Japan

In the eighth century, a Japanese commercial envoy to Tang Dynasty drifted to the Indochina peninsula on their voyage. It is believed to be the first Japanese footprint on Southeast Asia soils (Institute of Asian Cultures, Sophia University 2009). Since then, Japan and Southeast Asian have had a long and close relationship until today. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, Japan benefited from the prosperous commercial network of Southeast Asia and there were several Japanese communities in Southeast Asia. In the late nineteenth century after breaking its more than bicentennial-long isolation policy from the Westerners, ¹ under Japan’s modern Meiji government Japan was the first non-Western nation to accomplish industrialization. Many Asian students and prospective leaders came to Japan to study the modern nation-building process. On the other hand, many Japanese longed for the unknown region of Nanyo (Southward) to stimulate their frontier spirits as well as economic interests (Tarling 2006).