While officials in Canberra said the Japanese proposal was the best and cheapest, they also hailed it as the biggest defence industry agreement between the countries.
New Zealand, too, has sought to shore up its strategic and military relations in Asia as part of a foreign policy reset in recent years that the government says has turned more attention on Pacific cooperation and security.
Officials in Wellington announced in July that work had started on a defence logistics agreement with Japan, intended to make it easier for the countries’ militaries to work together.
Japanese naval vessels do not often make visits so far south in the Pacific Ocean, but the rich and strategically important waters of New Zealand, Australia and smaller Pacific Island countries are increasingly contested by the world’s major powers, making it the site of a fierce battle for influence between Beijing and Western nations.
Although remote, New Zealand has recently been drawn into more fraught questions of regional security.
In February, live firing exercises by Chinese naval frigates in the Tasman Sea between New Zealand and Australia drew alarm from those countries’ governments after flights were forced to divert at short notice.
The last port visit to Wellington by a Japanese naval vessel was in 1936, New Zealand’s military said.
A Japanese ship visited New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, in 2016.