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I think being a country of law, which Japan is decidedly not, is a must-have for G7 membership. I'm not American and have never set foot in the US, so don't take my criticism of Japan as some sort of "America #1" cultural chauvinism.

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Well you already suggested that you are an European so that was a given. What I meant was judging a country's "worthiness" is already a weird notion --- how should "country of law" be quantified and compared? Who gets to say which country / system of law is better or worse?

The notion that a group of rich and powerful countries gets to decide how other countries should behave when said rich and powerful countries got to where they are through (both past and ongoing) atrocious exploitations of other people doesn't sound particularly convincing, don't you think?

Japan does not have a system of law. They were forced by the US after WW2 to pretend they care about these things, so they just looked what other countries have, translated it, and from then on they were able to show anyone who asked "see here we have these huge volumes with lots of written down laws, what do you want from us?" But in reality, laws are extremely relative in Japan, much more so than in any stable Western country.

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