Prague, June 26 (CTK) – Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) will leave for a five-day visit to Japan on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of resumption of Czech-Japanese relations during which he will discuss economic and defence cooperation between the two countries.
In Japan, Sobotka will meet his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe and other leading representatives.
He will lay a wreath at the memorial of the victims of a nuclear bomb explosion that obliterated Hiroshima at the end of World War Two.
Sobotka will be accompanied by Industry and Trade Minister Jiri Havlicek (CSSD) and Culture Minister Daniel Herman (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) and a delegation of businesspeople.
In addition to economic and defence cooperation, Sobotka will also discuss the relationship between the EU and Japan and a number of other foreign political issues.
Sobotka is the first Czech prime minister going to Japan since 2005, when Jiri Paroubek (CSSD) visited the country.
In view of the 13-hour flight and the seven-hour time difference between Prague and Tokyo, Sobotka’s official programme will start in the afternoon on Tuesday local time (Tuesday morning CEST) with talks with Abe.
On Wednesday, Sobotka will open a Czech-Japanese economic forum in Tokyo.
Japan is an important economic partner of the Czech Republic. Japanese firms are second biggest investors in the Czech Republic after Germany.
The business delegation headed by representatives of the Chamber of Commerce will be comprised of representatives of firms from defence and aviation industry, health care, engineering and power industry, and IT and communication technologies and robotics.
New cooperation opportunities in the sphere of defence technologies are due to changes to Japan’s pacifist constitution that banned the country, which was an ally of Germany during World War Two and occupied a large part of Asia, from the deployment of the military with the exception of self-defence for decades.
The change to the constitution, which reacts to a new geopolitical environment, now allows Japan to deploy the military abroad, even for defence of the allies.
Japan has also loosened the strict limitations of trade in defence industry products and a joint development of military technologies. This offers a cooperation potential to the Czech Republic and Japan in defence industry, the Czech government said previously.
On Wednesday, Sobotka will visit Josai University in Tokyo, which has a Central European studies department.
Sobotka will be presented with an honorary doctor’s degree at the university and he will deliver a lecture on the future of Europe.
Also on Wednesday, Sobotka will have talks with the management of Asahi Breweries that bought the Plzensky Prazdroj brewery in Plzen, west Bohemia, this year, and attend a reception at the Czech embassy in Tokyo.
On Thursday, Sobotka will leave by a Shinkansen high-speed train for Kyoto, which was Japan’s capital in the past. He will visit the Buddhist Sanjusangendo Temple, the shogun Nijo Castle with gardens, and Shimadzu corporation, one of the major world producers of analytical and measuring instruments, and meet the Kyoto mayor.
Sobotka will end his Japanese visit in Hiroshima. In addition to laying a wreath in the Peace Park and visiting an exhibition on the war, Sobotka will also see the Peace Memorial, which is a torso of the Industrial Palace by Czech architect Jan Letzel, which is the only building the bomb explosion did not completely destroy.
This will be one of the last large journeys of Sobotka during the four-year election term before the autumn general election.
He said he would like to complete visits to three Asian countrise which are very important for the Czech Republic from the economic and political points of view.
He visited South Korea and China with a business delegation before.
ms/dr/kva
