I'm interested in your last point. I'm not actually sure what a Japanese cultural perception of the future looks like. Can you elaborate?
Neither am I to be honest, I don't know enough about Japanese culture to answer the question really. I only know that perspective can inextricably change how we view everything, future included. To give an example we've talked about before in a previous thread unrelated to sci-fi. Godzilla and the entire structure of the kaiju culture pretty much arose from the fear of nuclear warfare. That is a perspective Japanese culture holds almost on their own, being the only nation a nuke has been used on in a war-time capacity. While it's definitely apparent that Japan over the years has developed a strong westernized culture, its hard to say if their science fiction looks like our own. What they fear in their day-to-day lives, or see as worthy of development varies.
War, zebra2 if you have not watched Space Brothers you absolutely should, it's a beautiful slice-of-life near-future realistic sci-fi that is very applicable even now. I understand it was a Manga before being made into an anime, but I never read that and I don't know how it holds up.