ISAS Working Papers

What motivates Japan to look at South Asia as a foreign aid destination? This paper explores the evolution of Japanese attitudes toward South Asia in foreign aid. Japan began sending official development assistance (ODA) to the region as early as 1958 and has become one of its largest contributors. However, Japan’s ODA goals to the region have been underexplored. Japan has expanded economic diplomacy by capitalising on the policy of development cooperation to the region and recently stretched it out to the security building cooperation with aid recipients in South Asia, especially with India.