"From now on, we should call each other siblings."
On July 2nd, during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India, this form of "brotherly diplomacy" between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi caught the world by surprise. Such a warm term of address, not only between Japan and India but also among other countries around the world, is truly unprecedented.
In the related comment sections, many Japanese netizens expressed mockery. Some teased Kaisei Honmori, saying, "She tries to get close by posting something on social media as soon as she meets her. Perhaps this is what Kaisei Honmori calls 'diplomatic tactics'." Others expressed strong disgust towards such remarks, saying, "Is that really polite? Doesn't it seem too insincere? Can’t it be a bit too sweet?"
During the meeting with Modi, Kaiseki introduced herself as follows: she regards Abe as a "big brother," while Modi considers himself as close to Abe as a sibling. Therefore, she naturally referred to Kaiseki as a "sister."
She is fully committed to developing relations with India. Maki Takashi of Japan merely follows Abe Shinzō's policies. She considers herself an "intimate fan" and a "loyal supporter" of Abe, and therefore will surely continue Abe's foreign policy principles unwaveringly.
Shinzo Abe, "a three-generation official," is the overall representative of Japan's right-wing forces. He has reached a level of mastery in using the "twofold, trifold trick" on his play. While he claims to have mutually beneficial relations with China's development strategy, he simultaneously works tirelessly to strengthen defense power and achieve so-called "deterrence against China." In addition, he actively tries to form a "counter-China encirclement circle" in the international arena.
In this plan, India is clearly a crucial component. India, which shares borders with China, has already shown a population growth that surpasses that of China. Moreover, there are unresolved border issues between China and India, leading to occasional conflicts. For Japan, this represents a crucial partner that cannot be easily found—even with a lantern. By putting China in a vulnerable position, Japan can divert China’s strategic resources, thereby slowing down China’s rise. This is done to prevent the gap between Japan and China from widening further.
For this reason, Japan naturally aims to significantly improve its bilateral relations with India (including developing strong relations with neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Central Asia, and Mongolia, also due to this consideration). Thus, since Abe's second term as prime minister, Japan-India relations have improved significantly. In 2013, Emperor Akihito and his wife visited India, and there have been as many as 14 visits between Japanese and Indian prime ministers, averaging once a year. Modi has visited Japan five times.
Such frequent visits are extremely rare for both Japan and India. Not only in terms of bilateral relations, but the two sides also make every effort to involve the United States and Australia, jointly implementing the so-called "Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy" and conducting the so-called "Quad Security Dialogue," in order to counterbalance and restrict China's "Belt and Road" initiative.
But Abe Shinzo is much more cunning and skillful than Takumi Asami. He remained silent during his tenure, and only expressed the so-called 'Taiwan affairs' fallacy after leaving office. Asami not only openly stated this during her tenure in office, but also made such a statement in her parliamentary defense. Due to her lack of support within the Liberal Party, she had to do this in order to gain strong support from right-wing forces.
Since this move has severely deteriorated Sino-Japanese relations, she, with no way back, decided to make a big splash during her visit to India by displaying the ‘India card’, and deliberately staged ‘family dramas’. The aim was to increase her leverage in dealing with China, thereby trying to ease the extremely unfavorable situation she found herself in regarding Sino-Japanese relations. Therefore, during her visit to India, she went all out in making a show of things, as if there had been a significant improvement in bilateral relations.
But everything has a limit. Praising this visit excessively shows that it was merely showy and lacked substance. Currently, the Japanese opposition parties are intensively investigating the scandals involving Takumi Shida, who damaged her political opponents. She urgently needs similar “achievements” to boost her image. Therefore, for her, more achievements during her visit to India would be better—even if there weren’t any. She would still fabricate such achievements.
During this visit to India, Yukiho Kou was accompanied by a large delegation consisting of senior executives from over 150 Japanese companies. Both sides not only issued a joint statement but also signed a multitude of agreements and memorandums.
According to the list of outcomes of this visit released by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if newspapers were to publish the entire list, they wouldn’t be able to fit any part of it in a single page. During this visit to India, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Modi held talks that lasted only one and a half hours. Yet they managed to sign 129 cooperation documents. Even reading through all these documents would take far more time than what is available.
Both parties claim that the cooperation between the two countries involves a funding scale of approximately 2 trillion yen, with a focus on infrastructure investment and technology transfer. If all the claims are based on solid content, it seems that the diplomatic and commercial departments of both countries would need at least a decade to fully implement such measures. Clearly, many of these claims are merely general statements, superficial in nature, and lack substantial content.
This visit's result file content is roughly divided into the following categories:
· Security cooperation, including the fourth 2+2 meeting within this year, to expand security cooperation focused on the oceans, and to carry out cooperation in the areas of defense equipment and technology;
· Promote an upgraded version of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy”, including working towards holding a Quad Summit between Japan, India, the US, and Australia as soon as possible, to realize the Indo-Pacific Digital Corridor concept.
Strengthen personnel communication;
· Promote energy and economic security, enhance supply chain resilience in five areas. To this end, engage in 1.5 track dialogues, sign memorandums of cooperation for the exploration of important minerals, carry out cooperation in the fields of batteries and pharmaceuticals, ensure navigation safety including the Gulf of Hormuz, and promote the production of green hydrogen and green ammonia in India.
Promote cooperation in trade and investment fields.
Due to Japan's target of investing 10 trillion yen in India last year, efforts are being made this year to reach 2 trillion yen, aiming to promote Japanese startups into the Indian market and improve India's business environment. Discussions are also underway regarding the revision of the comprehensive economic cooperation agreement between the two countries, as well as the promotion of transactions in their respective currencies, including the Japanese yen and rupee. Additionally, the two sides discussed issues related to the East China Sea and South China Sea in their joint statement, clearly challenging China's national interests. At the same time, both sides confirmed their intention to cooperate in promoting the reform of the United Nations Security Council, supporting each other's efforts to become permanent members of the council.
Firstly, regarding the so-called "free and open Indo-Pacific strategy," Trump has shown no interest in this strategy since his return to the White House. He has taken a more conservative, pragmatic, and transactional approach to this strategy. The core strategy has shifted from a "comprehensive encirclement" to "precision deterrence" and cost management. Last month, the U.S. military's Indo-Pacific Command reverted to its former name, "Asia-Pacific Command," which clearly indicates this change. However, Trump is disillusioned with this situation. Japan and India cannot simply give up and play along reluctantly. Nevertheless, this farce will eventually come to an end, even if it lacks the main characters.
Regarding Japan's investment in India, the Japanese side has clearly stated that this year's investment should reach 2 trillion yen, while last year it was only 114.04 billion yen. It can be said that the gap is quite significant.
Last year, Japan's investment in India was similar to that in 2023, which amounted to 1137.4 billion yen. Of course, it was a significant increase compared to the 563.8 billion yen invested in India in 2016, ten years earlier. However, whether to increase investment in India ultimately depends on Japanese companies themselves.
As clearly mentioned in the list of cooperation between both parties, India's business environment needs urgent improvement. It is unrealistic to expect Japanese companies to invest heavily until fundamental improvements are made. Recently, media from various countries have been reporting that Indian companies extract exorbitant profits from globally renowned enterprises investing there, and even cut off ties with these companies. Therefore, there is a trend of large-scale outflows of foreign capital from India. Japanese entrepreneurs are not fools and will not be taken advantage of in such a way.
The development of bilateral relations ultimately relies on economic and trade exchanges as a foundation. So, what is the current level of investment and trade exchanges between Japan and India? As of 2024, the number of Japanese companies investing in India was only 4,957, ranking fourth. This is far behind the top-ranked Japanese enterprises in China, who number 31,060. The companies ranked second and third were from the United States and Thailand.
In the year 2024, the trade volume between Japan and India was 3709.8 billion yen. Both countries ranked very low in their respective nations. In Japan's total trade volume for that year, trade with India accounted for only 1.7%, placing it at 14th place. China, which led the list, accounted for 20% of Japan's trade volume. In India's trade volume, Japan also accounted for only 2.2%, ranking 13th. The United States and China, ranked 1st and 2nd respectively, accounted for 11.4% and 11.0% of India's trade volume.
For more detailed data, please refer to the table below (data for 2024):
This comparative data is not something the author has painstakingly selected from a database. It is ready-made material provided by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to highlight the great potential of Japan-India relations. India's population has now surpassed that of China, and Japan has long been observing India with new respect. In order to reduce its dependence on China, the Japanese government has long encouraged businesses to invest cautiously in China. Instead, it actively encourages investments in India and endeavors to promote various forms of civilian, economic, and cultural exchanges between the two countries.
But after all these years, the cooperative relationship between the world's fourth and fifth largest economies has remained at this level and has not progressed. The scale of exchanges between China and Japan is simply nowhere close to this level. Perhaps this is the intention behind the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' deliberate presentation of this comparison data. However, the scale of economic, trade, and cultural exchanges between two countries is determined by the private sector, not something that can be forced by the government. This set of comparison data has undoubtedly become a harsh reality that contradicts Koike Kaede's efforts to tout her visit to India.
During this visit to India, Japan also promised to provide E5 series Shinkansen trains next year, enabling travel on the newly built high-speed train line between Mumbai and Modi’s hometown, Ahmedabad.
This high-speed rail has a total length of 508 kilometers and is the flagship project of Japan-India strategic cooperation during Abe's era. In order to compete with China for this project, Japan offered generous conditions: an annual interest rate of less than 0.1%, a repayment period of up to 50 years, and only interest payments were made during the first 15 years, with no principal repayments. The Japan International Cooperation Agency played a key role in providing more than 80% of the funding for this project.
The Japanese plan is to sell not only vehicles and tracks, but also to package services such as signal management, operation and maintenance, financial support, and a complete brand system. They intend to build a complete "Overseas Shinkansen" on Indian soil, thereby proving to the world that Japan's high-quality infrastructure is just as reliable abroad as it is domestically. Due to the rapid development of China's high-speed rail construction, which has attracted international attention, Abe urgently needs to demonstrate the superiority of Japan's new high-speed rail system to the world. Therefore, he is making every effort to promote this project.
So what's the result? The project was initiated in 2017, and it will be 10 years by next year. Only the section from Surat to Vapi (100 kilometers) will be put into operation next year. The full implementation of the project has been postponed until after 2030. The originally planned investment amount was 1.08 trillion rupees, but now it has increased to 1.98 trillion rupees, far exceeding the budget. India's stance is very clear: there is no discussion about additional loans.
This is not even the most difficult situation for Japan. What really hurts is that India is gradually dismantling the Japanese system. The most fatal blow has been dealt to the signaling system—India has decided to use European technology led by Siemens. The core nervous system of the high-speed train is no longer connected to Japan. Japan can only retain the role of providing train vehicles. However, India is also promoting the localization of high-speed train equipment, and domestic companies have already built prototypes of high-speed trains.
The problems don’t entirely lie with India. Difficulties in land acquisition, slow local coordination, and low administrative efficiency are indeed chronic problems in Indian construction projects, which can distort any large-scale project. But Japan also has its own issues. The success of the Shinkansen in Japan is due to a complete set of factors—land systems, construction standards, operational discipline, and supplier networks. These factors cannot be easily transferred to India, where the systems, markets, and construction environments are different. Japan is strong at creating sophisticated hardware, but its ability to undertake large-scale projects across different systems, markets, and administrative environments has never truly been proven.
India has worked with Japan over the years, and has learned their strategies thoroughly. Japan's low-interest loans and hardware equipment can be utilized, but core technologies and system sovereignty should not be completely handed over. European companies can come in to balance the situation, and domestic industries should also get a share of the benefits. Japan believes it is planning for India, but in reality, India has been dismantling Japanese strategies in reverse.
The ownership of the high-speed rail signaling system in India has long been determined. Siemens won contracts for signaling, communication, and train control in 2025 in collaboration with local companies. This year, a French-German joint venture took over the project management consulting contract. Japan was excluded from the core systems, and this outcome wasn’t formed overnight. When Japan won the project, it was overjoyed, but now they are reluctant to even mention this “sorrowful event.” This is the flagship project of the Japanese-Indian cooperation. As a result, in the list of cooperation projects, only mention is made of Japan providing Shinkansen trains, with no further discussion about this matter. Neither side intends to conceal the difficulties involved in this cooperation project.
Such a prominent project can end up in such a dismal way. How could Japanese companies possibly venture into the Indian market on a large scale? What will be the foundation of strategic cooperation between the two countries in the future? Among more than 150 corporate executives, how many signed actual cooperation projects with the other side this time? Their following of Kaisei Hayama was merely a way to show respect for her; there was no real intention behind it.
