Narendra Modi Meets Shinzo Abe in Japan

Abstract

2014 marked an important year for India–Japan relations. The most important events were the victory in the Indian general elections of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and his visit to Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is widely known as a pro-India politician, had called up Modi soon after his victory and invited him to visit Japan. This invitation was warmly accepted by Modi and resulted in his visit to Tokyo and Kyoto from 30 August to 3 September. After the summit on 1 September, Modi and Abe announced the ‘Tokyo Declaration’ which declared ‘the dawn of a new era in Japan–India relations’ (MOFA, Japan 2014a). India–Japan relations have changed dramatically after Yoshiro Mori, then Japanese prime minister, visited New Delhi in August 2000. The two countries had kept a distance from each other before the visit, mainly due to the Cold War politics, with Japan’s alliance with the US and India’s involvement with the Non-Aligned Movement. This state of ‘indifference’ in the relationship worsened to ‘bad relations’ when India conducted nuclear tests in 1998 and Japan imposed sanctions against it. The goal of Mori’s visit in 2000 was to improve the relationship and this objective it seems was largely achieved. He and then Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, also of the BJP, agreed to establish the ‘Global Partnership in the 21st Century’ (Embassy of India, Tokyo 2014). Since then, the two governments have successfully developed diplomatic relations in a wide area, including security cooperation.