This isn't a well-researched article, just my observations of various Japanese otaku-dom (fandom), from the perspective of an American anime/manga fan. Basically, from my perspective of Japanese mass media, if boardgaming had much popularity, you'd see it reflected somehow, somewhere, in Japanese anime/manga. You don't. You do see many references to RPGs, though mostly of the video game kind, which tend to be insanely popular in Japan. There are also a couple of fairly high circulation RPG periodicals available, which infers at least a decent RPG community.

The miniatures hobby is inferred from the sheer amount of miniatures scale models (WWII/modern period mainly) available from Japan. I have read about a couple of mecha model combat systems though. As an aside, note that virtually all of FASA Battletech's 1st edition mecha designs came from various Japanese animation shows/comic books, most notably Macross (Robotech here in the US). Whether the system was inspired by an existing Japanese design, I don't know. (Don't have the interest to research it, and my Japanese is limited to basic conversation vocabulary...I'm not Japanese, btw.)

I was later informed by some of my local gaming friends that Hobby Japan (a corporation that mostly specializes in models and hobby publications) put out a couple of WWII boardgames (mainly Pacific Theater) a long time ago, in the 70s. I believe these games are out of print now. I don't know if HJ has released anything since then.

As far as I can tell, there isn't much of a Japanese board game hobby, period, outside of Go, Shogi (Japanese Chess), and Mah Jongg, all traditional games that are centuries (or more) old.

A quick scan of the local Japanese toy stores (easy to find if you live in California) reveals no board games, not even children's ones (at least the last time I looked). The big Japanese gaming areas, outside of the traditional games, above, are pen-and-paper RPGs, which gets about as much exposure there as RPGs here, maybe a little more, since most RPGs with modest popularity over there get turned into anime (car-toons) quite quickly, or vice-versa: popular anime get turned into RPGs... Their RPG genre cross-section is quite broad, running the entire gamut from hack-and-slash fantasy to way-out-there sci-fi.

Also there is a smaller miniatures gaming community, mostly interested in either 20th century or medieval Japanese periods, or giant robot combat. There are a few systems that utilize all those anime/manga (comic books) based mecha models that are so readily available in Japan, kind of like Battletech. This is about as close to us rec.games. board types that the Japanese get.

MtG has been exported there. Don't know how it turned out, I don't follow CCGs anymore. I do know some home-brew CCGs were made, though. I think there might still be a couple packs of them in the local Japanese toy and book stores.

Basically, video games (all types), has nearly completely dominated the entire Japanese gaming market. If you want to see where the Japanese are going with strategy gaming, this is where you have to look.