A cursory glance at Japanese culture and values shows me that America has had far less influence on its development than you believe. On the scale of individuality/community, Japan is further on the opposite side. The anime/manga industry is quite different than anything we have in the West, and a lot of their values tie into the things that are depicted, what's okay, what's not okay, etc. We often see traditional influences on their media that simply don't exist in the West in the same way (comparison of the American and Japanese versions of The Ring: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01956051.2011.5...).

Yes. First you attribute what Japan is to how the US rebuilt it, when in fact this society has thousands of years of history before the US. Sure we can't deny US influence after WW2 and how integrated they are in the global economy, that doesn't make it a westernized country.

Not to be annoying, but can't this be said about most places? Like continental Europe.

Continental Europe is considered, by and large, to be "The West", as is the United States. In this context, the US is a new country but very much representative of the Western world.

Yes. Japan is generally considered part of the "Eastern World."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_world

Culturally yes, but it depends on context. As mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world , during the Cold War and after, "Western World" was roughly analogous with "First world".

That is to say, (again, roughly) - "modern, stable, (primarily) capitalist, democracies aligned with Western Europe/USA".

So, in the context of geopolitics and political ideologies many people still consider it to include Japan and South Korea. Yours truly included.

Not that I care as much about the "aligned with" part anymore, but certainly the "modern, stable, democracy" part.

Yes.