eschew world domination? only in public think of it as manifest destiny with a 100 year plan
Not with their birth rate.
And not with this..
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/229/wu05nov0ca.jpg/sr=1And not with making horrid lefty-emotive decisions like shuttering ALL their nuclear power in the wake of Fukushima, despite not having the capacity to replace even a fraction of the power with other methods.
South Korea could pretty much now buy the Japanese equivalent of their Fortune 100 with
cash on hand.
They can think it all they want, but it's not going to happen. I don't care what a culture/civilization thinks, or says, I care about what they do in making long term prognostications.
Japan is firmly on the road to setting itself up as a first-world backwater, and will be further attenuated culturally and ethnically by "guest workers" from Korea and China, and other parts of Asia as they struggle to make up for their inverted demographics time-bomb.
That's not to say America is at risk of doing much the same things (Aztlan anyone?) that threaten us too, but we're a much more resilient nation and culture, that was built on assimilation. Many thought the end was nigh more than once as waves of Irish, Italians, and E. Europeans came ashore, notions that look... quaint now, at best. So perhaps Mexico won't be the end of us either.
Japan is much more... rigid about such things.
But my apologies if I misunderstood and you meant China. Yes, they worry me. And it'll take a LOT of messed up demographics, and asexual Otaku humping anime pillows to take them down a few pegs. They are pretty much done in gathering up every last first world technology and convenience, yet still have loads of third-world disposable humanity to leverage against their competition. A dangerous mix.
