Business Connections Prompt Japan To Open Nashville Consulate

October 7, 2008 5:55 p.m. EST

Nashville, TN (AHN) - Japan will become the first country to have a consulate office in the state of Tennessee. Japanese officials have closed a consulate office in New Orleans, Louisiana, which opened in 1922, to establish an office in Nashville.

Hiroshi Sato, Japan's deputy consul general, will start his job on Oc. 10 as consul general of Japan's new consulate office in Nashville. Along with Tennessee, Sato will cover the states of Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi.

"This made Japan the first and only country to open a consulate office in the state of Tennessee," Vice Consul Takeshi Kodo in Nashville was quoted as saying by the Nashville Business Journal.

The mission of the Consulate General of Japan in Nashville is to promote Japanese economic partnerships, Kodo said.

"The fact that we opened the office in Tennessee is proof of our growing partnership with the United States," Kodo says.

As part of his official duties, Sato will take part in a U.S.-Japan trade conference in Raleigh, N.C., on Oct. 18-21 along with Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen.

Tennessee has 155 Japanese affiliate companies employing more than 14,000 people in the state, Kodo reportedly said.

Many of those companies serve the automotive business and Nissan North America relocated its headquarters to the region from California.

Sato began working for Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1973 and has been posted in Egypt, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and also elsewhere in the United States in New York and Washington, D.C.