In November, Ehime Prefecture and the state of Hawaii agreed to become sister "municipalities" -- a symbolic move aimed at overcoming the February 2001 Ehime Maru tragedy.

Nine people aboard the Ehime Maru, a Japanese fisheries training ship, died when it sank off Hawaii after being struck by a surfacing U.S. Navy submarine.

In signing the sister-city accord, however, the parties also agreed that the relationship should be reassessed five years later.

Although the five-year provision was submitted by the Hawaiian side, Ehime Prefecture officials welcomed the proposal since it would be a more convenient way of phasing out the special relationship in the future.

"It is better to (put a time frame on the ties) than meaninglessly continue the relationship forever," remarked one Ehime official during a recent gathering of local government officials, according to participants.

Local governments nationwide are re-evaluating their sister-city relationships with overseas municipalities -- partly due to the tight budgetary constraints that have forced them to cut back on international-exchange expenditures.

Total expenditures by local governments on exchange programs stood at 6.5 billion yen in 2001, a decline of nearly 50 percent from the 11.5 billion yen spent in 1997, according to the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations.

In some cases, sister-city relationships entail only ceremonial exchanges, such as delegates visiting each other on the decennial anniversaries of their ties.

Even so, travel and hosting costs tied to these exchanges have become a heavy burden on local government coffers that have been bludgeoned by the protracted economic slump.

During a meeting of local government officials in Tokyo in November, many indicated that they may terminate their sister-city relationships -- or at least review these ties -- in five to 10 years.

Okayama Prefecture, which has sister-province ties with Jiangxi Province in southern China and with the state of South Australia, is one of those considering a review.

"It is not good to (be satisfied) just holding fifth and 10th anniversary events when there is virtually no other form of exchange," observed Makoto Inokuma, an official of Okayama's international division who attended the meeting. "We would not insist on the form of sister cities."

Inokuma stressed the need to propose projects based on specific topics, rather than just "get-to-know-each-other" events. He also stated that the private sectors of the respective communities, rather than the governments, should take the lead in these exchanges.

The idea of sister-city ties was first proposed in 1955 by then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who believed that friendly civic exchanges would improve national-level ties.

That year, the city of Nagasaki, which had been devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945, became the first city in Japan to conclude a sister-city relationship -- with St. Paul, Minn. This was apparently designed to be a gesture of postwar reconciliation with the U.S.

In addition to student-exchange programs that have continued for nearly 50 years now, interchanges between the two cities' universities, orchestras and businesses have grown.

During the 1950s, a number of Japanese local governments formed sister-city ties with overseas municipalities, mainly in the U.S.

Companies and schools in these cities and towns dispatched delegates to the overseas sister cities to study advanced technology and social systems.

Following the 1972 normalization of Tokyo-Beijing ties, many local governments turned their eyes to China, as well as other parts of Asia, with Japan having increased its economic presence in the region.

Some cities and towns also used the 100 million yen distributed in 1988 by then Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita to each of Japan's municipalities as "hometown promotion" funds for sister-city projects.

"There was a time in the 1970s when holding exchanges with people in foreign countries was considered as something of a status symbol (for municipalities)," said Toshihiro Menju, chief program officer of the nonprofit organization Japan Center for International Exchange.

He reckoned that, today, local government officials lack the resolve or vision to take in new information or technology from their counterparts and make use of them to revitalize their own localities.

Yet some Japanese cities and prefectures have used their sister-city ties to forge successful exchange programs.

The city of Fukuoka says its international exchange programs are no longer limited to its sister cities in China, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, South Korea and the U.S.

The city, which dubs itself an "Asia-Pacific City," holds Asian film festivals and awards cultural prizes to those who have contributed to promoting Asian culture, art and academic studies.

Yamaguchi Prefecture, which concluded friendship ties with China's Shangdong Province in 1982, was given a young Hijo peach tree grown in the province two years later -- on condition that the plant would be cultivated only inside the prefecture.

Following years of trial and error, during which the peach plant gradually adapted to the local soil, Yamaguchi farmers started selling the Hijo peach, dubbed China's "king peach," as a local specialty in 1997.

In November, the Yokohama Association for International Communications and Exchanges invited social workers, volunteers and college students from its sister city, San Diego, to discuss education programs for immigrants.

Yokohama has a large number of foreign residents, while there are many Mexican immigrants in San Diego, which borders Mexico.

Menju of JCIE pointed out that local government officials in charge of international exchanges must have sufficient knowledge of their counterpart municipalities in order to coordinate mutual-interest initiatives.

The coordinator must know how the administrative system works, who the key figures are in the locality, what kind of resources the city has, and so on, Menju said.

"If the coordinator can draw them together, there will be substantial discussions and exchanges of significant information," he said.