YUAI

In a meeting with Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who was visiting the opening ceremony of an Europahaus-Wien residential building in 1961, ÖJAB’s founding president Dr. Buchwieser learned about a Japanese organization for global “fraternity”, that was pursuing similar goals as ÖJAB: The YUAI Foundation. In 1963 there was a first encounter between the two organizations as YUAI sent a delegation to Vienna and another two years later in 1965 the both of them signed an agreement to officially become sister organizations and closely work together in future enterprises.

ÖJAB and YUAI are sister organizations to this day. The agreement of cooperation was stipulated and renewed in an anniversary visit in June 2015, when YUAI sent a delegation of its management team to Vienna.

The YUAI Foundation (Koueki Zaidan Houjin YUAI) takes its principles from Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s ethics of international connection and unity and is headed by the Hatoyama family, a prominent family of Japanese politicians. They campaign across party lines for international understanding, humanity and compassion.

The YUAI Foundation (Koueki Zaidan Houjin YUAI) takes its principles from Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s ethics of international connection and unity and is headed by the Hatoyama family, a prominent family of Japanese politicians. They campaign across party lines for international understanding, humanity and compassion.

Cooperation for decades

Since establishing their bond in the early 1960s, YUAI and ÖJAB have been in close contact and have organized many different youth exchange events between Austria and Japan. The YUAI’s international youth conferences and the annual singing competition hosted in Tokyo are particularly noteworthy. For the YUAI singing contest, that took place annually from 1991 to 2016, young artists would perform a classical German or Japanese song and the winner would receive the opportunity to show their skills at the “Traditional song- and chamber music night”, a charity concert in Vienna organized by ÖJAB. The donations gathered from this concert would go to ÖJAB’s development cooperation projects to support children in Burkina Faso. In return, one or two young musicians among ÖJAB members would go to Japan.

Another project that came into being thanks to the cooperation between ÖJAB and YUAI is the Austrian-Japanese Youth Exchange (ÖJJ). This association located in Vienna organizes youth exchanges between Austria and Japan under the guidance of ÖJAB since the 1970s.