[3] 66,7% Buddhism 1,5% Christianity 6,2% Other In the 8th century, Abe no Nakamaro, a descendant of the Imperial House of Japan, entered the Chinese civil service under the Tang dynasty and eventually served as governor (jiedushi) of Annam from 761 to 767.

[5] During the 8th century, the Japanese court composite ritual art comprising orchestral music and dance (Bugaku) known as Rinyu-gaku is said to have been introduced by a foreign monk named "Buttetsu" (Phật Triết) who came from Rinyu (Chăm Pa).

[6] An archaeological dig in Kyūshū, the most southwesterly of the four main islands of Japan, revealed fragments of a Vietnamese ceramic with the inscribed date of 1330, but ended in 1332.

In 1601, Lord Nguyen Hoang sent a missive to Tokugawa Ieyasu the new shōgun of Japan, which in the letter he mentioned the incident concerning a citizen of the shogun’s country.

The response from Japan was one that praised their thoughtfulness in dealing with the situation, and confirmed that, from then on, all their legitimate trading ships would be bearing the red seal of the shogun.

Tokogawa declared such ships to be legitimate, and this was the first confirmed official contact between the two governments, which marked the beginning of a then diplomatic trading relationship that lasted for much of that century.

Vietnamese records show that when the port of Hội An was opened by Lord Nguyễn Hoàng in the early 17th century, hundreds of Japanese traders were already residing there.

His son Lord Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên would marry his daughter Princess Ngoc Khoa to Araki Shutaro, an eminent Japanese trader.

They reclaimed fallow land and built towns where trading vessels from the Qing Empire, western countries, Japan, and Java flocked.

[13] With the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan adopted a more outward-facing foreign policy, part of which eventually involved more active diplomacy and trade with French Indochina, the colonial state that contained the territory of present-day Vietnam.

A number of Vietnamese nationalists became drawn to Japan after its 1905 victory in the Russo-Japanese War, as Phan Bội Châu encouraged Vietnamese youth to travel to Japan and study in preparation for revolution against the French colonial government in what was called the Đông Du movement; among these students was Cường Để, heir to the throne of the Nguyễn dynasty.

[25] Clemenceau also wanted the Japanese intervene in Siberia against the Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War to secure the repayment of French-Russian loans, which were crucial to the French post-war economy.

In Hanoi on 15–20 April 1945 the Tonkin Revolutionary Military Conference of the Việt Minh issued a resolution calling for a general uprising, resistance and guerilla warfare against the Japanese by establishing 7 war zones across Vietnam and insisting that the people's only way forward was armed resistance against the Japanese and ouster of the Vietnamese puppet government that served them.

In July, the Việt Minh led attempts to force an entry into Japanese rice silos and redistribute it to starving peasants.

The following month, Trường Chinh wrote an article titled "Policy of the Japanese Pirates Towards Our People" in Issue No 3 of the Communist Review (Tạp chí Cộng sản).

[33] Many of these leftover Japanese soldiers would work with Hồ Chí Minh and the Indochinese Communist Party after the war to fight against French colonialism.

[34] Implementation, however, was delayed by North Vietnamese demands that Japan pay the equivalent of US$45 million in World War II reparations in two yearly installments, in the form of "economic cooperation" grants.

Giving in to the North Vietnamese demands, Japan agreed to pay the reparations and opened an embassy in Hanoi on 11 October 1975, following the fall of Saigon.

[34] This initial grant was to be used for the procurement of products and associated services on the condition that the suppliers could be from any county and would not be exclusively limited businesses those owned Japanese nationals.

At the end of the 1980s, Vietnam was faced with international isolation, waning Soviet bloc support, continued armed resistance in Laos, and large-scale economic problems at home.

Akashi Yasushi, UN undersecretary for disarmament, was head of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia, and Japan pledged US$3 million and even sent approximately 2,000 personnel including members of the SDF, to participate directly in maintaining recently restored peace.

On 30 October 1998 the Hải Vân Tunnel Construction Project was started, which was mainly financed by a loan provided by the Japanese Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF).

[40] The ODA pledged for 2011 by Japan reached 1.76 billion US dollars, which was four times larger than the donation from South Korea, Vietnam's second biggest donor, at 412 million.

In a speech in May 2014, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe affirmed that Japan would provide Southeast Asian nations its "utmost support" in their South China Sea territorial disputes.

In March that year the leaders of Vietnam and Japan agreed to upgrade bilateral relations to be an "Extensive Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in Asia", this new relationship promised to let both countries collaborate more closely with each other in a large number of fields including politics, economics, national security, culture, and human exchange.

[43] Following Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's high-profile visit to Vietnam in September 2021, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi shortly followed afterwards with his visit, inking an accord to export Japanese-made defense equipment and technology to the Southeast Asian country and the two countries agreeing to boost cooperation amid China worries.