LUCKNOW: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Akie Abe, widow of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have unveiled the Abe Memorial Corridor at the Rudraksh International Convention Centre in Varanasi on Wednesday. The gallery is dedicated to a friendship the Chief Minister described as the living symbol of India and Japan’s historical, cultural and diplomatic ties.
The inauguration fell on the date that marks twenty-five years since Narendra Modi first took the oath as Gujarat Chief Minister in 2001, the same milestone being observed across Uttar Pradesh this month as he marks twenty-five years in public life.
A Friendship built on trust
Addressing the ceremony, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the bond between Prime Minister Modi and Abe was built not on office but on trust, noting that positions changed over the years while the friendship endured.
He called the corridor a tribute offered to Abe’s memory on behalf of Uttar Pradesh twenty-five crore residents, Prime Minister Modi and a hundred and forty crore Indians. Observing that Japan had once gifted Kashi its Rudraksh and Kashi was now embedding Japan’s former Prime Minister’s memory within that same Rudraksh.
Two decades of a rare bond
Tracing the friendship arc, the Chief Minister recalled that Modi and Abe first met in 2007, when Modi travelled to Japan as Gujarat’s Chief Minister. That same year, Abe told Indian Parliament that a strong India served Japan best interests, just as a strong Japan served India’s.
The Kashi-Kyoto sister-city agreement followed in 2014 and in December 2015 Abe watched the Ganga Aarti alongside Modi during his Varanasi visit, laying the foundation for what would become the Rudraksh centre. The two leaders broke ground on India’s bullet train project in Ahmedabad in 2017 and Abe hosted Modi at his private residence in Yamanashi the following year.
Padma Vibhushan and a final farewell
The Chief Minister recalled that Abe was conferred the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour in 2021 and that Modi travelled to Tokyo in September 2022 to attend his state funeral after his assassination, with India observing national mourning. He reflected on how rare it is, in a world of transactional alliances, to find a friend who stands by you without weighing gain and loss.
Beyond Rudraksh: An expanding partnership
The Chief Minister used the occasion to outline the scale of Japan’s economic footprint in India, noting that nearly 1,400 Japanese companies currently operate in the country and that the partnership now extends into semiconductors, artificial intelligence, green hydrogen and critical minerals.
He referred his own visit to Japan in February this year, during which agreements worth thousands of crores of rupees were signed with Japanese firms in Tokyo and Yamanashi. He recalled riding Japan’s Maglev train, capable of speeds exceeding 500 kilometres per hour and to study its precision engineering firsthand.
Yamanashi prefecture is now Uttar Pradesh’s partner for green hydrogen energy, with a dedicated Yamanashi desk set up at Invest UP.
A 500-Acre Japanese city near Noida
The Chief Minister also announced that a 500-acre Japanese industrial city is being developed in the IEDA region near Noida International Airport, framing it as proof that Japan’s precision.
Uttar Pradesh a market of twenty-five crore people, the country’s youngest workforce and its largest expressway and airport network, now complement each other. Looking to 2027, when India and Japan mark seventy-five years of diplomatic relations, he described the corridor as the first offering of that anniversary.
It links Japan identity as the Land of the Rising Sun to Uttar Pradesh own as the Land of the Sun Dynasty through the state’s Buddhist circuit of Sarnath, Kushinagar, Kapilvastu, Shravasti, Kaushambi and Sankisa.
Akie Abe’s Tribute
Akie Abe grew visibly emotional recalling her husband, telling the gathering he had shared a deep personal bond with Modi and had spoken often of their 2015 Ganga Aarti together, a memory that left her wanting to visit Varanasi herself.
She said her husband would have been overjoyed to see a memorial bearing his name, her eyes welling with tears as she spoke. She went on to praise the Rudraksh centre’s design, noting that its exterior carries 108 rudraksh beads, a number that similarly holds significance in Japan, where temple bells are rung 108 times to mark new beginnings.
The Chief Minister presented her with a peacock crafted in Varanasi pink meenakari style as a memento. Cabinet minister Ravindra Jaiswal, Mayor Ashok Tiwari, Zila Panchayat chief Poonam Maurya, MLA Saurabh Srivastava and members of the visiting Japanese delegation were also present at the ceremony.
For a city already woven through with monuments to friendship between the two nations, from the Japanese-funded Rudraksh centre itself to the twin-city pact with Kyoto.
The new corridor adds a more personal register as a memorial less to a diplomatic relationship than to the two men who built it, meant, as the Chief Minister put to stand as a living classroom teaching the coming generation how far-sighted leadership can alter the shared future of two nations.
