At the Netaji Research Centre, Abe might point to Bose’s vision of Asian solidarity. And when he meets the son of Judge Radhabinod Pal, the only dissenting judge in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal after the Second World War, he will express the deeply felt gratitude of the Japanese people for the extraordinary empathy India showed when they were down and out.

Abe’s Kolkata sojourn is not about sentimentalism. He is signalling a significant departure from the dominant tradition of Japan’s foreign policy. After the Meiji Restoration that launched Japan’s modernisation in the middle of the 19th century, “escaping from Asia” and becoming part of the West were the major preoccupations of Tokyo’s foreign policy.

When Japan’s vision of leading Asia came to a disastrous end in the Second World War, Tokyo accepted a subordinate role in the alliance with the US and distanced itself from Asian politics.

Abe and his generation have underlined two central strategic objectives for Tokyo — rebuilding a foreign policy that is rooted in Japan’s Asian identity and constructing a new Asia that is committed to democratic values and freer trade. If Abe’s pilgrimage to Bengal highlights the first objective, deepening strategic cooperation with India is essential for Japan’s ambition to forge a new Asian architecture.

Abe is reminding us of Bengal’s unique role in shaping modern Asia; can Kolkata, however, find a way to live up to its own great tradition? For nearly 200 years, Kolkata was the centre of discovering Asia’s past and debating its future. Kolkata’s great institutions like The Asiatic Society and Greater India Society generated new knowledge about Asia’s past and reconstructed India’s own historic contributions to the making of Asia. The great debates that ensued during Tagore’s travels to Japan and China on Asia’s modernisation and its relations with the West remain as stimulating today as they were then.

... contd.