Professor Hirono Ryokichi(L) poses for a photo.[Jiao Xiaoli/China Daily]

In January I was invited to take part in a seminar in Tokyo organized by academics looking for ways to ensure and promote peace and prosperity in the region.

With the backing of China Daily’s Editor-in-Chief, Zhu Ling, I accepted the invitation and arrived at International House, an oasis in the center of Tokyo. The hotel originally belonged to a wealthy Japanese family but after World War II fell into Americans hands, before eventually being restored to Japanese ownership.

It was my third visit to Japan. On previous flights to the country, aircraft had been booked out, but the latest flight was only half full. It was clear that tourism between China and Japan has fallen dramatically. Indeed, I know for a fact that for many Chinese tourist guides who make a living working in Japan work has all but dried up.

Japan’s high standards of service became immediately apparent when I hopped into the airport limousine to Tokyo. The service attendant counted each piece of baggage meticulously, lined them up and took a note of each passenger who got off at the next stop. One Chinese passenger who did not know where she should get off received the help and attention of someone who did not know her, but might well have been a long lost friend.

I soon met Professor Hirono Ryokichi of Seikei University in Tokyo, who is internationally renowned. He has long been an environmental activist, since he returned from the United States where, he majored in economics, in the 1950s, working fervently for cleaner air, water and soil and for the establishment of Japan’s Environmental Protection Agency at the end of the 1960s. He has also had a wealth of experience at UNESCAP, the OECD, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, and on the board of the Japan Committee for UNICEF.

He is now Head of the Environmental Partnership Council of Japan, responsible for mobilizing support of all non-governmental organizations engaged in environmental protection, and is a senior adviser to the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies. This institute works closely with China and many other countries. He is also an adviser to the Japanese government on official development assistance.

In 1974 he was invited to Beijing and met the Premier Zhou Enlai and his colleagues and discussed the pros and cons of various versions of a market economy as practiced in the United States and Japan. He was inspired by the concerns with environmental issues expressed by Xi Jinping, now China’s top leader, and the US President, Barack Obama, in visits to Japan in recent years. Having been a professor at Seikei University since 1961, Hirono happily recalls a number of occasions with Japan’s current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, since his student days at Seikei.

Hirono, 81, bubbles with enthusiasm and humor and remains committed to his life-long dream: building a world free of war, free of poverty and devoted to sustainable development.

His speech during the environmental and energy cooperation forum resonated with me with its warmth, clarity and professionalism. He has long been a very good friend of China, and his patience in waiting for a Chinese friend at the airport for over five hours because of a flight delay left the friend, and others, overwhelmed. In talking about the China-Japan friendship he likens it to “a steadily growing tree with its hundreds of branches and thousands of leaves blessing the trunk with warm sunshine and nurturing the roots from an endless spring of underground water and rich minerals”.

I will never forget the friendship of Japan that I felt during this mission. As for Hirono Ryokichi, I consider him to be someone who will be not only a lifelong friend of mine but a lifelong friend of China.

Jiao Xiaoli is a freelance writer of China Daily.