Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the state funeral of his former Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe next month. According to reports, the Japanese government has scheduled the state funeral for Abe on September 27 at the Nippon Budokan arena in the Kitanomaru National Garden in Tokyo. PM Modi will attend the official farewell ceremony and hold a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Kyodo news agency reported.
Abe died after being shot during a speech in Japan’s Nara city in July this year. Abe’s funeral will be the second state funeral for a former Prime Minister since World War 2.
“During my recent visit to Japan, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Abe again and discuss many issues. He was witty and insightful as always. Little did I know that this would be our last meeting. My heartfelt condolences to his family and the Japanese people,” PM Modi said in a series of tweets soon after his death.
PM Modi had termed Abe as “close friend” and the friendship between the two leaders blossomed ever since Modi visited Tokyo in 2014 for the first time after becoming the Prime Minister. During one of PM Modi’s official visits to Japan in 2018, Abe invited PM Modi to his family home in the Yamanashi prefecture.
PM Modi also met Abe earlier this year, nearly two years after the Japanese PM stepped down, as part of his visit to Japan to take part in the Quad summit.
After the assassination of Abe, PM Modi even declared one day of national mourning in India. PM Modi also penned a blog titled “My Friend, Abe San”. “In the passing away of Abe, Japan and the world have lost a great visionary. And, I have lost a dear friend,” he had said in the blog.
During his tenure as Prime Minister, Abe had said that in order to build a win-win relationship through synergies between Modinomics and Abenomics he would like to set a common goal of doubling Japan’s direct investment and the number of Japanese companies in India by 2019.
Japan is considered to be one of India’s close allies with both nati cooperating in the Quad format of comprehensive partnership alongside the United States and Australia.