Early Ethio-Japanese contacts

The historical relationship between Japan and Africa stretches back to the seventh century, when Japanese and Africans presumably met each other in China and elsewhere in East Asia. With the arrival of Europeans by the mid sixteenth century, encounters between Japanese and Africans in and outside Japan had increased. Japanese contacts with Africa before World War II, however, were always an appendage. Moreover, distinguishing North and North east Africa geographically from Black Africa by stressing racial, historical, religious, cultural, and linguistic differences, Japan's foreign ministry officially classified that region as part of the Middle East.

After the Meiji restoration of 1868, Japanese intellectuals began to pay attention to African affairs, initially through European eyes. Later, Japan also got firsthand information by sending official economic missions, setting up consular offices, and using the information networks created by shipping companies and trading houses. European colonialism in Africa made Japan's military and political penetration impossible, and Japan's African interests remained a by-product of expanding economic markets and its political relations with Western countries. Japan designed its economic penetration to capture markets and to secure cheap and stable supplies of raw materials, especially cotton. A latecomer to world politics, Japan accepted Europe's political hegemony over Africa and the colonial, economic system that made this exploitation possible. These limited, exploitative contacts meant that Japan could and did claim clean hands in Africa.

Japan joined the imperialist world dominated by the Western powers with its victories in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and 1895 to win Formosa (Taiwan) and the russo-Japanese War a decade later, followed by korea's annexation in 1910.