O the city

Fujimoto later helped build up five wisteria corridors around Jiading, with a total length of over 2,000 meters.

He comes to Shanghai every year to prune the plants and teach local staff how to graft and manage them.

“Unlike cherry trees, wisteria needs much more care to blossom nicely,” said Fujimoto.

He has also helped Shanghai establish two seedling centers.

He invites Shanghai gardeners to Japan to learn pruning skills and gives lectures in Shanghai, where he’s trained more than 200 people.

He has also taken wisteria cuttings back to Japan from China, including those in the Palace Museum in Beijing.

Second hometown

In 2001, he introduced Kirishima City, which also hosts a wisteria park, to Jiading to help them establish exchanges.

As a horticulturalist, he has also trained many grape cultivators for Jiading, making Shanghai the first place in China to master the skills of low-density grape cultivation in greenhouses, contributing to the success of the brand of grapes grown in Jiading’s Malu Town.

Fujimoto said that though he comes to Shanghai every year, he is still shocked at its rapid changes.

“When I came to Shanghai for the first time, Hongqiao Airport was so small that I stepped out of its gate immediately after landing,” he said. “It took me more than an hour to go from the airport to Jiading as there was no direct way and we had to detour on small roads. The car carrying me seemed to be the only automobile on the road as others were pedestrians or cyclists. Beside the road were trees and old buildings. I felt I had come to another world as expressways were already very popular in Japan at that time.

“Now, expressways are everywhere in Shanghai and China has the longest length of expressways. It takes me only 15 to 20 minutes to come from the airport to Jiading,” he said. “Public toilet hygiene is no longer a problem. The shanty houses have also been replaced by skyscrapers and bicycles replaced by cars. If people leave China for two or three years, they will be shocked by the dramatic changes here.

“I had worried about the exchanges with China as we had wars in history,” he said. “But in the past 30 years, I have never faced hatred from the Chinese people. China is really a great nation with tolerance and self-confidence and Shanghai is such a great city. So I feel greatly honored to be an honorary citizen of Shanghai.”

Fujimoto said the current Wake Town mayor and another Shanghai honorary citizen Egusa Yasuhiko, an Okayama Prefecture resident who was honored in 1997, have both congratulated him on his award, while Japanese media made appointments with him for interviews.

“The award will definitely further promote exchanges between our two places,” he said.

Fujimoto said he hopes to spend the rest of his life in improving Jiading Wisteria Park and hopes his children might take over his work. He is bringing them to Shanghai next year with his wife.

“I’m now 86 years old and will turn 87 in three months,” he added. “I love Shanghai as my second hometown and wish to have half of my ashes buried in Japan and half under these wisteria in Jiading after I die.”