Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Saudi Arabia is expected to mark an impressive step forward in the Japan-Saudi Arabia relations, following Crown Prince Sultan’s historic visit to Japan a year ago. The Japan-Saudi Arabia Society, an association that has been working to promote friendship between the two countries for the last 47 years, looks forward to Abe’s visit with high hopes.
Relations between Japan and Saudi Arabia have been very cordial ever since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1956. The exchanges of royal visits began with Prince Sultan visiting Japan in 1960 as minister of transportation and communication. This was followed by two major visits — by King Faisal in 1971 and then Crown Prince Abdullah in 1998. Japan Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited the Kingdom in 1981 as crown prince and princess, Crown Prince Naruhito and Princess Masako were in the Kingdom in 1994. Crown Prince Naruhito visited the Kingdom again in 2005.
Personal contacts among high-ranking officials have continued uninterrupted. Takeo Fukuda in 1978, Tomiichi Murayama in 1990, Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1997, and Junichiro Koizumi in 2003 visited the Kingdom as Japanese prime ministers. Shinzo Abe who is arriving in Riyadh today is the first Japanese premier to be accompanied by a high-level economic mission comprising 180 top business leaders.
His visit is thus expected to give a further boost to the economic cooperation between the two countries.
Looking back upon the half century of our diplomatic ties, we witness a growing friendship, with increasing personal interactions at both official and private levels.
Our trade relations once confined to oil and industrial products have now expanded to include an extensive range of investment, technological cooperation, human resource development, cultural exchanges, sports activities and so forth. In April last year Crown Prince Sultan and then Prime Minister Koizumi signed several agreements in Tokyo related to the joint statement titled “Toward the building of strategic and multilayered partnership between Japan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Elsewhere, Japan-Saudi Arabia Business Council that groups private sector leaders meets regularly to discuss ways of strengthening economic and industrial ties. In February this year, the council discussed an agenda covering such areas as the water resources, the treatment and reuse of sewage water, the vocational training, the human resource development, the upgrading of financing system, the advanced transportation systems, the development program of national industrial clusters, and the railway project, some of which were discussed in relation to the existing joint venture projects, and the other in expectation of implementation in the future.
On the official level, the Japanese-Saudi Joint Commission meetings exchange views on intensified supportive setups in favor of private sector activities. The next meeting is scheduled for May. There are two major things that deserve special mention in our economic-technological tie-ups. One is the capital participation by Saudi Aramco in Japan’s Showa-Shell Sekiyu acquiring 14.96 percent share. Some 300,000 barrels per day of Saudi crude oil are to be supplied to the Japanese market under this deal. The other is the joint venture project between Sumitomo Chemical and Saudi Aramco envisaging a giant integrated refining and petrochemical complex in Rabigh. The project brings forth an output capacity of 1.3 million tons of ethylene and 900,000 tons of propylene, representing one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes ever built at one time. The total amount of investment in the project is estimated at more than $9.8 billion. With workers totaling over 30,000 on the site, the construction is going on and is scheduled for completion next year. For its titanic size of investment, for its being a joint venture between Japan and Saudi Arabia, for its mass job creation potentiality, and for its technology transfer requirements, the Rabigh project is expected to become a vibrant symbol of Japanese-Saudi economic cooperation.
In November last year, a Japanese economic mission visiting the Kingdom took part in a workshop in Riyadh where the construction plans of new Saudi economic cities were presented. The plans were again presented at a seminar sponsored by SAGIA Gov. Amr Al-Dabbagh in February this year in Tokyo, attracting keen interest from the business circles of Japan.
The technology transfer and the human resource development are the areas that witness major boost in cooperation, as seen in the electronic technology and the automobile engineering for which the Saudi side provides hardwares including buildings and facilities and the Japanese side provides softwares including instructors and training programs. We hope that this type of cooperation will be intensified and expanded to embrace other potential areas where Saudi youth are involved. We also hope that Japan would receive a certain number of the 7,000 Saudi students who will be selected to study abroad by the Saudi government, as the Japanese government and private sectors are working together on preparing the accommodations for foreign students. By providing talented, promising Saudi students with accommodations and higher education opportunities, we expect them to play the role of a bridge between Japan and Saudi Arabia.
While the Japan-Saudi Arabia Society has dedicated itself to the introduction of correct knowledge of Arab-Islamic culture and civilization by way of publications and seminars, it is with pleasure we note that exchanges of academic and sports activities between the two countries have been on the rise — judo and football frequently played between the two peoples, the Saudi Royal Cup Race contested every year in Tokyo, the Japan Cup Race annually competed in Riyadh — to name just a few. The displays at the Saudi Arabian pavilion at the Expo 2005 in Aichi Prefecture offered a great deal of enlightening suggestions to the Japanese visitors who had little knowledge of the Kingdom.
In conclusion, I sincerely wish that Prime Minister Abe’s visit would lay a solid groundwork for a broader range of friendly relations.
— Keiichi Konaga is chairman of the Japan-Saudi Arabia Society.
