In the present day, I’m visiting India for the primary time since my appointment as Minister for Overseas Affairs. As a member of the Japan-India Parliamentary Friendship Affiliation and a long-time promoter of Japan-India relations, I’m sincerely trying ahead to feeling the vibrancy of India.
Japan and India have historic ties which date again to the introduction of Buddhism within the sixth century. My hometown, Shizuoka Prefecture, additionally has deep ties with India. For instance, whereas Shizuoka is legendary for its inexperienced tea, Tada Motokichi, who ran a tea enterprise in Shizuoka within the nineteenth century, is claimed to have discovered black tea manufacturing strategies in India, introduced them again to Japan, and utilized them to inexperienced tea manufacturing.
Japan and India, which solid such deep ties, launched the “Japan-India Particular Strategic and International Partnership” in 2014, and prior to now decade have dramatically strengthened our relationship in wide-ranging areas. By means of our previous efforts, I’m satisfied that there are tangible potentialities for additional cooperation sooner or later. Based mostly on this conviction, I want to broaden the scope of our bilateral relationship constructed up over time, and additional deepen our relationship within the following 4 areas by formulating concrete initiatives.
First, within the space of defence and safety, my go to will embrace the third Japan-India Overseas and Defence Ministerial Assembly (“2+2”), the primary such assembly in practically two years. Cooperation within the safety space has made exceptional progress in recent times, together with joint workouts between the Japanese Self-Protection Forces and the Indian Armed Forces in all forms of land, sea, and air forces, in addition to efforts to advertise defence gear and expertise cooperation. By means of this “2+2” assembly, I want to share our understanding of the strategic atmosphere, and additional promote varied efforts. I look ahead to fruitful discussions with Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Minister Rajnath Singh.
Second, within the financial space, we’ve got made regular progress in particular initiatives together with our flagship Excessive-Velocity Rail mission, the event of the northeastern area, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi attaches nice significance to, and the commercial worth chain idea linking the northeastern area of India to the Bay of Bengal. As well as, our international locations are firmly dedicated to attaining the 5-trillion-yen goal of private and non-private funding and financing in 5 years, which was set by the leaders in 2022. Constructing on this observe report of cooperation, we are going to proceed to advertise cooperation in new areas equivalent to Inexperienced Transformation and Digital Transformation, in addition to improvement of the funding and enterprise atmosphere, to take our relationship to the subsequent stage.
Thirdly, ties between the folks of Japan and India are the muse of our bilateral relationship, and we want to significantly increase the bottom of people-to-people alternate sooner or later. The extension of this 12 months’s “Japan-India Tourism Alternate 12 months” to fiscal 12 months 2024 was introduced on the event of the Japan-India Strategic Dialogue in March. From September to October, varied occasions will likely be held intensively in India as “Japan Month”, and related occasions will likely be held in Tokyo as “India Month”. We hope that these efforts will additional promote mutual exchanges between our international locations.
Fourth, I want to work with India within the space of Ladies, Peace and Safety (WPS), which the Japanese authorities has firmly promoted in recent times and which can be my lifework. WPS relies on the concept that society may be a lot nearer to a extra sustainable peace by means of the participation of girls themselves in management positions in prevention in addition to humanitarian and reconstruction help, whereas on the identical time working to guard susceptible teams equivalent to girls in occasions of disaster. India is without doubt one of the international locations that has deployed many ladies in PKOs, and on the Japan-Australia-India-US (Quad) Overseas Ministers’ Assembly in Tokyo final month, which I hosted and by which Minister Jaishankar additionally participated, we dedicated to contributing to and implementing the WPS Agenda, together with its software to catastrophe danger discount. We want to take into account how we will materialise cooperation with India on WPS.
Along with these bilateral efforts, Japan and India are deepening cooperation globally, together with by means of multilateral frameworks. On the Quad Overseas Ministers’ Assembly final month, we reaffirmed our opposition to any unilateral actions that search to vary the established order by pressure or coercion, and our steadfast dedication towards the realisation of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP).
The friendship between Japan and India is a novel one, as it’s constructed on a typical basis of lengthy historic ties and democracy. Because the world faces varied challenges and stands at a turning level in historical past, Japan and India, as companions in “co-creating” new options, are anticipated to make a big contribution to peace and stability within the Indo-Pacific and past. I sincerely hope that my go to to India will mark a brand new web page within the Japan-India relationship and result in the additional deepening of our partnership.
The author is the Overseas Minister of Japan