Every summer, a village west of Tokyo called Kawakami-mura becomes the temporary home of 700 or so twenty and thirtysomethings who help local farmers plant and harvest the lettuces for which the area is known. There and elsewhere in Japan, farmers have come to depend on these seasonal workers, even though they do not speak the language well – because most of the itinerant workers are from China.

On the streets of Tokyo’s glitzy Ginza shopping district, meanwhile, large groups of Chinese tourists are a daily sight in designer boutiques and discount electronics retailers alike, many flashing a Ginren, the Chinese credit card that has become vital to the income of many shops in the capital.

The young workers in Kawakami-mura and the shoppers in Ginza are just two of the more conspicuous signs of Japan’s increasing dependence on China to support its faltering economy. Once the unchallenged economic giant of Asia, Japan is turning to its western neighbour not just as a manufacturing base but for customers for its goods and services and as a source of labour in sectors ranging from agriculture to clothes manufacturing.