The meeting was attended by Deputy Chair of the National Commission for Women Affairs, Family and Demographic Policy, Deputy of Majilis Yelena Tarasenko; Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Motoyuki Fujii, as well as Director of the World Heritage Division of the Agency for Cultural Affairs T.Okamoto.
Opening the meeting, Gulshara Abdykalikova stressed that Japan is a strategic partner of Kazakhstan. The Secretary of State emphasized the visit by President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Japan in June 2008 encouraged further strengthening of bilateral cooperation. She highly assessed the activity of Kazakh-Japan Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation involving the public and private sectors of the two states. In 2014, the trade turnover between the two countries reached $1.7 billion.
The sides also discussed most topical issues of development of Kazakh-Japanese relations in the social and humanitarian sphere. Gulshara Abdykalikova stressed the importance of cultural exchange against the background of increasing mutual interest of the two countries and proposed to consider the possibility of concluding a bilateral agreement in the field of culture.
In addition, the parties considered issues of gender equality, including in the framework of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted at the 1995 Fourth UN World Conference on Women.
At the end of the meeting, Masayoshi Kamohara conveyed an invitation to the Secretary of State from the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to attend the second World Conference on Women to be held in Tokyo in August this year.