[HajiShirazu]

It is true that Japanese people tend to take their hobbies seriously and many of them if they took up poker would study hard and play well. And if they can crush music games and eating certainly poker is within their grasp. Having read some Japanese poker strategy-related sites I can kind of get a sense for how many of them think about the game and the idea that they would be "system" players is probably correct.
However I feel there would also be many rich fish, especially given the wide gap between rich and poor in the country. Furthermore there are no good strategy books in Japanese, although if it took off it would only be a matter of time before someone translated some and posted them on 2chan, or published some 2+2 book ripoff. And in any case it takes time and experience to play well, so at least there would be an initial fishy period of a couple years or so.