Sorry I can't believe what you just said regarding inclusion.
The MLB has the most diverse league with almost every race involved. The NFL is a land athletic sport so your best players that will fill the league will be those athletic players. You can't blame a league if certain countries or ethnicities aren't as athletic to compete in the NFL.
W...t...f
Japan has more registered players than Slovakia and I think Austria (and perhaps Czechia, but don't quote me on that). Hockey is a unique sport where you don't need a ton of players to be successful as we've seen with Sweden and Finland. However, if you're not going to play the numbers game like Canada can, you better hope your development can overcome and in Japan's case it hasn't. Remember that a lot of sports teams not only in Japanese culture, but Asian culture are tied together with schools. Students join clubs which can be futball, tennis, baseball, archery, and in the north hockey. One problem is that hockey is very well known in the Northern part of Japan where they get a ton of snow, but is practically unknown the more south you go. Like people might know it, but don't care about it as baseball is the king, especially in Tokyo. Of course hockey is quite regional on both sides of the sea, but that hasn't stopped other countries in producing good players.
If I was going to take a guess, it's a bit too chaotic in terms of getting proper development as schools control the programme instead of an outside source filled with development accolades (as we find in USHL/CHL). Of course hockey has great prep schools in North America such as SSM, Select Hockey, Pursuit to Excellence, and Red Bull Akademie in Europe. Based on the info provided by Gordon-senpai, Saitama is a dedicated hockey prep school there, but the other problem is they're playing against other schools who have chaotic programmes and Iguchi's team probably destroy them.
It seems similar to the problem in England where instead of creating a top junior level where they can narrow down talent levels at the top, they believe that every single ice rink in England deserves to have a team as well as a junior team (as
@3 Minute Minor can probably go more in-depth). That not only destroys the development of the league, but it really waters it down. Since players who need extra development time are getting ripped apart by the superior talented players and the talented players are plateauing in their development because they're playing against water-downed competition. It's as much of a lose-lose scenario you can get.
The other problem is that Japan sports federation funds money into programmes, but I've noticed they're quite biased - who isn't? - in terms of the sports and which ones. They tend to fund summer sports much more than winter and the more popular the sport is the more funding it gets such as volleyball, futball, and baseball. Winter has been getting more money lately, but since hockey is regional it doesn't get as much as other popular sports in Japan such as ski jumping and now figure skating. Surprisingly the women's hockey team is getting much more popular, but is still very far behind ski jumping. Japan just needs a wave of good players to catch the eye of the people at top who having meetings over funding. Hopefully, one of these players in this crazy age group for Japan can make the NHL which is very powerful tool to get the media's attention.
