I would like to take this opportunity to express my great delight at the fact that the second Okinawa International Movie Festival will be staged here in Okinawa, and that it will be a larger and livelier event than last year’s festival. I would also like to express my appreciation to Yoshimoto Kogyo and everyone else involved in staging this event, for their sterling efforts.

Okinawa boasts a natural environment that is blessed with a warm climate all year round and a coral-reef ocean, and which is renowned for its healing properties and for the health and longevity that it affords the local people. Formerly the Ryukyu Kingdom, Okinawa assimilated many diverse cultures through exchanges with China and the nations of Southeast Asia, and as a so called “bridge between nations” has developed its own unique culture.

Okinawans are magnanimous in character and have a peace-loving demeanor. Thus, with its splendid theme of “Laugh and Peace,” the Okinawa International Movie Festival is ideally suited to Okinawa.

With people thronging to Okinawa from all over the world, I am confident that the festival movies will give rise to new personal interchange, that Okinawa will be enveloped in laughter and peace, and that this will spread to the rest of the world.

The second Okinawa International Movie Festival will be larger in scale than the first festival, in terms of duration, content, and geographical area as the venues will be expanded to Ginowan and other parts of Okinawa, and a variety of different events will be staged.

Video workshops, at which Okinawan elementary school students get to experience the fun of making videos, and the Okinawa Youth Video Festival, in which Okinawan junior-high-school and high-school students can make their own videos with the support of professional staff, are already in progress on the various islands that comprise Okinawa Prefecture.

The charm of the Okinawa International Movie Festival is that it boasts a number of different dimensions, such as laughter, peace, and human interchange. In addition, with summer fast approaching, the festival will be accompanied by ceremonies held all over Okinawa to mark the start of the swimming season.

I fervently hope that all who come and attend the festival on our southern resort island of Okinawa will enjoy themselves to the full.