Press Releases
Courtesy Call on H.E. Mr. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, by Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Fumio Kishida
On September 1, commencing at 10:15 a.m. for approximately 30 minutes, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Fumio Kishida made a courtesy call on H.E. Mr. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, who is visiting Japan. The overview of the meeting is as follows.
1. At the beginning, Minister Kishida welcomed Prime Minister Modi’s first visit to Japan as Prime Minister of India, and highly appreciated that Prime Minister Modi selected Japan as the first country to visit, other than India’s neighboring countries. Minister Kishida also said the Japan-India “Strategic and Global Partnership” has been making steady progress, and he firmly believed that as a result of cooperation between the influential leaders, Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Japan-India relationship would be elevated to a new level.
2. Minister Kishida, whose hometown is Hiroshima, expressed his gratitude that Prime Minister Modi paid tribute to the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, as well as the silent prayer that the Indian Parliament offers in August every year for mourning the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.
3. Furthermore, Minister Kishida said he would like to visit India and hold the next Japan-India Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue. He also said that he discussed various items for cooperation with Ms. Sushma Swaraj, External Affairs Minister of India, in August this year, and expressed his expectation that the Summit Meeting to be held later on the same day would be fruitful.
4. In response, Prime Minister Modi said that he had decided to visit Japan as the first destination as Prime Minister, other than India’s neighboring countries. He said Hiroshima’s grief has been shared by the whole humankind, and expressed his condolences once again. Furthermore, Prime Minister Modi said Japan and India share a spiritual bond, and he conveyed his feelings of sympathy for the victims of the torrential rain disaster that struck Hiroshima in August.
5. Prime Minister Modi also said that, both at a personal level and as Chief Minister of Gujarat State, he has been building up a very amicable relationship with Japan over many years, and he highly appreciated that the relationship between the two countries has also become closer in recent years. He stated that he would like to make a joint effort to further enhance the cooperative relationship between Japan and India for the future of Asia in the 21st Century, based on the stable governments in both countries.