[5] In August 2003, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid an official visit to the Central Europe, namely Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.

In the afternoon of the next day, he held talks with Czech Prime Minister Vladimír Špidla at the Prime Minister's Office and there they exchanged their ideas and thoughts on the bilateral relations and significant global issues that include the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and reconstruction of Iraq, where it had been only three months since the war had ended.

[6] According to the meeting, both of the prime ministers issued the "Joint Statement towards Strategic Partnership between Japan and the Czech Republic," which celebrated 10th anniversary of their partnership and the imperial visit to Prague a year ago as an epoch-making event and proclaimed more evolution of cooperation in the bilateral relations, in assisting the renaissance of Iraq and in preventing the further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

[7] Economic relations between Japan and the Czech Republic have been developing steadily with rapid growth of large-scale direct investment and trade of electrical machinery and mechanical components.

[1] In the year of 1968, when self-proclaimed "brotherhood nations" the Soviet Union and four communist states sent tanks to Prague, Japan sent a private enterprise there; that is to say, one of the largest Japanese general trading companies Mitsui & Co. started operating in the capital of the Czech Republic.