President Ma Ying-jeou said Friday that a park being built to commemorate Japanese civil engineer Yoichi Hatta, whose work contributed greatly to the success of an irrigation system in southern Taiwan, is slated to be inaugurated May 8 next year. The Yoichi Hatta Memorial Park, located at Wushantou Reservoir in southern Tainan County, will mark another milestone in the historical and cultural exchanges between Japan and Taiwan, Ma told a group of parliamentarians from Japan led by Yoshihide Suga, a Lower House Liberal Democrat dietman who formerly served as a minister of internal affairs and communications. Wushantou Reservoir is the centerpiece of the Chia-Nan Irrigation System, a flagship civil engineering project of Hatta's that was completed 80 years ago. Ma told his guests that Hatta is revered and memorialized by farmers in southern Taiwan, where his irrigation system -- a 10,000-km water distribution system -- has played a major role in irrigating some 150,000 hectares of farmland in Tainan and Chiayi counties since 1930 following the completion of Wushantou Reservoir. Ma expressed hope that after the Hatta Memorial Park is completed next year, it will become another major tourism attraction for southern Taiwan that will help attract tourists from Japan, particularly those from Hatta's home town of Kanazawa, in Ishigawa Prefecture. The president also noted that although formal diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Japan were severed in 1972, bilateral exchanges have remained close. 'Taiwan and Japan are closely linked, both historically and geographically, and no countries in the world are as close as these two countries, which exchange 250 flights each week, ' according to Ma. Japan is one of Taiwan's three largest trade partners and the number of Japanese tourists that visit Taiwan tops the tourist numbers from all other countries in the world, Ma noted. At the same time, he went on, Taiwan is also one of Japan's major sources of tourists. Despite the close relations, however, Taiwan and Japan maintain no formal diplomatic relations, Ma continued. 'I therefore designated 2009 as the year for promoting special partnerships between Taiwan and Japan,' he said. Since then, bilateral exchanges have improved further, including the signing and implementation of a working holiday project that benefits the youth of both countries, the establishment of a branch office in Sapporo by Taiwan's representative office in Tokyo, and the launch of two-way flights between Taipei's Songshan Airport and Tokyo's Haneda Airport slated for this October, he added. 