>>13791578On the DVD commentary for one of the films, one of the directors says something about being worried about how Brock would be received worldwide. They feared that he would get racist hate, because he was designed to be Asian. Funnily enough, everybody passed him off as black, so it was fine, but from this, we know that Kanto is NOT supposed to be Japan.
Whilst Kanto/Sinnoh/Hoenn/Sinnoh are based off of locations in Japan, and draw inspiration from Japan, it isn't literally Japan. Same thing for Unova and Kalos. They draw inspiration from America and France, but they aren't America or France.
All we know about the poke-verse diversity-wise is that there ARE regions where the people look Asian (Kimono Girls/Brock, ect.), but we have not been to those regions.
Kanto through to Sinnoh are populated mostly by the generic wide-eyed anime face people. Unova and Kalos seem to have some darker skinned people, but they aren't the same ethnicity as Brock, as they have the generic anime faces, and he seems to have a specific Malaysian face.
So yeah, there are no Japanese or American's in Pokemon. Only Kantoans and Unovans, who share the same generic anime facial features.
