Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cemented economic links and cultural amity with North Carolina on Friday, following up time in Washington during his official U.S. visit by checking up on benchmark Japanese companies building plants here.
Kishida, Cooper and others traveled to the Triad on Friday morning to tour the construction site for the Toyota Motor Corp. electric and hybrid battery plant that is expected to ultimately employ more than 5,000 people. They also toured the Honda Aircraft Co. production facility in Greensboro.
After those visits they returned to Raleigh for lunch at the governor’s mansion in Raleigh, the first time a foreign head of state has visited the governor’s mansion since record-keeping began in 1891, the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources said.
Japan is North Carolina’s largest source of foreign direct investment. More than 200 Japanese companies have now set up shop in the state, employing more than 30,000 people, according to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and his office.
“I am honored to be here in North Carolina to showcase the multilayered and strong ties between Japan and the United States,” Kishida said through a translator inside the mansion ballroom.
He called North Carolina “a state at the forefront of the times.”
Kishida, who has been Japan’s prime minister since 2021, said before his trip that he chose to stop in North Carolina to show that the Japan-U.S. partnership extends beyond Washington, according to a translation posted on his website.
Hours before Kishida and his wife arrived Thursday night at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a subsidiary of another Japanese company, Fujifilm, announced an additional $1.2 billion investment in its upcoming biopharmaceutical manufacturing plant southwest of Raleigh and another 680 jobs.
Kishida, Cooper and others went to North Carolina State University in Raleigh later Friday, where they met students ranging from those in middle school to adults studying Japanese. They visited the university’s Japan Center, which was established by former Gov. Jim Hunt and others in 1980 following a state trade mission to Tokyo. North Carolina State also has long, formal ties with Japan’s Nagoya University.
