India – Japan Friendship Needs To Be As Durable As India – Russia Friendship : Incremental Vs Quantum Jump Approach : Can New PM Takaichi Bite The Bullet Like Late Shinzo Abe .
Rajiv Upadhyay 
Japanese PM Takaichi’s visit to India for three days from July 1 , following PM Modi’s visit to Japan in 2025 is a very good sign of growing trust between the leaders of two very important nations in Asia . While 
the Indian need for investment in development of Defence and critical technologies is well known, the Japanese domestic and international needs are not that well known in India . Let us examine them
- Japan has to come out of the Second World War Defeat Syndrome and seek its rightful place in world as existed in 1912 at the end of Meiji regime which revolutionised the economic and industrial development of Japan . It has to come out of its proverb in international affairs while retaining it as a core strength of Japanese society.
“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down”
- China’s enormous military and economic might is a great security challenge to Japan which is just 1046 km by sea. A weak Japan will instigate hegemonical ambitions of China in East China sea , Taiwan and south China sea and even Indian ocean .
- By 2035 America and Europe will likely enter into a Soviet type detente and accept G-2 structure leaving Asia and Africa to China and Europe and Latin America to USA and NATO’s European allies . Japan will become as unimportant to west as India became to Gorbachev and Boris Yelstin.
- Japan’s aging population is another challenge . There are more than one hundred thousand centenarians in Japan who do not let Japan forget the second world war. Japan is short of active labour force.
- Growing protectionism and cheap Chinese products will reduce the market for high quality but costly Japanese products as has happened to Sony TVs .
- CIA and other ex colonial powers will continue to secretly work to break India into several countries the way they did in USSR to prevent rise of another challenge like China. India , Japan , Russia will have to work together to oppose the inevitable neo colonialism . PM Takaichi has the twin responsibility of taking Japan out of the second world war legacy the way Helmut Kohl did by unifying East and West Germanies in 1990 or Poland did by introducing democracy in 1989 and finally join EU in 2004. In depth analysis will reveal that India and Japan can be as durable friends for next forty years as India and Russia . India is slow , fragmented , bureaucratic but is steady in growth , stable and very advanced in technical and scientific knowledge and a reservoir of highly skilled man power. The decision needed only is whether we should adopt a slow incremental approach or have trust and build an exclusive fast track developmental model in cooperation in defence and industrial development. India and Japan have only fifteen years to catch up with China in defence and economic development . Under the circumstances, a well planned and jointly executed ‘ Quantum Leap’ methodology is more suitable for both the countries. Can PM Modi and Takaichi bite the bullet ?
