The funny thing is, this is a monarch game and Japan still isn't in the middle ages and I am one tech away from the industrial ages. What is it with Japan? In all my games in civ3 (and civ4 for that matter) they are incredibly far behind in techs from everyone else.
I haven't explored the whole map yet so I don't know whether they are on an island or not. I just traded for a contact with them to meet them.