Honeymoon reminder hunt

Japan’s emperor Akihito and empress Michiko at the Imperial Palace in
Tokyo in September. (Reuters)

New Delhi, Nov. 2: Japan is combing New Delhi and neighbouring villages for places and faces its emperor and empress can recall from their honeymoon trip to India in 1960 when the royals arrive here again at the end of this month.

Diplomats from Tokyo and the Japanese embassy are trying to identify the places that emperor Akihito — then the crown prince — and his wife Michiko visited in and around New Delhi and the people they met on that trip, officials have told The Telegraph.

The royals will arrive on November 30 on the first Indian trip by a Japanese emperor. The visit reflects the growing proximity between the nations that has caused concern in China, which has territorial disputes with both.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo in May and struck key defence deals that Japan had shrunk away from for decades after World War II till current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared Japan’s intention to join the global arms bazaar. Abe too is scheduled to visit India early next year.

Akihito and Michiko, both 79, rarely travel overseas these days. For the Japanese, who worship the world’s longest continuing royal family, the couple’s few foreign trips figure among their country’s most important diplomatic gestures.

But for Akihito, the visit to New Delhi will be equally a trip down memory lane, officials said.

“They (the emperor and the empress) have very fond memories of their earlier visit, and that’s part of the reason they’re so keen to visit,” a Japanese diplomat said.

Japanese officials have identified a key social hub in New Delhi that stands witness to the couple’s visit 53 years ago — the India International Centre, which counts the capital’s elite as its patrons.

Then crown prince Akihito had laid the foundation stone for the centre, which the emperor will visit this time, Japanese officials confirmed. The centre’s director, Kavita Sharma, said she was not authorised to speak on the visit.

The Abe cabinet had earlier this week fixed the schedule for the royal couple’s visit, and the dates are exactly the same as those of the 1960 trip: arrival on November 30 and departure on December 6. On December 4, the couple will fly to Chennai for a day.

In New Delhi, they will meet President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Singh. They will briefly visit Jawaharlal Nehru University, which came up in 1969 and houses one of India’s best Japanese departments, Japanese officials said.

But it’s Haryana’s villages, beyond Delhi’s borders, that have been the focus of a key part of Japanese ambassador Takeshi Yagi’s search for living reminders of the 1960 honeymoon trip.

The then crown prince and his wife had visited the villages — then a part of Punjab — and spent hours with local people. Yagi’s team is now desperately searching for these villages and the residents who had met the royals then.

“There has been some success,” one official said. “But there is need to look further.”

The search is difficult at a time these villages are shadowed by more modern symbols of the India-Japan friendship.

Delhi’s outskirts now echo with the hum of Japanese factories manufacturing cars and appliances, employing tens of thousands of Indians. Haryana boasts the highest Japanese investment in any Indian state, and will soon host a National School of Design supported by Tokyo.

Along with the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor, this stretch just outside Delhi is cited by both nations as the biggest example of their fast-growing ties. Both India and Japan will hold up the royal visit as the latest chapter in that partnership.