"HIKARI (“light” in Japanese) aims at pursuing and bringing one step further cooperation between Europe and Japan in the field of high speed transport (HST).Such a disruptive approach to commercial air transport will foster innovation, ensure leadership in high technology areas, and contribute to ACARE goals by studying alternative fuels and low emissions propulsive technologies. But for such a program to result in concrete solutions for the future traveler, it is mandatory to create international synergies between the most active consortia on the subject.HIKARI will therefore the bases to a fruitful European-Japan partnership in HST, gathering the most renowned partners. It includes industies (EADS subsidiaries MBDA and Astrium, EADS Innovation Works department, and IHI Aerospace),research centers (ESTEC, DLR, CIRA, ONERA, NLR, CNRS and JAXA), and Universities (The University of Tokyo and EASN). Some members have worked with the IPCC, proving that environment is at the heart of such a development. Finally, HIKARI integrates partners with competencies in market analyses: Airbus “Market Forecast” department, Oxford Economics, SME specialized in economic analyses and transport issues, and JADC.The primary output from HIKARI will be roadmaps based on synergies between different projects, e.g. ATLLAS, LAPCAT, ZEHST, LEA, proposing common experimentation plans to contribute to definitive validation of key technical areas by 2020 or earlier. To support this, studies will be run on demand and cost assessment and on the economic impact of HST, and in three technological areas currently of interest to both European and Japanese partners: fuel and environment, thermal and energy management, propulsion. Output from these activities will be integrated in the roadmaps.Next steps beyond HIKARI will then be to follow these roadmaps, paving the way for the development and Entry Into Service of a disruptive and environment-friendly passengers airplane in the future.Due to adminstrative requirements set by the European Commission, JADC and IHI decided to withdraw from the initial proposal. However it is planned to maintain contact with these entities, possibly by inviting them to some workshops.Therefore their work share, as initially foreseen in Part B, was removed from the DoW partA but Part B is kept unchanged in order to be able to trace the history when exchanges are made with these two former partner"