Talk:Japan/@comment-46133453-20200619174544/@comment-24166893-20200621190856

Actually Talsorian's Cyberpunk, ICE's Cyberspace, GURPS Cyberoworld, and FASA (now Catalyst Games) Shadowrun focus quite a bit on Japan. Remember the cyberpunk genre started when Japan was on the rise, many Americans feared that Japan would buy everything that we owned, Japanese Keiretsu (the successors to the zaibatsu) were on a roll, and there were all these movies starring ninjas, the Yakuza, and Japanese corporations as the villains.

Other Asian countries like Korea and China were secondary or tertiary in the cyberpunk world. The focus was on Japan, the United States, and Europe. The "good guy" megacorp was usually American (though there would be bad guy American megacorps too of course). The most sinister megacorps were always foreign. In Cyberpunk it was Arasaka (Japanese), while in Shadowrun it was (Saeder Krupp - German, MCT - Japanese / Yakuza, and Aztechnology - post-Mexican / Cartel). In Shadowrun of course there was also the Japanese Yakuza invasion and an actual imperial Japanese occupation of  the Bay Area in California (and conquest of Hawaii). Cyberpunk also did the Yakuza invasion but they didn't put as much print into it as Shadowrun did.

Now, if you look at the new sci-fi roleplaying games that have been coming out, it's not Japan that is one of the antagonistic powers but China. Naturally the United States is still a power (if the game is by an American company) or it's Europe that rivals China (if the game is by a European company). Think of the cyberpunk Interface Zero by Gun Metal Games (China = New Mandarinate) or Corporation by Brutal Games (China = Ai-Jinn). There is also the transhumanist Eclipse Phase by Catalyst Games and the Transhuman Space by GURPS. White Wolf's cyberpunk / psyker / space opera Aeon Trinity gives us the New Chinese Empire. The space opera wargame Infinity gives us Yu Jing.