Scottish Samurai honour for Japanese PM Shinzo Abe

A Taisho Star will be presented

An Aberdeen karate great is to present a Scottish Samurai honour to the Japanese Prime Minister.

Ronnie Watt OBE is part of a Scottish Samurai Awards delegation heading to Japan, with the highlight set to be the meeting with Shinzo Abe next week.

Mr Watt - who has a 9th Dan ranking - founded the awards in 1994 to mark links between Scotland and Japan.

The Japanese PM will receive a Taisho Star, one of the highest accolades in the Scottish Samurai Awards.

Shinzo Abe is due to receive the award next week

The awards were inspired by Fraserburgh-born businessman Thomas Blake Glover - the so-called Scottish Samurai - who arrived in Nagasaki in 1859.

He helped found Mitsubishi, and contributed to the modernisation of Japan.

'Really proud'

Since the awards were founded, comedian Billy Connolly and actress Joanna Lumley have been among those who have been honoured.

Mr Watt, 71, said: "He (Shinzo Abe) heard of the Samurai awards through various colleagues and Lord Charles Bruce (Honorary Patron of the Japan Society of Scotland), and he had expressed an interest that he wanted to meet us, I'm really proud.

Mr Watt has a 9th Dan ranking

"It is probably, apart from meeting the Queen, one of the highlights of my life, because to be given the honour of meeting the Prime Minister of Japan is exceptional for a European.

"I've been practising karate for 54 years, it is amazing.

"We formed the Samurai Awards as a friendship society, for people to meet one another in Japan or Scotland, to interlink.

"Karate is a mental and physical culture based on self-defence, but it has got morals, those morals are endeavour, to seek perfection of character, refrain from violent behaviour, respect others and be faithful.

"The people who receive these awards have achieved every one of these aspects in their working life, their sporting life, their martial arts life, it is basically somebody of a really excellent character."

Ronnie Watt hopes the trip can help further strengthen relations

He added: "With the great respect for Thomas Blake Glover, for Aberdeen and for Scotland, and what the people of Scotland did for Japan at the time of Glover, the Japanese have got a great love and respect for us."

He hopes the trip can help further strengthen those relations between the two countries.