Düsseldorf is rightly considered "Little Tokyo on the River Rhine” with around 8,500 Japanese inhabitants, more than 400 Japanese companies, numerous gastronomic and cultural institutions and the annual Japan Day. The capital has long had a special friendship with the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, which is close to Tokyo and one of the most populous prefectures in the country. Since 2019, the long-standing relations have been institutionalised and the cities became official twin cities.
Hochschule Düsseldorf – University of Applied Sciences (HSD) now also wants to strengthen ties. Therefore, a delegation from JETRO, the Japanese foreign trade organisation, local government representatives of the prefecture of Chiba and representatives of Chiba University Connect, an incubation centre affiliated with the University of Chiba, visited the campus in Derendorf on 21 November.
HSD’s Centre for Digitalisation and Digitality (ZDD) is intended to serve as a launchpad for the development of a network for interdisciplinary German-Japanese collaboration. ZDD is an interdisciplinary teaching and research institute that develops application-oriented solutions and innovative study programmes in the field of digital transformation and digitality.
Over the next three years (2026–2028), HSD wants to establish and expand strategic partnerships with universities and other partners in Japan as well as the German-Japanese business community in Düsseldorf. The focus is on the joint development of application-oriented teaching formats and courses in which students from Germany and Japan collaborate digitally from their respective locations on a project-related basis. The project also includes the implementation of interdisciplinary summer schools at HSD and winter schools in Japan. These are intended to give German and Japanese students a comparatively simple opportunity to attend the respective partner university.
