Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Japan to participate in the state funeral of slain former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on September 27,  Kyodo News reported from Tokyo. The Indian side is yet to announce the visit and a senior official in response to the news said, the visit is “possible,” indicating the details are yet to be worked out.

Mr. Modi will begin the month of September by hosting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, which is being planned as a significant regional interaction. This will be followed by the leaders’ summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Samarkand during September 15-16. Next will be the U.N. General Assembly’s annual session in New York which is likely to be of great importance because of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. 

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A visit to Tokyo for the planned ‘state’ funeral for Shinzo Abe is therefore a possibility if Mr. Modi flies on the way back to Delhi to the Japanese capital from the United States after completing engagements in New York. An official emphasised, “no final decision” has been taken about the trip to Tokyo for the ceremony. Abe had on several occasions expressed admiration for Mr. Modi and the Indian leader had expressed “unbearable pain” following the assassination of Abe by a former Japanese military man.

Quad leaders’ summit

Mr. Modi had visited Tokyo in May for the Quad leaders’ summit when he met with President Joe Biden of the U.S., Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Abe is widely acknowledged as the driving force behind the Indo-Pacific “Quad” that tried to reorder the maritime domain stretching from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and beyond.

Abe, Japan’s longest serving Prime Minister was assassinated on July 8 while campaigning for the election for the Upper House of the Diet, the Japanese national assembly. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had announced on July 14 the plan for holding a state funeral for Abe.

However, the plan has been at the centre of a protracted public discourse as a state funeral is a rare event in Japan as it amounts to the Japanese state commemorating political figures who are known to evoke mixed emotional response among the Japanese electorate. That apart, the Government of Japan which is based on strict separation of the religious elements and the political structure, usually opposes state funerals as such ceremonies are expected to be religious in nature that may undermine the separation of the religious and the political elements. 

The Abe family held a private Buddhist funeral ceremony for the slain leader on July 12 at the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo which is the resting place for several of Japan’s Tokugawa  shogun, the legendary military figures who unified Japan.