Japan is a fine country, it seems to export more culturally to us than us to them at this point. It has a very long and in-depth history with traditions being held up very high. Though, they are engaged in a very different culture war than the one we have: they have one of the oldest populations and their debt to GDP rate is worse than ours. They are culturally aligned, but they have significant issues. Every country does, it is just a lot harder to see from the US stage, since we have the habit of considering our country the center of the world, throughout most of history, many countries have been, the US however has been the center since post-WW2 due to it's financial influence and world reserve currency status.