Lori Odom, state director of Asian investment, credits Nashville investment banker Ed Nelson, who served as an honorary consul general for more than 15 years, with promoting Tennessee while the Japanese government was seeking a new location.

The office, which opened in January 2008, covers Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. It will promote cultural exchanges, serve Japanese citizens and businesses and assist Americans in need of visas.

Tennessee hosted the 34th annual joint meeting of the Japan-Southeast U.S. Association and Southeast U.S.-Japan Association in October 2010 in Nashville. The associations are made up of leaders in business and government from Japan and eight Southeast states including Tennessee. The organization was created in 1975 to promote trade, investment, understanding and friendship between Japan and the organization’s member states.

Tennessee’s trade with China has grown 1,100 percent over the last five years, the most rapid growth among the states.

In October 2007, the state opened the Tennessee China Devel­opment Center in Beijing. At the same time, the state began working with the Chinese Foreign Loan Office for an exchange of health-care leaders to improve rural health-care delivery in both countries.

That visit yielded other positive results. Knoxville-based Phenotype Screening signed an agreement to sell its equipment to the Chinese Institute of Botany in Beijing. Phenotype makes a small X-ray device used to analyze plant root structures.