It has been a great pleasure to be able to invite you to Osaka for this Ministerial Meeting. On behalf of the people of Japan, I would like to welcome you once more to Osaka. At the same time, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the people of Osaka and environs for the tremendous efforts that they have made to get things ready for our meeting.
As you know, Osaka is part of the Kansai region, and this region -- especially nearby Kobe -- was devastated by a major earthquake this January. As you can see, however, they are recovering gradually. And much of this recovery is thanks to the moral and material support that we received from the other APEC member economies. I would thus like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your generous friendship.
For well over a hundred years, Japanese life has seemed more and more to center on Tokyo. This has also been true of international conferences, and all three of the G-7 Economic Summits that Japan has hosted have been held in Tokyo. This is perhaps the first international conference to ve held in Osaka.
Yet it is in the Kansai region that the Japanese state was first established, and about 60% of our national and cultural treasures are located in this region. This region is also home to a large number of traditional artistic and cultural traditions, and I very much hope you will be able to take this opportunity to familiarize yourselves with the Kansai part of Japan.
The Kansai area is also a very independent-minded area. For hundred years ago, the Osaka suburb of Sakae was a major international trading port that traded with merchants worldwide and that built a considerable stock of wealth as a result. This spirit lives on even today, and the Kansai area has a great many companies rich in frontier spirit and entrepreneurship.
The various cities of the Kansai region's six prefectures have sister-city relationships with a total of 205 cities all over the world. Of these, 146 -- or about 70% -- are with the APEC region, which is another indication of the strong relations this area has with the Asia-Pacific. Given Osaka's rich traditions and commercial involvement, this is truly a fitting site for the Ministerial Meeting and Leaders Meeting to move APEC from the vision phase to the action phase. This year marks the seventh APEC Ministerial Mettings and the third APEC Informal Leaders Meeting. Japan has been an active Advocate-member of APEC from the very beginning, but even we had no way of knowing that the APEC economies would grow so important and the APEC meetings so significant in just seven years' time.
This progress is, I am sure, due to the fact that the APEC member have fully grasped the importance of economic activity based on free market principles and have taken it upon themselves to reform their economies in line with these APEC principles.
We have spent considerable time today discussing the Action Agenda -- a compilation of our distinctive approach and collective efforts to the years 2010 and 2020 -- and I am pleased to see that we have something to propose to the Leaders Meeting. Tomorrow, we will be discussing other aspects of APEC's future, including such important issues as organizational questions and the preparations for next year's meetings. Our activities here have been an important milestone on this long journey we share for Asia-Pacific development, and they may well be termed the first steps in transforming the Pacific into a bountiful sea for the 21st century.
Japan's having developed in very close contact with the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, I take my responsibilities as co-chair of Ministerial Meeting very seriously, as I am sure minister for Foreign Affairs Kono does, in this crucial year.
In closing, let me offer a prayer that tomorrow's Ministerial Meeting and the Informal Leaders meeting on November 19 will be resoundingly successful and that APEC will continue to develop into the 21st century and beyond -- and let me assure you most strongly that Japan is committed to doing everything it possibly can to make than happen.
Thank you.
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