Modi's Japan visit a tale of promises

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan this week will be remembered for sweet tweets, temples visits, warm bear hugs and promises of Japanese investment and technology transfer. The visit, however, failed to clinch the much-hyped Indo-Japanese deals on nuclear cooperation, state-of-art US-2 amphibious planes and even a fast-train project linking Mumbai to Ahmedabad, capital of Gujarat province which Modi ruled as chief minister from 2001 to 2014, when he became India's prime minister.

Although Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe put the prefix of "special" to their Strategic Global Partnership, they failed to upgrade their "two-plus-two" format of security talks from official to ministerial level.

What really stood out was the display of excellent bonhomie and personal chemistry of the two strong, pro-business nationalist leaders committed to reviving their countries' economies and prestige. Since the two countries' geopolitical locations book-ends a rising China and other complementarities - like Japan looking for markets and infrastructure projects and India for investment and technology transfers - the two leaders' meeting heralded a kind of new stage in Indo-Japanese ties.