From Quake-Safe Bullet Trains To AI And Security: PM Modi's Big Japan Agenda

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to visit Japan from 29th to 30th August 2025, his eighth visit to the country. Along with his Japanese counterpart, Shigeru Ishiba, PM Modi will hold the 15th India-Japan annual summit on Friday.

“The 15th summit will give both the prime ministers the opportunity to do an in-depth review of the bilateral ties, take stock of progress in the last few years across multiple domains, and, of course, as is usual, exchange views on regional and global issues of importance,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Tuesday.

“This will also be an opportunity to launch several new initiatives to build greater resilience in the relationship, and to respond to emerging opportunities and challenges.”

According to a statement, the two Prime Ministers will review the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, which includes defence and security, trade and economy, technology and innovation, and people to people exchanges, and will also discuss issues of regional and global importance.

Prime Ministers Modi and Ishiba are also expected to travel to Sendai, a city known for its semiconductors, in a bullet train.

On their first together, Prime Ministers Modi and Ishiba will explore Japan's participation in future bullet train projects in India, beyond the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route.

After the initial agreement that the E5 series bullet trains in use in Japan would be sent to India for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route, Tokyo offered to launch the new E10 series bullet trains simultaneously in both the countries.

The E10 bullet trains have the same speed as the E5 trains – a maximum of 320 kilometres per hour. However, the new trains prevent derailment in case of an earthquake, and will have provisions to switch to driverless automated operation in the future.

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will fund Rs 88,000 crore, which is about 81 per cent of the total estimated cost of Rs 1,08,000 crore for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad-High-Speed-Rail. The remaining will be funded by the Ministry of Railways and the state governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Apart from this, the two countries will also upgrade the 2008 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation and will launch an economic security initiative, focussing on semiconductors, critical minerals, AI, telecommunication and clean energy.

Mr Misri had stated that India and Japan are two countries that share values, trust and strategic outlook on several issues and are Asia's two leading democracies and amongst the world's top five economies. He also said that the annual summit between the two countries represents the highest level dialogue mechanism that exists between India and Japan.