Shinzo Abe advocated closer India-Japan ties, sought to move beyond Tokyo’s post-war pacifist worldview

Drawing deep from family ties — his father was foreign minister of Japan — history and geography, and quoting from Swami Vivekananda and Dara Shikoh, the speech by Abe that day was a landmark not just in India-Japan ties, but for the earliest articulation of the geopolitical construct of the Indo-Pacific, which he described as the “Arc of Freedom and Prosperity” on the outer rim of Eurasia, and the Quad. Passionately, he made the case for the coming together of India and Japan, two democratic nations, one in the Indian Ocean, the other in the Pacific, a “broader Asia” that would evolve “into an immense network spanning the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, incorporating the US and Australia. Open and transparent, this network will allow people, goods, capital and knowledge to flow freely”.

Japan-India ties are 70 years old this year. For the first five post-war decades of the 20th century, bilateral ties were friendly. Japan saw India as one of the few nations that had treated it with respect after the war. India was not among the signatories of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which brokered post-war relations between the defeated Axis power and the Allies. Instead, Delhi established an independent peace treaty and bilateral relations with Japan. The Japanese leadership is to this day appreciative of the dissenting judgment of Indian judge Radhabinod Pal at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. Nehru’s decision to accept Japanese Overseas Development Aid, the first country to do so, also generated a lot of goodwill in the bilateral relationship. Several collaborations took place. The first Doordarshan engineers were trained in Japan. The “small, affordable people’s car” became a reality through a joint venture with the Japanese Suzuki, revolutionising motoring in India with the Maruti 800.

But it was only in the 20th century that bilateral ties climbed up to the next level. While Prime Ministers Yoshiro Mori and Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed the Global Partnership for the 20th Century Agreement in 2000, to Abe goes much of the credit for the transformation of India-Japan ties in the last two decades, including the Japanese funding for ambitious projects such as the Mumbai-Delhi Industrial Corridor and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. He and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh upgraded the relationship to a Special Strategic and Global Partnership.

To understand the true extent of this transformation, consider that in 1998 Japan was among the countries to condemn and sanction India but by 2008, after a waiver to India from the Nuclear Suppliers Group following the India-US civil nuclear deal, Abe — and his Liberal Democratic Party successors — had begun to consider a similar deal with India, and a round of negotiations was held in that period despite opposition within Japan. That initiative was interrupted when the Democratic Party of Japan took charge in 2009, and the 2011 tsunami caused disaster at the Daiichi nuclear plant in Fukushima would have put a lid on it, had Abe not returned to power in 2012. The deal was eventually signed in 2016, and became operational a year later.

His visit in January 2014 marked another first between the two countries. It was the first time a Japanese PM would be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade. A few decades earlier, Japan, which is perhaps the only country that has pacifism written into its constitution, may have seemed like an inappropriate choice at a parade that puts on full display India’s military power. But Abe was different. In his second term, he wanted to change the constitution to get rid of the Article which he believed was preventing Japan from finding its true potential.

He was driven by the mission to help Japan find its true identity, and return it to its pre-World War II status, which he said was not to revive Japanese militarism, but aimed to restore Japanese “self esteem”. He appeared impatient with his compatriots’ comfort levels with the world’s post-war arrangements for the country. In a speech to the Diet after ISIS killed two Japanese hostages, he goaded his country to “get confident” and adopt “proactive pacifism” that would equip Japan for an international role as a protector of global peace. It was during his tenure that the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force (constitutionally, the Japanese military exists only for self-defence purposes) began naval exercises with friendly powers — India and Japan held their first naval exercise in December 2013 — and the country appointed its first National Security Advisor. This search for self-esteem also made him controversial internationally, as when he appeared to deny the existence of “comfort women”. He also took steps to rewrite Japan’s history.

There were times that India was not entirely comfortable with the pace of the fast-growing relationship, especially at a time that Delhi-Beijing ties were also growing and the two sides had agreed that their border dispute would be resolved peacefully. During his visit in 2007, as if sensing these concerns, Abe, invoking Nehru again, said: “Japan has undergone the Discovery of India, by which I mean we have rediscovered India as a partner that shares the same values and interests and also as a friend that will work alongside us to enrich the seas of freedom and prosperity… I wonder, here in India, whether there is now a similar change underway in your perception of Japan. If by some chance this has not yet taken place, would you allow me to say that it started here, now, with all of you?”

Abe believed that as the third generation politician, he was both destined and better equipped than many of his peers to play a transformational role in Japan’s politics and foreign affairs. He certainly achieved that with India. His passionate advocacy of closer ties with India will be missed.

nirupama.subramanian@expressindia.com