Akie Abe, widow of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on Wednesday inaugurated a photo gallery dedicated to her late husband at the Rudraksh International Cooperation and Convention Centre in Sigra. The Varanasi Municipal Corporation, which announced the opening later in the evening, has named the space the Abe Memorial Corridor and described it as dedicated to the late leader. The ceremony took place at about 2 pm.
The gallery is built around one trip. Its photographs are drawn from Shinzo Abe's visit to Kashi in December 2015, when he came to the city as Japan's serving Prime Minister, and they include pictures from the Ganga aarti he attended during that visit.
Akie Abe, who was Japan's First Lady during her husband's years in office, broke down on stage while speaking about him. She said he would have been very happy had he been alive to see the day, and that the centre in Kashi had come up because of his initiative. His absence, she said, was deeply painful for her.
She also spoke about how the building began. According to her, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had talked about creating such a centre in Varanasi when he visited Japan. She thanked Modi, described the gesture as an example of friendship between the two countries, and said that her husband, had he lived, would certainly have come to Kashi himself and been moved by the honour.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attended the ceremony and presented her with a memento. Mayor Ashok Tiwari, state minister Ravindra Jaiswal and MLA Saurabh Srivastava were among those present, along with a group of schoolchildren.
During the December 2015 visit, Abe and Modi attended the evening Ganga aarti together at Dashashwamedh Ghat. It was a short stop on a longer state visit, and photographs from that evening are now on display inside a building his government's support helped put up.
The Rudraksh centre, which stands in Sigra not far from the municipal corporation's head office, was built with Japanese assistance and opened in 2021. Its link to Japan is part of a wider tie. Varanasi and Kyoto signed a partner city agreement in 2014, during Modi's first visit to Japan as Prime Minister, and the convention centre has often been described by officials on both sides as a symbol of that relationship.
In the years since it opened, the centre has become a regular venue for large official and cultural events in the city, from conferences to government campaigns such as the Poshan Maah 2026 national launch planned at Rudraksh last month. The new gallery gives people attending those events something more to see between sessions.
The corporation's announcement did not say whether the corridor will be open to the general public outside scheduled events, or on what timings, and it did not list how many photographs are on display. Since Rudraksh is a working convention venue with controlled entry, people hoping to see the photographs may need to check with the centre's management before going.
Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister, stepped down in 2020 on health grounds and was shot dead while campaigning in Nara in July 2022, nearly two years later. He visited India several times during his tenure. The December 2015 trip was the one on which the two governments agreed that Japan would back the Mumbai to Ahmedabad high-speed rail project, but its Varanasi leg was built around an hour by the river rather than around the agreements signed in Delhi.
Japan's presence in Kashi has not been limited to visits by heads of government. In August, a delegation led by the Governor of Yamanashi Prefecture toured Sarnath and Kashi on an investment and culture visit, and the same month a Japanese academic spoke on migration in Somona Sinha's novels at Vasant College.
On Wednesday, though, the room belonged to one visitor. Akie Abe looked over the photographs and keepsakes from her husband's evening on the Ganga, taken nearly eleven years ago, and was visibly moved by what she saw.
