From Matangi Tonga Magazine, Vol. 16, no. 1, June 2001.

Moshin Morita, the President of the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, was in Tonga in March on a fact-finding mission, “to find ways to develop intellectual and cultural ties between Japan and Tonga.”

Through an interpreter Moshin said that in April last year during the second meeting of Pacific Forum leaders and Japanese officials in Japan, the Japanese Prime Minister Mr Mori announced his intention to strengthen the relations between Japan and the Pacific islands in cultural, intellectual and academic areas.

Moshin said that his university hosted the first ever meeting of vice chancellors from universities in the Pacific region in Japan in July last year. He said that a second seminar was planned for June in Japan and he was going to invite the new vice chancellor of the USP. “I woud like to say that there are lectures in English at my university and other institutions and we would welcome students from the Pacific to study in Japanese universities. It is also very important for Japanese students to come and study in the region, for example at the USP.”

Moshin said that under this intellectual exchange program his university had been working on an Information Technology seminar held in Okinawa in February and attended by 20 people from the Pacific countries.  A second IT seminar was planned for October this year to be funded by the UNDP.

Tonga was his first visit to Polynesia. He went to Micronesia last November and he will be visiting Melanesia at the end of the year.