It was a star-studded affair on Wednesday night as President Joe Bidenwelcomed A-listers including Robert De Niro, Tiffany Chen and Jeff Bezos to the White House for a state dinner with Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister.
The president and first lady Jill Biden hosted more than 200 guests at the glitzy event in the White House East Room, where they dined on a specially curated menu of house-cured salmon, dry-aged rib-eye steak and matcha ganache.
The guest list read like a who’s who of prominent Democratic figures, tech moguls and Biden family members.
The Hollywood actor and outspoken Mr Trump critic De Niro arrived hand in hand with his girlfriend, Tiffany Chen.
The former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton made it to the top table.
Big Tech moguls Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos, who was joined by Lauren Sanchez, were also in attendance, as was JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
On the political and administrative aisle of the guestlist was vice president Kamala Harris, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, secretary of state Antony Blinken and treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
Several Biden family members, including granddaughter Naomi and her husband Peter Neal, were also there as were labour luminaries Shawn Fain, the president of United Auto Workers, and the United Steelworkers president David McCall – whose unions have endorsed Mr Biden for reelection.
Both Mr Biden and Mr Kishida took to the stage for a lighthearted, warm address to the crowd, where the former spoke of the two nations’ “friendship” and the latter invoked an iconic phrase from Star Trek.
Speaking in English, Mr Kishida told guests at the White House that he hoped the “unshakable relationship” between his country and the US would “boldly go where no one had gone before”.
“I would like to propose a toast to our voyage to the frontier of the Japan-US relationship with this word: boldly go,” he said, quoting the iconic opening monologue of the original Star Trek series.
The two leaders, who expressed a genuine friendship, pledged to continue to knit together their countries’ interests in the face of global challenges.
Mr Biden, 81, said he and Kishida, 66, came of age as their countries forged a strong bond in the decades after they were pitted against each other in the Second World War.
“We both remember the choices that were made to forge a friendship,” he said. “We both remember the hard work, what it has done to find healing.”
“Tonight,” Biden continued, “We pledge to keep going.”
Dr Biden had transformed the State Floor of the White House into what she called a “vibrant spring garden” for the evening’s event.
The floor of the famous Cross Hall was decorated with images giving the feel of walking over a koi pond, a nod to fish that symbolise “friendship, peace, luck and perseverance,” the first lady said at a media preview on Tuesday.
Guests were entertained by musical guest Paul Simon who sang two of his major hits, “Graceland” and “Slip Slidin’ Away”.
A state dinner is a tool of US diplomacy, an honor doled out sparingly and only to America’s closest allies. In the case of Japan, the president has granted that honor for just the fifth time to an ally that he sees as a cornerstone of his policy toward the Indo-Pacific region.
