The year 2001 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the beginning of Japan-Cambodia exchange. To commemorate the occasion, this project aimed to encourage the rebuilding of Cambodia's intellectual property and the improvement of its intellectual infrastructure and to further deepen bilateral cooperation by supporting the preparation of historical records on Japan-Indochina cooperation.
Archival research in five areas--Cambodia's history and culture, the history of Japan-Cambodia cooperation, Japanese cooperation in the Cambodian peace process, Japanese cooperation in Cambodia's national revival in the second half of the 1990s, and Japan-Cambodia cooperation--was undertaken and historical records were organized. A Khmer text on the historical records was produced and was then translated into English and Japanese. In March 2001, 3,000 copies of the trilingual publication Cambodia-Japan: Historical Record were printed.