Japan got a taste of India's rising soft power as exquisite notes of shehnai mingled with exhilarating beats of Indipop at a festival celebrating the exuberance and creativity of Indian culture that opened here Thursday.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe with their wives lit the lamp Thursday evening, inaugurating the year-long festival at Orion Hall in Four Seasons Hotel, which ushered in a new chapter of cultural camaraderie between the two Asian giants.

'The Festival of India which we launch today will bring out the vibrancy of India's culture in all its diversity,' Manmohan Singh said at the inauguration ceremony, which also launched the India-Japan Friendship Year 2007, marking the 50th anniversary of the cultural agreement between India and Japan.

The two countries have also decided to designate 2007 as the year of India-Japan tourism exchange.

The festival will bring home to the Japanese people 'the youthful dynamism of contemporary India's free and open society and the great transformations that are taking place in India's economy,' Manmohan Singh told the over 600-strong audience here.

'We are also looking forward to the Festival of Japan in India, which will showcase both modern and traditional Japanese culture, which is catching the popular imagination in India,' he said.

Cultural hybridity of India, a traditional country that is modernizing to take its place under the global sun, came out beautifully at the performances that combined the quintessentially Indian musical instrument shehnai played by Pandit Rajendra Prasanna with more racier and trendier numbers by ace choreographer Shiamak Davar.

As Davar performed numbers like Mera Juta Hai Japani, the audience cheered lustily, showing an appreciation of centuries-old cultural ties that are reinventing themselves in what is set to become an Asian century.

Abe, Japan's youngest post-war prime minister, recalled 'deep civilisational ties and the legacy of Buddhism' that binds the two emerging Asian powers. Alluding to Manmohan Singh's historic address to the joint session of Diet earlier in the day, Abe stressed, 'It reinforced his conviction that we must nurture this relationship as the most important relationship in the world.

'The prime minister's speech was historic and everybody was deeply moved.'

In his speech to Diet, Manmohan Singh underlined the need for stepping up people-to-people contacts and cultural exchanges between India and Japan and called the friendship between peoples as the cornerstone of any strategic partnership.