Japan foreign minister to visit India for strategic dialogue

Japan’s foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi will arrive in India on Thursday for a strategic dialogue with external affairs minister S Jaishankar

Updated on: Jan 14, 2026, 19:08:12 IST

By Rezaul H Laskar

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

New Delhi: Japan’s foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi will arrive in India on Thursday for a strategic dialogue with external affairs minister S Jaishankar that is expected to focus on strengthening the partnership in security, trade and technology, and the situation in the Indo-Pacific, people familiar with the matter said.

This will be Japan’s foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi’s first visit to India in his current stint as foreign minister . (Reuters)

This will be Motegi’s first visit to India in his current stint as foreign minister and is part of a nine-day tour of West Asia and Asia that includes Israel, Palestine, Qatar and the Philippines. He is set to hold the strategic dialogue with Jaishankar on Friday, the people said on condition of anonymity.

The dialogue will be an opportunity for the two sides to take stock of bilateral cooperation amid wide-ranging changes on the global stage because of the policies of the Trump administration in the US. India and Japan are also partners in the Quad, whose leaders’ summit, to be hosted by New Delhi, continues to be surrounded by uncertainty because of the current strains in ties between New Delhi and Washington.

Motegi will also be the first senior member of the new government led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to travel to India. Takaichi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met on the margins of the G20 Summit in South Africa last November and reaffirmed their commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Modi’s visit to Tokyo last August for an annual summit led to several important outcomes, including Japan setting a target of 10 trillion yen ($68 billion) for private investments in India over a decade and a 10-year roadmap for enhanced economic cooperation in areas such as technology, digitalisation and rare earth minerals.

Takaichi has spoken of working towards tangible results in a wide range of fields such as security and defence and the economy based on the Japan-India joint vision for the next decade launched last year. She has also said she aims to leverage the strengths of both countries to foster innovation and growth in critical and emerging technologies such as semiconductors and AI, and to bolster cooperation in economic security.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rezaul H Laskar
Rezaul Hasan Laskar is Foreign Editor with the Hindustan Times, which he joined in 2015. He began as a journalist in his hometown of Shillong in northeast India and has worked in newspapers and wire services over the years. He moved to New Delhi in 1997 and initially focused on defence, national security, Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast, while also working of foreign policy and international relations. He has been part of the media delegation accompanying PMs on foreign visits and has reported from destinations ranging from Tibet to Ukraine. Between 2007 and 2013, he was the Press Trust of India correspondent in Pakistan, one of only two Indian journalists allowed to report from the country. He extensively covered Pakistan’s domestic politics and the life of the common people, as well as the fallout of the 2008 Mumbai attacks on India-Pakistan relations and the subsequent trial in Pakistan of the suspects involved in the attack. As part of his reportage in Pakistan, he travelled the breadth of the country, from the Swat Valley to Balochistan. Reza’s first gig in journalism was writing a weekly music column, and music – especially classic rock – remains a keen interest. He is also a movie buff and a keen photographer.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather major national developments and Karnataka Bandh LIVE.