RT December 2 2013
Emperor Akihito (L) and Empress Michiko (R) stand before embarking onto a plane, before they take off for New Delhi, at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on November 30, 2013. (AFP Photo / Toru Yamanaka)Fifty-three years is a long interlude during which national psyches, power configurations and foreign policies can alter completely.
The arrival of the emperor of Japan, Akihito, and his wife, Empress Michiko, in India fifty-three years after they first visited as crown prince and princess may be laced with nostalgia and trips down memory lane, but this six-day Japanese royal trip is taking place in a totally transformed world.
The India of today is a far cry from the India of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was personally present at Delhi airport in 1960 when newly-wed Akihito and Michiko stepped down the ladder. This time too, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, came to the Air Force Station in Delhi to receive the monarch as a special gesture, breaking official protocol. But as Akihito and Michiko already know and will be repeatedly reminded on this tour, contemporary India is a bigger international player than it was in the Nehru era.
Changed India, half a century later
Notwithstanding the warmth and hospitality accorded to the youthful Japanese royal couple by Nehru and the highest representatives of the Indian government in 1960, the fact that Japan was an anti-communist treaty ally of the United States limited how far a non-aligned nation like India could cooperate with it. In the five decades since then, Japan still remains the major pillar in the network of American alliances in the Asia Pacific. With nearly 40,000 American troops on its soil and wide-ranging military and security cooperation with Washington, Tokyo is to this day the heartbeat of American interests in Asia.