Part 3: Before the Fall – Japanese Influence in Malaya and Singapore

In the last post, we followed Marquis Yoshichika Tokugawa on his first visit to Singapore in 1921—a seemingly low-key personal trip. But Japan’s presence in the region was anything but recent. From the decades old trafficked sex workers trade to growing business networks, Tokugawa arrived as a ground swell of presence was taking place. In Part 3, we trace its evolution—from rising commercial interest to far murkier pursuits.

Read Part 2 here

The Japanese in Southeast Asia: Before Tokugawa, and After

Sultan Ibrahim had been friends with Marquis Tokugawa for over 20 years before the tragic events of Workld War II (WWII) changed everything.

When Marquis Yoshichika Tokugawa first arrived in Southeast Asia in 1921, he was not bringing Japan to a new frontier—it was more like returning to familiar ground. The Japanese who came with, or as a result of, the new introductions Tokugawa made were walking a path well-worn by generations of their countrymen.

In this post, we’ll step back in time to explore the deeper historical context of Japan’s longstanding presence in the region—and how that foundation helped shape the pivotal relationship between the Sultan of Johor and Tokugawa himself.

A Legacy of Trade

Much like the Chinese, Indians, and Arabs, the Japanese had been trading in Southeast Asia long before modern colonial lines were drawn. After Japan opened its doors to the world in the second half of the 19th century, Japanese commerce in the region intensified. Singapore’s emergence as a trading hub only accelerated this trend.

Read more about Singapore's precolonial cosmopolitan trading hub here

In Malaya, the Japanese population grew rapidly—from a single documented resident in 1871 to over 1,000 by 1900, and more than 6,000 by the 1930s. Japanese consuls were formally posted to Singapore in 1889, cementing a growing diplomatic and commercial footprint.

A Surprising Discovery

A 1890s photograph of Japanese prostitutes in Singapore from the collection of the National Museum of Singapore. https://www.roots.gov.sg/Collection-Landing/listing/1035063

For the early 20th-century Japanese elites and planners who ventured south—including supporters of the expansionist Nanshin-ron or “Strike South” policy—there was an unexpected sight waiting in the port cities of Southeast Asia.

They found their countrymen already there in significant numbers. Most were women. Nearly all of them worked in the sex trade. They had been there for decades.

Driven by poverty and desperation among Japan’s rural peasantry, thousands of Japanese women had ended up in brothels across the Straits Settlements, the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, and the Philippines. To many of the new arrivals—diplomats, scientists, industrialists—this legacy was an embarrassment. It clashed with the image of a rising imperial power they hoped to project.

In an effort to clean up Japan’s image, the Japanese consulate began repatriating some of these women. But the damage to Japan’s reputation—and the persistent local demand—meant the trade never truly stopped. From 1915, Japanese women were officially barred from entering the Straits Settlements. But as with all things in high demand, prohibition only forced it underground.

At the time, the male population of Singapore far outnumbered the female, so it is not too surprising that these developments caused some anxiety among the male population. While various officials, themselves likely sexually frustrated, sought to enforce the ban, the local Chinese, Indian, and European male population looked on helplessly. 

However, the Japanese brothels closed in name only. They reopened under new guises: massage parlours, “ice cream” vendors, flower arranging schools (minus the flowers), and even travel agencies (with fictional destinations). For the lonely male population of Singapore this thin veil fooled no one. They were, perhaps, united in one of the rarest of colonial experiences: universal relief (literally), regardless of race, class, or creed.

Changing Demographics, Shifting Agendas

 

A postcard from September 1906 commemorating a business milestone of tonnage shipped by Japan's NYK Line, much of which passed through Singapore and Southeast Asia.

As the Japanese footprint in Southeast Asia grew more respectable on the surface, it also grew more complex. In Johor, where earlier Japanese investments in rubber plantations had started to yield significant profits, the number of Japanese residents multiplied sevenfold between 1911 and 1921.

By the early 1920s, Japanese men made up the majority of the population across Malaya and the Straits Settlements. As the Japanese population in the region expanded, their communities organized themselves more formally. Schools appeared. Newspapers emerged—some beginning to reflect a growing anti-British sentiment as events in China sharpened Japan’s geopolitical vision.

The Return of Tokugawa

It was into this changed landscape that Marquis Tokugawa returned in May 1929. He was no longer simply a curious aristocrat. Now, he was the senior representative of a large Japanese delegation attending the Fourth Pan Pacific Scientific Congress in Batavia, an organization that was enthusiastically embraced by Japan’s Southern Seas policy.

His party included 11 senior academics, 7 high-ranking government officials, and one military observer—to keep an eye on things. The Japanese were in Southeast Asia not only to study it, but to assess it, chart it, and understand its potential: botanists, hydrographers, surveyors, and many others fanned out across the region.

Tokugawa himself had become a specialist in the region. Fluent in Malay and the proud owner of a vast personal library on Malaya, he likely knew more about the land, its people, and its politics than any other Japanese national. He wasn’t a spy—he would never stoop to such a base profession. But the information he gathered flowed back to Tokyo, where it was studied intently.

The Shadow Network

By the 1930s, the Japanese community in Southeast Asia had evolved into something much more than a collection of expatriates and entrepreneurs. It was, increasingly, a network—one that fed intelligence back to the homeland.

Japan’s Military Affairs Bureau (Unit 82), based in Taiwan, coordinated a growing web of information gathering across the region. And ironically, it was the much-maligned brothel system that played a critical role. These seemingly innocuous businesses provided perfect cover to gather sensitive information: maps, military sites, infrastructure, local knowledge, even potential collaborators.

And Tokugawa, whether knowingly or not, contributed to this broader mission. His research trips across Johor, Singapore, and Java—ostensibly scientific—were invaluable to Japanese policymakers. His close friendship with Sultan Ibrahim of Johor, a fiercely independent ruler whose state occupied a strategic position on the peninsula, only added to his value. Conversations in Tokyo’s imperial botanical laboratory between Tokugawa and the Emperor surely included reports on Malaya’s strategic terrain, its people—and its vulnerabilities.

A 2004 translation of Tokugawa's book about his travels in Malaya and Java in the 1920s and 1930s

A Tsunami Approaches

In our previous post, we explored the shifting nature of Japanese engagement with Southeast Asia—how curiosity turned into calculation, and science into strategy. (Read the previous post in the series here).

By the late 1930s, the tides were rising. Tokugawa’s scientific missions, Japanese schools and newspapers, the discreet whispering network of sex workers, and the extensive mapping of the land—all were signs of something bigger on the horizon.

The relationship between Tokugawa and the Sultan of Johor may have begun over tiger hunts and shared intellectual curiosity, but the stakes had changed. A tsunami of attention was building—relentlessly—at the tip of the Malay Peninsula.

And the world would soon feel its impact.

Coming up next: Sultan Ibrahim visited Japan in 1934: who was to know that just years later Asia would descend into a war which pitched the British Empire against the Empire of Japan with the Sultan caught uncomfortably in the middle of it all? In the next post we discover how a friendship that started more than a decade earlier became a pivot point in the broader story of Southeast Asia’s–and Tyersall’s–darkest hour.

Learn more: read the book