Okay, I get your point. I appreciate the sources and the articles over the gaming society in Japan are quite interesting. But, if what all you say is true, if this has nothing to do with safety but is more of a cultural thing (safety reason, aside), it doesn't change the fact that Nintendo is one of the biggest gaming companies in the world -- the whole world, not just Japan.
So, if I was a CEO at Nintendo, I would recognize this and try my best to put out a quality product that will yield more profit, something similar to XBL. As someone said, this would be more than cost-effective because Brawl's sales will sky-rocket after less than die-hard gamers hear about it's wonderful online mulitplayer. To me, that sounds reasonable and just good business. As SamuraiPanda said in his podcast, Brawl is going to be the biggest, best-selling, and overall greatest game for the Wii's lifetime, sold all over the world. I can't imagine that such an important part of it would be dictated based on the gaming traits of one country, even it happens to be Japan. If you're right and that is actually what's happening, _I_ need to be CEO of Nintendo.