Joe Biden to host Japan’s PM Fumio Kishida in April, White House confirms

The formal social and policy event delivers on a promise by Biden to host the closely allied nation, which is key to the United States’ strategy to lower tensions around China, North Korea and other Asian security issues.

Biden and Kishida will discuss “efforts to strengthen our political, security, economic, and people-to-people ties” to improve Indo-Pacific security, said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.

Twenty-twenty-four “will be a pivotal year for Japan-US relations, with an official visit by Prime Minister Kishida taking place early in the year,” Japan’s ambassador to Washington, Shigeo Yamada, said on Thursday in pre-recorded remarks to an event hosted by the Wilson Centre think tank.

Mieko Nakabayashi, a professor at Japan’s Waseda University, told a Washington think tank event that factional rivalries inside Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party raised questions about whether Kishida could hold on to power long enough to make the visit.

She also said there was growing concern in Japan about the prospect of a second Trump presidency. “We are very, very worried, and we are thinking about a variety of scenarios of… whoever becomes the president of the United States,” Nakabayashi said.