Introduction
In a speech before the Indian Parliament in 2007, then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe introduced the ‘Confluence of Two Seas’, a precursor to Tokyo’s Indo-Pacific policy framework. It referred to the linking of the Pacific and Indian Oceans to make a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’; Abe named India as an anchor in such a vision.
To be sure, India-Japan relations date back to the decades after the Second World War. Their current partnership is increasingly featured as an important pole in Abe’s book,
Utsukushii kuni e (Towards a Beautiful Country: My Vision for Japan) where he writes that it would not surprise him if “in another decade, Japan–India relations overtake Japan–US and Japan–China ties.”