I doubt there is any place in the world that doesn't deserve chastisement.
The fault of the Japanese people -- generally speaking, I'm not saying this is why they were punished or even if they are being punished directly by God -- is extreme pride masked as humility and sense of duty. I'd gather this is why they are so hard to convert, along with other Asian peoples. They often have a rigorous form of morality even without God, so they probably think they don't need Him. It's the "good pagan" mentality. But look where this ends up, in a lack of sympathy for the weak, a lack of charity, and materialism. It strikes me as an incredibly unhappy and suffocating culture, where even the people who appear happy are often faking it, keeping a stiff upper lip, as it were.
Look at all these ѕυιcιdєs that they have, or the salarymen having heart attacks in their fifties from overwork. There is such heartless industrialization, everything is about money and success. I also think the explosion of sci-fi and fantasy anime there, as well as sɛҳuąƖ perversion, is the inevitable flipside to this dehumanization. Fantasy, the release of the "id," becomes the only means of escape besides death.
If this is a punishment, if this is the beginning of the Chastisement, it wouldn't surprise me. Japan may be one of the worst nations on Earth, spiritually speaking, so it seems kind of appropriate that it all kicks off there. America has done the most damage overall, but Japan is worse within its own borders.
I often think about how it says in the Bible that God will judge the nations. Here is my prediction of this ranking:
1) France
2) Italy
3) Spain
4) Austria
5) Poland
6) Ireland
Those are the core countries. And then on down from there. Clearly, France is the greatest nation, I'm sure of that one, please spare your breath arguing against dogmatic fact. I don't care about Gallican pride or any of that, it was slipping a bit then, but even saints have their weaknesses... The French people have the exact right balance of a solid work ethic with charity, they know there has to be some quality of life too.
Today you'll often hear certain French people say that the country should be more like Germany, meaning they need to be more like the Chinese, living only for work. But the essence of France is nothing like Germany. It does my heart good to see that many French people simply don't accept this psychotic globalization and can see through that lie that just "working harder" is somehow going to solve the global crisis. A handful of people want to make more and more people work longer for less and less, while driving them out of the real-estate market or saddling them with loans. Even here in America, which always prided itself on its freedom, people are saying we need to work harder like the Chinese, instead of blaming these corporations that are destroying jobs by shipping them overseas to cheap labor... But the French people see what's happening and they won't put up with it much longer. Even the atheists there are wiser than the Catholics here about how pernicious this trend is, how pernicious these banks are.
Italy and Spain err slightly on the side of laziness and irresponsibility, Austria and Germanic nations towards machine-like insect life. Only France has mastered the perfect balance. Those people know how to live. They are the most civilized and refined nation of all, even in their apostasy you can see the quality.