By Investing News Network Japan’s gold endowments were first brought to western attention in the 13th century, when Marco Polo extolled the nation’s wealth in his book of travels, calling it the “land of gold.” Polo’s stories of the emperor’s gold-plated palace and the heaps of gold from Japanese mines that made their way to China via trade routes persuaded Christopher Columbus to look for his own route to Asia. Today Japan is in the midst of a gold-mining revival, with the government’s newly amended mining act allowing foreign companies the right to explore the nation’s untapped mineral potential.