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Japan Forward
a day ago
- Business
- Japan Forward
Japan-India Maritime Ties Enter a New Era of Smart Cooperation
In a compelling display of growing strategic and economic synergy, Japan and India are charting a bold new course in maritime cooperation. The two Indo-Pacific partners are in advanced discussions to expand bilateral ties. They aim to achieve this through a shared vision of green technology, smart infrastructure, and a resilient maritime ecosystem. The latest milestone in this evolving partnership was marked on June 2 in Oslo. Japan's Yoshimichi Terada, Vice Minister for International Affairs at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, met with Sarbananda Sonowal, India's Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways. The meeting, held on the sidelines of the Nor-Shipping maritime conference in Norway, was nothing short of transformational. It signaled a renewed commitment to jointly advance sustainable and smart maritime initiatives. These initiatives are not only commercially robust but also environmentally sound and socially inclusive. Both Japan, as Asia's most mature democracy, and India, the world's largest, are vibrant democracies with complementary strengths. And they have long shared a special strategic and global partnership. Their maritime dialogue is now taking center stage as both nations recognize the importance of the Indo-Pacific as the engine of global trade and geopolitics. Terada and Sonowal shake hands. (Courtesy of Government of India Press Information Bureau) What makes this development particularly significant is its forward-looking approach. It focuses not just on traditional maritime security but also on cutting-edge technologies, climate resilience, and inclusive growth. At the June meeting, Terada and Sonowal delved deep into potential investments in India's shipbuilding industry, with an emphasis on co-development and co-production models. Japan has expertise in building state-of-the-art vessels. Coupling that with India's growing shipyard capabilities holds tremendous promise. Together, they aim to foster a competitive, future-ready shipbuilding ecosystem that can serve regional and global markets. One of the most exciting dimensions of the talks was the mutual commitment to green port development. Japan's Green Infrastructure Strategy and India's Sagarmala Initiative found common ground in the conversation. Both sides agreed to exchange best practices and technological know-how in clean energy adoption. From shore-to-ship power supply to hybrid propulsion systems and hydrogen-based logistics, the green maritime transition is well underway. Digitization was another key area of convergence. Smart ports, enabled by AI, IoT, and blockchain technologies, are central to India's maritime modernization strategy. Japan, a global leader in port automation and intelligent logistics, is expected to play a catalytic role in India's digital port transformation. These smart solutions are not only set to enhance operational efficiency but also reduce emissions, lower costs, and streamline trade. One of the most visionary aspects of the dialogue was the focus on India's island territories. They are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. These smart solutions discussed by the two nations involve transforming these strategically located sites into "smart islands." They would feature green ports, renewable energy facilities, eco-tourism infrastructure, and disaster-resilient logistics hubs. In this regard, Japan's experience in building sustainable island ecosystems through integrated maritime and urban planning offers valuable insights. Their collaboration will help unlock the untapped potential of these islands. It will also serve as a model for regional development and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. The meeting was held on the sidelines of the Nor-Shipping 2025 conference. (Courtesy of Government of India Press Information Bureau) No partnership is complete without a strong foundation in human capital development. Recognizing this, both ministers placed special emphasis on enhancing skills, training, and capacity-building. Japan's maritime institutions and the Indian Maritime University (IMU) are expected to expand academic and research collaboration. They aim to facilitate knowledge exchange and the creation of a highly skilled maritime workforce. Scholarship programs, joint R&D initiatives, and training modules for green technologies are already under consideration. These efforts will nurture a new generation of maritime professionals adept at navigating the complexities of a rapidly evolving industry. A shared understanding of the need for resilient infrastructure in the face of climate change is also shaping the partnership. With both countries susceptible to natural disasters such as tsunamis and cyclones, discussions focused on building disaster-resilient ports, warehouses, and navigation systems. Japan's technical experts in mitigation and India's vast coastal infrastructure create a perfect synergy for joint innovation and resilience-building. India is also expected to benefit from Japan's advanced hydrographic and coastal mapping technologies. These are critical for sustainable port planning and climate impact assessments. This renewed maritime cooperation between Japan and India is not just a bilateral affair. It has far-reaching implications for the region and beyond. It exemplifies how like-minded countries can come together to address global challenges such as climate change, sustainable development, and maritime security, through practical, people-centric solutions. As maritime trade continues to account for over 90% of global trade volume, the importance of resilient, green, and smart maritime infrastructure cannot be overstated. Japan and India's collaboration sets a positive example for the world, demonstrating how strategic alignment and shared values can produce real on-the-ground impact. Both countries are gearing up to implement the outcomes of the Oslo dialogue with optimism in the air. The proposed projects are all aligned with Japan's Sustainable Blue Economy Strategy and India's Amrit Kaal vision. With strong political will, robust institutional frameworks, and deep friendship, Japan and India could redefine maritime cooperation in the 21st century. Author: Professor Pema Gyalpo
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes: Japan's Imagica Group Selects Tomoka Terada's ‘Maria' to Launch First Original Film Slate
The feature debut from writer-director Tomoka Terada, Maria, has been named the first winner of the Imagica Group Film Project, a newly established initiative designed to foster original Japanese filmmaking. The project was unveiled Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, where the Tokyo-based post-production giant is marking its 90th anniversary. Maria centers on an 18-year-old caregiver navigating poverty, pregnancy, and fractured family ties in a declining industrial port town. The film, which draws from Terada's background as a social worker, presents a portrait of young people left behind by Japan's aging society. The project will be produced by Hana Tsuchikawa of OLM, Inc. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'The Plague' Review: Joel Edgerton in a Thrilling Drama That Captures the Terror of Adolescent Masculinity Legendary Entertainment Names Di Mu CEO of China Division Long Layover? Plan a Paris Pitstop The selection was made by a jury including Palme d'Or-winning director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), who called Terada's screenplay 'realistic and well-written,' noting the jury's unanimous support for the project. 'It surprised me with its humor and clarity,' he said. 'It didn't feel like a debut.' Imagica Group, a fixture in Japan's post-production industry, is investing ¥70 million ($500,000) into the film's production. The company will bring in additional Japanese corporate entities as co-financiers. The new program will support one film per year for five years, with an eye toward international festivals. Other jurors helping to select the winning titles include Tokyo International Film Festival programming director Shozo Ichiyama and Yuka Sakano of the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute. At the press event in Cannes, Tsuchikawa emphasized the grounded, observational nature of the script. 'What struck me about Maria is how it brings warmth to a story that's not conventionally uplifting,' she said. 'There's honesty in how the characters try to survive.' The Imagica Group Film Project is limited to producers affiliated with one of the company's subsidiaries, though outside directors and writers may partner with eligible producers. This year's competition drew 88 proposals. Maria was selected following a two-round evaluation process, with final jury deliberations concluding in April. Terada, who is also currently employed as a social worker, has previously worked as an assistant director on Kore-eda's Monster and Emma Kawawada's My Small Land. In a recorded message, she reflected on the personal roots of the project. 'These characters are people I've known, not invented,' she said. 'I wanted to write something that comes not from me, but from the world I've observed closely.' While the film is still in development, jury members expressed hope that the Imagica initiative will continue beyond its initial five-year plan — and possibly expand to support filmmakers across Asia. 'It's a strong start,' Ichiyama noted. 'But it's also a much-needed model for how the private sector can step in where institutional support is lacking [in Japan].' 'When I heard about this initiative, I thought: finally,' added Kore-eda. 'There's a gap in how new filmmakers in Japan are discovered and supported. A system like this, if it continues, could help address that.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Asahi Shimbun
03-05-2025
- General
- Asahi Shimbun
Museums seek to include women's presence in staging exhibits
Part of these portraits of successive internal medicine professors, which formerly hung in the Internal Medicine Auditorium at the University of Tokyo Hospital, were shown at 'The Face of Medicine,' a special exhibition held at the Intermediatheque museum, in 2016. (Provided by the University Museum, the University of Tokyo) Museum collections professor Ayumi Terada admitted being overwhelmed by the lack of diversity in an exhibition she organized for the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Medicine. 'The Face of Medicine,' a special exhibition held from 2016 through 2021, exhibited 16 items out of a larger set of portrait paintings, photos and sculptures of successive internal medicine professors. 'Oh, this organization was so strikingly masculine,' Terada thought at the time, looking at the all-male faculty. Since then, Terada, a project associate professor with the Intermediatheque museum outside Tokyo Station, has been working to include materials in light of gender at special exhibitions she has organized. She has been seeking consciously to incorporate the 'presence of people and things that tend to be overlooked from the perspective of official history,' such as women, into exhibits. Terada packed exhibitions with the presence of women when she organized a sequel show titled 'The Faces of German Medicine,' with a focus on German teachers in the cradle years of modern medicine in Japan, in 2022. She included, for example, the episode of Go Ine, a Japanese woman who donated her body by her own volition, in an explanatory note to a portrait photo of Wilhelm Doenitz (1838-1912), an anatomy teacher. She also exhibited a photo of female nurses walking toward the main building of the former Tokyo Medical School, the predecessor to the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Medicine. Terada said she did so to spotlight the fact that women were present at the time when all professors and all students were male. 'Leaving out women risks making the public believe as if no women had been there,' Terada said. 'If museums were to design their exhibits without being aware of that risk, they could pass along, and strengthen, the biased gender norms saying that only men have played active roles in society. I think that is very dangerous.' Museums across Japan are seeking to reflect the oft-underrated presence of women in their exhibits, even though the country, as a whole, has yet to become a front-runner in efforts to rethink museum exhibits from the standpoint of gender. REASSESSING MATERIALS FROM GENDER PERSPECTIVE The National Museum of Japanese History (Rekihaku), in Chiba Prefecture, provided much fodder for discussion when it organized 'Gender in Japanese History,' a special exhibition, in 2020. Rekihaku officials said they also paid close attention to the design of illustrations and gender-related expressions in explanatory panels when they renovated a gallery on prehistory and ancient times in 2019. For example, a statement was added to an explanatory note on village leaders of the Jomon Pottery Culture Period (c. 14500 B.C.-1000 B.C.) to say that women accounted for many of the village leaders in western Japan. A museum of local history in Taki, Mie Prefecture, organized a special exhibition titled 'The history of women: our collection items as seen from a gender perspective,' from July through September last year. On exhibit were 95 items of materials and documents that attest to the presence of women, who have seldom been featured front and center in history. Okayama Tomokiyo (1789-1878), who developed the Isenishiki rice variety, is well-known among Taki's residents as an eminent figure produced by the local community. Okayama, a follower of a folk religion called Fujido, is believed to have relied on a network of its followers to spread the rice variety to different areas of Japan. One section of the special exhibition highlighted Fujido's teachings that men and women are equal beings and showed related documents and materials, including a scripture, along with detailed explanatory notes. 'We can learn new things, even from old materials exhibited in the past, when we revisit them from a gender perspective,' said Mami Murata, a curator who organized the special show. 'Museums could turn up heaps of materials that are useful for gender studies if only they made conscious efforts to do so.' JAPAN LAGS BEHIND The need to redesign museum exhibits from a gender viewpoint has been discussed for more than a decade outside Japan. The International Council of Museums (ICOM), which organizes museum officials from around 130 countries and regions of the world, included the concept of 'gender mainstreaming' in a resolution adopted at a general conference in Rio de Janeiro in 2013. Under the awareness of an inadequate engagement with gender and women's issues in museums, the resolution recommended, among other things, that similar institutions 'analyze the narratives being told from a gender perspective.' ICOM redefined museums in 2022, when it adopted a new definition that includes the social role of museums in fostering 'diversity and sustainability' in addition to their conventional functions for collecting, studying and exhibiting heritage items. More consideration is being given to gender and other forms of diversity at museums abroad. Officials of museums overseas who are working to promote diversity attended a symposium on 'diversity and inclusiveness in museums' in Tokyo in January. An official with the National Taiwan Science Education Center in Taipei presented, among other things, how she and her colleagues organized a special exhibition to highlight the presence of women in science, which has tended to be invisible, and later moved the exhibits to a permanent show gallery. An official involved in working out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policy at a museum within the University of Amsterdam pointed out that the process of selecting materials for show can, in a sense, take away the voice from specific aspects of history. She stressed a need for museums to try to remain neutral, keeping in mind the presence of diverse people in terms, for example, of gender, race, religion and disabilities. Yuji Kurihara, executive director with the National Museum of Nature and Science who organized the symposium, pointed out that Japan is lagging behind in similar efforts. 'One could hardly say the importance of DEI is sufficiently understood by museum officials in Japan,' he said. There is, in fact, no mention of diversity in Japan's Museum Law, which was amended only four months before ICOM adopted its new definition of museums. The numbers of men and women are almost the same among museum workers, but the proportion of women among museum directors is extremely low, at only 14 percent. 'Japan's museum administrators should also work on DEI, including by redefining their museums,' Kurihara said. (This article was written by Maiko Ito and Chie Kohara.)
