Ms. Hideyo Ashigaki was an active scout, and since 1971 has held senior positions in the Women’s Scout Organisation of Kanagawa Prefecture in Kawasaki. In 1977, as a member of the Kawasaki City Committee for International Cooperation, she supported the choice of Rijeka for establishing friendship with Kawasaki. She prepared countless meeting programmes between representatives of the Women’s Scout Organisation of Kanagawa Prefecture with members of the Rijeka Scout Association in Kawasaki and Rijeka.

During the Homeland War, despite the recommendation given by the Japanese government that Japanese citizens should not travel to Croatia, Ms. Hideyo and her family, daughter Kazuyo and son Tadashi, members of the Kanagawa Prefecture Women’s Scout Organisation and members of the Kanagawa Prefecture Red Cross, regularly visited Rijeka twice a year, offering material support, and telling the truth in Japan about the Homeland War and strengthening friendship between Rijeka and Kawasaki. Daughter of Ms. Hideyo Ashigaki is Ms. Kazuyo Ashigaki.

Ms. Hideyo Ashigaki, a citizen of the city of Kawasaki in faraway Japan, belongs to a group of ordinary little people who, with their hard work, commitment, tolerance and positive curiosity, are changing the world – for the better. As part of her pedagogical activities, she managed to interest young scouts in a different world from the one in which they lived, in a completely different cultural, linguistic, economic and political atmosphere and to awaken in them a sense of tolerance, acceptance of the other and different, helping the other and different in trouble. She acted in the same way with Kanagawa Red Cross activists, as well as with Kawasaki City Government officials who involved her in the decision-making process on Kawasaki’s international cooperation with European cities.

Mrs. Hideyo passed on her endless tolerance, altruism and ease in establishing communication with other people to numerous generations of Rijeka scouts, who still call her Mama Hideyo.

Until her last breath, although in poor health, Mama Hideyo was keenly interested in developing friendly collaboration between Rijeka and Kawasaki. Through her daughter Kazuyo, who has been living in Rijeka for twenty years, she was fully informed about everything that was going on in Rijeka, about the programmes within the project Rijeka – European Capital of Culture 2020. She was especially pleased with the fact that carnival festivities presented Rijeka as the European Capital of Culture. Not once did Mama Hideyo with her group of scouts and Red Cross activists visit the Rijeka Carnival!

Mama Hideyo will forever remain a part of Rijeka’s identity, in which tolerance, acceptance of the other and different are basic features.

(Photo: Kawasaki, 2017, Hideyo Ashigaki with Vojko Obersnel, mayor of the City of Rijeka at that time and her husband Tadao Ashigaki)