East Asian influence on Northeast India

The East Asian countries of Japan and Korea have significant contemporary influence over and cultural similarities with Northeast India, which engages to a significant extent with Korean and Japanese culture and has been receiving infrastructural investment from Japan.

Japan
Historically, Northeast India and Japan have been connected to some extent through Buddhism; other cultural similarities have existed for millennia, such as in food and through an appreciation for nature. During World War 2, the Japanese military collaborated with the Indian National Army in the region; eventually, the westward expansion of the Japanese Empire was put to a stop in Northeast India in the 1944 Battle of Imphal. Since then, Japan has contributed to the construction of infrastructure in the region. Northeast Indians consume some Japanese cultural products as well, such as anime.

Northeast India is currently being prioritized by India and Japan as part of Japan's Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy and as part of India's Act East policy, with both countries seeing the region as especially important for creating trading routes due to their collective rejection of China's Belt and Road Initiative. Northeast India, in conjunction with the neighboring BIMSTEC country of Bangladesh, is seen by Japan as an important region in containing China, while India seeks to use its northeastern region to increase engagement with Southeast Asia. The geographical similarities between Northeast India and Japan, as well as India's guarding of its northeast as a sensitive border region that it is unwilling to allow untrusted partner countries to invest in, are other major factors leading to India desiring Japan's involvement in the region.

Korea
Northeast India has often felt alienated from the rest of India (sometimes referred to as "mainland India"), leading it in recent decades to look towards phenotypically and culturally similar parts of Asia in the east for connection. Part of this alienation is due to local insurgents and others banning Hindi cinema and other potential tools of "Indianization" in the region. In this context, Korean culture has become popular in Northeast India, with Korean words becoming increasingly prevalent in the local languages. Korean food has also become increasingly popular at local restaurants. The popularity of Korean culture that emerged in Northeast India has since spread to the rest of India in recent years. One aspect of Korean culture's popularity in Northeast India is its ability to incorporate Christian principles in a non-Western manner, making it more relatable in some ways to Northeast Indian youth than Western culture.