Germany and Japan

Engelbert Kaempfer, a physician from Lemgo who served at Dejima in the 1690s, wrote one of the first major European accounts of Japan. Philipp Franz von Siebold from Würzburg taught Western medicine in Nagasaki in the 1820s and assembled large collections of Japanese plants and objects. The Eulenburg expedition concluded the treaty of friendship and commerce between Prussia and Japan in January 1861.

In the Meiji era, Itō Hirobumi studied constitutional theory in Berlin and Vienna, and the Meiji Constitution of 1889 drew on Prussian models; German advisers such as Hermann Roesler shaped Japanese law, and Erwin Bälz taught medicine in Tokyo for decades. During the First World War Japan captured the German base at Tsingtao; German prisoners at the Bandō camp in Tokushima gave the first complete performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Japan in 1918. The two countries were allied in the Tripartite Pact of 1940; relations between Japan and the Federal Republic of Germany were restored in the early 1950s.

Bilateral trade is dominated by industrial goods. German exports to Japan consist mainly of pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles and parts, machinery, chemicals, and medical and measuring equipment; pharmaceuticals have recently overtaken cars as the largest category. Imports from Japan are led by machinery, motor vehicles and parts, electronic components, optical and medical instruments, and chemicals.

Both countries are highly specialised manufacturing nations whose trade is characterised by intra-industry exchange: German and Japanese firms are simultaneously competitors, suppliers and customers in automotive, machine tools, chemicals and electronics. The EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, in force since 2019, removed most tariffs.

Hundreds of German companies operate subsidiaries in Japan, among them automotive groups and suppliers, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, machine builders, and logistics and software firms; many are concentrated in the Tokyo and Yokohama area. Japanese investment in Germany is spread across automotive supply, electronics, machinery, chemicals and trading houses, and several Japanese groups have acquired German firms.

Joint ventures and mergers link the two industries closely; the machine tool maker DMG Mori, formed from the German Gildemeister and the Japanese Mori Seiki, is a prominent example.

Düsseldorf has been the centre of Japanese business in Germany since the 1950s, when Japanese trading houses and steel firms settled near the Rhine–Ruhr industrial region. The city is home to one of the largest Japanese communities in Europe, with a Japanese international school, kindergartens, a Japanese chamber of commerce, a consulate general, Japanese shops and restaurants around Immermannstraße, and the EKŌ-Haus, a Buddhist temple and cultural centre.

The annual Japan Day (Japan-Tag) on the Rhine promenade, with fireworks by a Japanese team, draws very large crowds. Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich also have significant Japanese business communities.

A dense network of institutions supports economic and academic exchange. The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan (DIHKJ, AHK Japan) in Tokyo advises German companies and represents their interests. JETRO, Japan's trade and investment promotion organisation, has offices in Germany that help German companies with business in Japan and Japanese firms investing in Germany.

On the academic and cultural side, the Japanese-German Center Berlin (JDZB), the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ) in Tokyo, the German East Asiatic Society (OAG) founded in Tokyo in 1873, the Goethe-Institut in Japan and the Japan Foundation's Japanese Cultural Institute in Cologne play central roles, alongside numerous German-Japanese societies and city partnerships.

For German-speaking readers beyond Germany: Switzerland concluded a treaty with Japan in 1864 and Austria-Hungary in 1869. Switzerland has had a bilateral free trade and economic partnership agreement with Japan since 2009, while Austria trades with Japan under the EU agreement. Both have chambers of commerce and trade promotion offices in Tokyo, and Japan has social security agreements with Germany, Switzerland and Austria that avoid double contributions for posted workers.