- L: Ueda Castle (©Ueda City) / R: Davos, Switzerland (©Davos Klosters / Stefan Schlumpf)
- Panorama of Davos (©Davos Klosters / Marcel Giger)
- Sugadaira Kogen ski resort (©Ueda City)
Ueda ― Davos (1976)
Chubu | Ueda City
City Partnerships
The long overdue meeting between “Davos of Japan” and its counterpart in the Swiss Alps!
From katanas to skis
Home to a feudal warlord Sanada samurai clan, to the historic hot springs like Bessho and Kakeyu, and to a savory recipe of garlic-flavored oidare yakitori, Ueda is an inviting city in the east of Nagano Prefecture and surrounded by massive snowy mounts that no ski enthusiast would want to miss. And it is precisely thanks to skiing that Switzerland became a part of Ueda’s history! From the early Showa period, the growing popularity of winter sports in Japan benefited to a snow resort in Joshin-etsu Kogen National Park, i.e. Sugadaira Kogen, the growing nationwide reputation of which soon earned the area a familiar nickname: “Davos of Japan”.
A flattering comparison
Even though it would only later turn into a major global hub thanks to the World Economic Forum, which every year in January welcomes the most powerful heads of state and businesspersons in the world, Davos was at the time already seen as one of Europe’s prime destinations for winter sports and as a health resort. Located at an altitude of 1,560 meters in the canton of Graubünden, which serves as a backdrop for the adventures of Heidi, the city became a reference for speed skaters and skiers in the early 20th century, then a world-famous resort at the turn of the new millennium.
Together with the nearby town of Klosters, Davos nowadays offers a wide variety of winter sports activities, and summer hiking trails, set amid stunning Alpine scenery for Swiss and Japanese people to enjoy. The whole area is accessible via the world-renowned Rhaetian Railway, which features some of Switzerland’s most iconic views.
Reaching out to a sister
In order to commemorate the 50 years anniversary of the establishment of Sugadaira Kogen Ski Resort, Ueda Mayor Shizuo Miyajima of Sanada-machi therefore contacted Davos officials in 1976 to suggest a sister cities agreement. On March 25, having travelled all the way to Graubünden, he met with Landamann Christian Jost in the old wooden town hall of Davos, where both men signed the beginning of yet another great story of friendship and understanding between Japan and Switzerland. To celebrate the twinning, a mutual exchange of one-square-meter land was suggested, and a green monument with a Swiss and a Davotian flags, the “Tower of Davos”, was proudly erected on a hill in Sugadaira Kogen.
Cross-countries
Despite the merging of Sanada into Ueda in 2006, exchanges between the two partner communities have remained strong: delegations of dozens have regularly traveled to Switzerland and Japan alike. Most recently, in October 2016, Mayor Tarzisius Caviezel and Ambassador of Switzerland to Japan Jean-François Paroz were invited to Ueda by its mayor, Mr. Souichi Motai, to take part in the commemorative ceremonies marking the 40 years anniversary of the city partnership.
The two cities were also more closely woven together in 2008, when the Sugadaira Skyline Trail Run Race and the Davos Swiss Alpine Marathon (78.5 km - the largest and most spectacular ultra mountain course in the world) signed a sister race agreement. Both pledged to send their own respective winners to each other’s world-renowned competition as an acknowledgement of the special relationship between the “Davos of Japan” and the “Ueda of Switzerland”!