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As India observes one-day mourning as a mark of respect to the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who was assassinated yesterday on July 8, the national flag at Red Fort, Rashtrapati Bhavan and Parliament fly at half-mast, news agency ANI reported. Shinzo Abe, who was Japan’s longest serving modern leader, was gunned down while making a campaign speech on Friday morning by a 41-year-old man. Notably, Shinzo Abe was prime minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and then for a second time from 2012 to 2020. The 67-year-old Japanese leader died after he was shot while giving a campaign speech in the southern Japanese city of Nara, even though he was rushed to a hospital, within a few hours the hospital had declared him dead.
As a first time prime minister for a little over a year beginning 2006, Shinzo Abe shared a vision for India-Japan ties largely based on greater “confluence” of the two seas, the Pacific and Indian Oceans. According to a PTI report, by the time, Abe stepped down as the prime minister in 2020 ending his second stint at the top office after an eight-year tenure, the relations were in a much deeper trajectory encompassing cooperation in a wide-range of areas with a broader aim of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Interestingly, Shinzo Abe who was the grandson of former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, also played a pivotal role in shaping the broad contours of the Quad or Quadrilateral coalition comprising India, Japan, Australia and the US. During an address to the Indian Parliament back in August 2007, Abe had elaborated on his ambitious roadmap for the India-Japan strategic ties to collectively deal with geopolitical challenges and for overall prosperity of Asia.
“Japanese diplomacy is now promoting various concepts in a host of different areas so that a region called ‘the Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ will be formed along the outer rim of the Eurasian continent. The Strategic Global Partnership of Japan and India is pivotal for such pursuits to be successful,” he said. Shinzo Abe worked for a closer strategic partnership between India and Japan and had said that the close ties between the two countries could prove to be a gamechanger for Asia as it could bring prosperity to the countries of the region.
(With inputs from agencies)
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