Indian PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Japan carries a much bigger geopolitical significance, especially at a time when the world’s largest democracy is facing crippling tariffs from Washington, led by US President Donald Trump.
The Indian delegation, led by Modi, met with Japan’s leaders, headed by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, exploring a ten-year strategic prioritisation for economic and functional cooperation in eight focal points: economic partnership, economic security, mobility, ecological sustainability, technology and innovation, health, people-to-people and state-prefecture engagements.
Here are the major highlights from PM Modi’s Japan visit.
Modi met governors of 16 Japanese prefectures in Tokyo and called for strengthening state-prefecture cooperation under the India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership through a joint declaration.
Later, Japanese counterpart Ishiba joined Modi in a bullet train to travel to Sendai in the Japanese prefecture of Miyagi to visit a semiconductor plant.
Ahead of this, Modi met with Indian train drivers who are being trained in Japan.
Ishiba and Modi then visited the Tokyo Electron Factory, where the Indian PM got to see their Training Room and Production Innovation Lab. He interacted with top officials of the semiconductor giant.
India has already clinched investment guarantees of 10 trillion yen (around Rs 60,000 crore) from Japan for the next decade.
Both nations also launched the Economic Security Initiative to ensure supply chain protection in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, clean energy, telecom, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, and emerging technologies.
India and Japan are exploring a ‘Japan Human Resource Exchange’—an action plan to promote two-way exchange of 5 lakh people between India and Japan, particularly 50,000 skilled and semi-skilled personnel from India to Japan in the next five years.
Japan Digital Partnership 2.0: Both nations are looking to collaborate on digital public infrastructure, development of digital talent and joint R&D in futuristic technological fields such as AI, IoT, and semiconductors with an MoU.
Another memorandum of cooperation for a joint crediting mechanism to “facilitate the diffusion of decarbonising technologies, products, systems, and infrastructure, thereby contributing to India’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goals, promote Japanese investment in India and India’s sustainable development” is being explored.
With China stockpiling rare earth magnets, Japan and India are looking to cooperate on building supply chain resilience for critical minerals. This includes the development of processing technologies, joint investments for exploration and mining, and efforts for stockpiling critical minerals.
Another major area is the agreement between the ISRO and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on a Joint Lunar Polar Exploration Mission. “A document that defines terms and conditions for cooperation between India and Japan on the Chandrayaan 5 mission” is being discussed.
Other bilateral MoUs include ones on decentralised domestic wastewater management and environmental cooperation.
Back in India, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirtivardhan Singh hailed the 10 trillion yen investment as an achievement for India.
The latest Japan visit came at a time when New Delhi faced turbulence with the United States.
So far, Japan and India have inked 13 key agreements and declarations and announced several joint initiatives.