+1 -- I think Japan's role in the way is pretty vague, and (IIRC) the minimal references in 1st edition stuff and the brief blurb in the 2nd edition don't really match up very well. Then there's the 2300AD timeline, which has them intact enough to help France and its allies garrison the Middle East when the US goes home.
I tend to see them as kind of the France of the Pacific, though with a different set of strengths and weaknesses. Given that modern Japan is dependent on oil, food, and all sorts of other imports, I think circa 2000 if they are hanging on it is by trying to maintain enough stability off shore to allow for trade. Less an attempt at a new Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere and more a multilateral engagement with Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan (another question mark), South Korea and US forces there, and any clumps of stability on the Chinese mainland.
And they don't have much, troops-wise, to do it, though if they can keep a supply of raw materials coming in and aren't too badly nuked, a lot of their defense industry is local. I see a lot of merchant ships plying the Pacific who are more merchant/adventurers on the Viking model doing wary business and occasionally clashing with small dictatorships scattered on the islands and mainland from China, down through the Philipines and Indonesia, and perhaps as far west as what's left of India. (As well as Hawaii, Alaska, and the US/Canadian/Mexican Pacific coast, doing business with anyone over there with goods to barter, etc.)
No idea on the order of battle, except for a little bit that touches on my Alaska stuff, but I've thought on and off that it would be a pretty cool premise for a campaign to have the PCs be a core group of US troops recruited out of Korea (or maybe coming off convalescing in hospitals in Japan) to augment the ships troops on a semi-militarized Japanese merchantman. Add in a general reconnaissance mission for the DIA or CIA unknown to the Japanese captain to the equation, with the possibility of some more active cloak and dagger stuff from time to time, etc., and the nice way any sort of scenario can come out of the next port of call and it seems like it would have a lot of potential.
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