Both false. Japan is currently the "zero-fee exchange utopia" like China was one year ago, and there is some speculation frenzy there, as we can not only see because of the Bitcoin price that is often higher than in other countries, but also because of (mostly Japanese) altcoin NEM, a cryptocurrency with almost empty blocks that is in the top 10 only because of bitFlyer .

But in terms of real world usage Japan continues to be one of the "lower powers": There are only 139 Japanese Bitcoin nodes. That is position #11 in the world (China is currently at #4). There was some growth from last time I checked (at the beginning of the year, Japan had about 80 nodes) but it's not near the top.