I have a bad feeling iTunes match is never going to come to Japan, along with iTunes in the Cloud, or allow their songs to be in store which has iTunes match and iTunes in the cloud.
Reason: Japanease Record Labels are very, very conservative about piracy.
Back in 2005, when iTunes store launched in Japan, many record labels in Japan was against iTunes store in general, due to very lax nature of FairPlay DRM. Before iTunes store was launched, all the music CD that were launched were encrypted with Copy Control, so when users puts in the disc into the PC, instead of Audio CD portion being played out, it goes straight to Data CD portion, and require users to authorize the computer to rip the songs to computer first. And the ripped files were encrypted with DRM, to be played on that computer only.
The worst offender of Copy Control CD was Sony, which actually charged users to rip the songs from CD if they do it the second and third and subsequent times.
Well, thanks to explosive adoption of iPod over there, and many users complaining that copy control CD actually damaging the disc drive on their stereos and computers (don't know how that happened, but there are actually stories regarding that), all record companies in Japan have switched back to regular audio CD. But more importantly, Apple kinda forced record companies to abandon the copy control discs, when they started asking record companies about joining iTunes store. Avex was the first one to say yes, and for them, it was kind of experiment to sell songs at lot lower price then the competition, as long as there was some form of DRM.
And rest is history. Except for the DRM part. Almost all record companies in Japan are still stuck in the stone age regarding copy control and wants DRM in their songs. And they believe that iTunes match and iTunes in the cloud actually encourages piracy. Until their attitude change in regards to DRM and piracy, Apple will never introduce iTunes match and iTunes in the cloud for music in Japan. (Unless Apple plays hardball, and threatens to shut down iTunes store completely unless record company comply with Apple requiring DRM free songs and allow use of iTunes match. All record companies in Japan who has contract with Apple for iTunes says that iTunes is their lifeline, since most of profits comes from iTunes)
Chicken and egg thing.
