The Indo-Pacific is often treated as a response to China’s rise or as a strategic concept popularised in Washington. But that interpretation obscures a deeper origin story. The Indo-Pacific was not simply declared into existence. It emerged gradually through a transformation in Japanese strategic thinking, as India moved from the periphery of Tokyo’s strategic imagination to its centre.

Most existing scholarship explains what the Indo-Pacific became—as a strategy, a regional order, or a geopolitical concept.[1]  Less attention has been paid to the strategic transformation that made such an idea possible. This commentary argues that the deeper origins of the Indo-Pacific lay in Japan’s long-term strategic reorientation towards India and the convergence of Japanese and Indian maritime regional strategies.

Japan’s discovery of India as a strategic actor marked a turning point in how Asia itself was imagined. Over the past two decades, Tokyo moved beyond an East Asia–centric worldview and began to envision a broader maritime strategic geography linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans. India was no longer viewed as a distant South Asian partner, but as an indispensable pillar of a wider Asian maritime order. This long-term strategic reorientation amounted to what may be called Japan’s ‘India Shift’.[2]

This transformation was rooted in Japan’s own maritime strategic tradition. Japan’s prosperity has always depended on open sea lanes, global commerce, and a stable rules-based order. Strategic thinkers such as Tetsutaro Sato, Tanzan Ishibashi and Masataka Kosaka each argued, in different ways, that Japan’s security and economic survival were inseparable from the wider maritime environment. After the strategic disasters of the Second World War, Japan rebuilt itself through its alliance with maritime democracies, economic openness and international cooperation. The Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) later translated these enduring principles into the strategic realities of 21st century Asia.[3]

By the early 2000s, Japan was already searching for a regional framework that extended beyond East Asia. During the post-Cold War period, Tokyo promoted Asia-Pacific regionalism through APEC and ASEAN-centred institutions. Yet as China’s strategic weight expanded and debates over an ‘East Asian Community’ gathered momentum, Japanese policymakers increasingly questioned whether an East Asia–only framework remained adequate. Gradually, attention shifted towards a wider maritime Asia that included India, Australia, and the United........

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