were also able to attend an exhibition at the Romantic Museum, at Quinta da Macieirinha.

In 1978, Nagasaki invited all countries to contribute a monument to a new area of its Peace Park, the World Peace Symbols Zone. The challenge was accepted by the city of Porto, which donated the "Relief of Friendship". The Porto monument would also be the first to be installed in the park, in November 1978, and it can be read on the respective plaque that it is a tribute to the victims of the atomic bombing of the sister city of Nagasaki.

Also following the twinning agreement, the Municipality of Porto became, in 1984, a member of the World Conference of Mayors for Peace, through the InterCity Solidarity initiative, promoted by Nagasaki and Hiroshima. To promote a peaceful world without nuclear weapons, this network already brings together more than 8,300 cities.

45 years of cooperation, friendship, and exchange

In these 45 years of twinning, numerous official visits, multidisciplinary events, and cultural exchange actions have been carried out. It is worth mentioning the reception in Porto last June of a delegation led by the Governor of Nagasaki Province, Oishi Kengo, as part of the celebrations of the 480th anniversary of the arrival of the Portuguese in Japan. On the occasion, a visit was organized to the work in progress at the Old Industrial Slaughterhouse of Campanhã, a project by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

The partnership between the two cities has been celebrated at different times, especially the celebrations of the 40th anniversary of twinning in 2018, which was attended by the Mayor of Nagasaki, Tomihisa Taue, and the director of the Peace Memorial of this city, Tomoo Kurokawa, who inaugurated the exhibition "Bomba Atómica - Hiroxima e Nagasaki" in the Town Hall. The same Tomihisa Taue had already been, ten years earlier, in Porto regarding the 30 years of twinning.

Many other joint initiatives have taken place in the last 45 years, such as the exhibition of Japanese contemporary art at the Serralves Foundation in 1994, the event “Map Exhibition 2000 Nagasaki”, promoted by the Japanese municipality to display maps and photographs of its sister cities; the exhibition “Bomba Atómica - Hiroxima e Nagasaki”, in 2006; or Japan Week, which, in 2010, brought together artists and designers around Japanese culture in Porto.

A living symbol of this relationship of cooperation, friendship and exchange is the persimmon tree (Kaki in Japanese), which was planted in 2007 by students from elementary schools in Porto, in the gardens of the Palácio de Cristal. The persimmon tree is descended from one of the few trees that survived, in 1945, the dropping of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The initiative took place under the twinning agreement and was promoted by the “Revive Time Kaki Tree” project, which seeks to avoid forgetting one of the biggest tragedies in human history.