I recently read a book about a mass breakout by Japanese from an Australian prisoner-of-war camp on Aug. 5, 1944. Some 1,100 Japanese tried to escape, but none succeeded -- indeed, 231 died, many by their own hand using prison-issue cutlery. "Voyage from Shame" by Harry Gordon (1995) portrays this breakout as a quest for death to avoid the dishonor of capture, by people whose world view remained as blinkered as during their country's centuries of isolation before the 1868 Meiji Restoration.
Now, 60 years later, Japan remains in many ways a country apart and still blinkered to the outside world -- certainly so in respect of its exposure to innovative trends elsewhere in the performing arts.
There's little that comes here from abroad that's really cutting-edge, and most visiting foreign productions tend to be safe, mainstream -- and of the big-money showbiz variety.