Shinzo Abe has twice tried the weather: It is usually very cold in Tokyo at this time of year, but with Angela Merkel finally spring has arrived, Japan's head of government flatters his visitor from Germany at the joint press conference.

For just 25 hours Merkel lingers on Japanese soil, it is a visit whose significance is primarily that it takes place at all. Big decisions are not to be expected: The new free trade agreement between Germany and Japan came into force a few days ago, the planned agreement for a better intelligence of the two states in the field of armaments and cybertechnologie is not yet ready for signing.

And in June, the Chancellor will stop by anyway, for the G20 summit in Osaka. Merkel unwinds the visit routinely, makes the military honors with annoyed expression on it, while her Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil home just making headlines with a billionaire plan for needy pensioners from tax revenue.

Host Abe does not really fit Merkel's visit: In Japan is Budget Week, and the Prime Minister, who celebrates the jubilee as the longest-serving Japanese Prime Minister in a few days, would have to sit in Parliament all day instead of meeting the Chancellor. But no page wanted to cancel Merkel's visit. The Japanese have just registered that Merkel stops by for the fifth time, while she has already completed eleven visits to its major competitor China since taking office in 2005.

We have known each other for many years

It seems almost as if the two heads of government needed their meeting as a short break and self-assurance among old allies. Abe and Merkel know each other for more than ten years, both are in their fourth term and have their biggest political moments behind them. Both represent aging societies whose industries are in danger of falling behind in competition with China.

All the more, they encourage their companies to cooperate in the field of artificial intelligence; Merkel has traveled with a business delegation to BDI boss Dieter Kempf and Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser.

But she must be careful with critical tones in the direction of the competitor: Your visit to Japan must not look as if Japan and Germany made common front against China or the United States. Caution is also in Abes interest: Japan is dependent on Chinese companies in the field of electric mobility. To this end, the Japanese industry cultivates billions of dollars of business relations with the Chinese technology group Huawei, which also wants to expand the German 5G mobile communications infrastructure and in Berlin increasingly encounters political resistance.

The common problem is in Washington

Questions about Huawei will be answered at the press conference in Tokyo only tight-lipped. Japan does not want to "rip off" companies, Abe says, but of course it's important to note that network operators would "collect users' data" fairly. " If not, the company would be "excluded". Merkel says nothing about the topic.

Both heads of government are all the more explicit in their commitment to multilateralism. In doing so, they know that their states are above all dependent on a partner for foreign and security policy, namely on the USA - and that they can no longer rely on this protective power since Donald Trump took office. Especially Abe must experience this painfully: The US President prefers to practice his North Korea policy without any good advice from Tokyo.

At the very end at the press conference, Angela Merkel then makes a bit of world politics, by depriving Venezuela's formally still-incumbent head of state, Nicolás Maduro, of recognition. In the eyes of Germany and many European states, Juán Guaido is the "legitimate interim president" of Venezuela, the Chancellor said. Here, her partner Abe had been more cautious: Venezuela had to be solved "peacefully and democratically", the Japanese had just said.