To be honest, I don't know for sure.
The few japanese people I talked to believe that investing in stocks is dangerous, based on the past losses they experienced.
I also read and heard that investors in Japan focus only on EPS and don't care a lot about net asset values. However, we probably all know that assets, when productive enough, are the generators of the companies' earning power.
That's why I don't really worry about the focus on earnings. We just have to pick the companies we like. At least, the well capitalized balance sheets give the managements great margin for errors, and the only thing these managements need to do is to prove that the cash really belongs to shareholders. And in that sense, what I am seing is mostly encouraging (at least going in the right direction).
Perhaps, disproportionate focus on earnings can partly be explained that around twenty / thirty years ago, a significant number of japanese managements used to buy derivative contrats and get their asset values wiped out. However, I am not sure this fear is still warranted today (as managements mostly became very cautious after learning from those mistakes).