Japan-Indonesia Relations' During the Prewar Period - Research Paper Example

One of the reasons for the economic expansion to the southern regions by the Western economies was the economic potential of these regions with an abundance of natural resources and cheap labor that could be profitably extracted. These regions also had strong potential as markets for the industrial surplus generated through the industrial revolution. For Japan, similar profit-making opportunities existed in regional expansion and these ideas found scholarly support in the Meiji era ideas of immigration or emigration of Japan, both to the north (Kyokushin) and south (Hanshin).

Prior to the Muromachi period, there was a general lack of information. Japan knew as little about the Western nations as did they about Japan. But since then, through direct interactions that were associated with trading, new information emerged about the foreign countries for Japan as well as about Japan for the foreign nations. This served in generating interests both ways because till then Japanese foreign trade was limited to those only with the people in surrounding regions, namely Korea and China, which at that time was still governed by Ming Dynasty.

Long before the Portuguese introduced the map that accurately described the region of Japan, a pastor named Busshō Japan Zenji (founder of Buddhist religion Ritsukyokuan flow in Tōfukuji) in the year 1279 created a map based upon his own travels. This map depicted China in the middle, in the area of western India, Korea and Manchuria in the north, Japan in the east, and Coarse (the southern island of Sumatra) and Java in the south. There are also records of the ships coming from Java and Sumatra with the elephants as a tribute to the Japanese king.